Silent Night at Greylag House
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Open the Series TrackerCloud had come down over the fells above Thornmere Water before the light was properly up, and Madge Loxley had five beds to make. She went along the landing with the windows open a hand's width each, letting the cold walk through the rooms the way her mother had taught her, because a shut-up room smells of itself and guests can tell. The east side first, where the light came in over the garden and the feeder station. Then the west, then the two little rooms under the gable, then the back bedroom that faced the lane, which was the coldest of the lot and which somebody had asked for specially.
Perfect for fans of snowed-in guesthouse mysteries, British village whodunits, and amateur sleuths.
A widowed landlady with a mortgage to meet. Five snowed-in strangers. One Lakeland guesthouse with a dead guest upstairs.
Madge Loxley, Widowed Landlady of Greylag House and Amateur Sleuth. Madge has kept Greylag House above Thornmere Water for twenty-two years. Carol week fills every room, and on the first snowbound morning Mr Marsh in the back bedroom does not come down to breakfast. She wants that night written down properly before the police get up the lane, and the house she has kept alone for nine years kept. Six feet of snow, a dead telephone, and five guests who each tell her something but never everything.
Gordon Swale, Retired Fell-Rescue Leader and Neighbour. Gordon spent his working life bringing walkers down off Great Thorn Crag and the last nine years as Madge’s neighbour, with something in his fleece pocket he never takes out. The blizzard strands him on her sofa. He wants Madge believed and her house kept standing. His mountain-rescue set is the only line to the sergeant, and Madge will not stop asking questions.
Somebody washed one cocoa mug in the night and hung it on the wrong hook. If Madge cannot read it before the plough gets through, Greylag House becomes the guesthouse where a man died, the bank takes the rest, and whoever walked her landing at eleven answers for nothing.
Nobody washes just one mug. Somebody under her roof did.
– snowed-in guesthouse mystery — six feet of drift over the lane, a dead telephone and a generator that gives one bulb in three
– landlady amateur sleuth — a widow of fifty-six who keeps her record in a stiff-backed notebook labelled LINEN
– locked-room death — a guest found in his bed behind a door only the landlady held the key to
– mysterious stranger guest — a well-fed man in a good coat gone at the cuff, who asks one question about an antiques dealer and takes it back
– houseful of suspects — a bickering brother and sister, a widow in a silk scarf who burns papers in the parlour grate, and a mild birdwatcher waiting for waxwings
– British Lake District Christmas cosy — carols at St Oswald’s, Wassail Trail lights down Kirkgate to the water, mince pies and a Christmas Eve Gala at the Hall
– later-in-life slow-burn romance — a retired fell-rescue leader of sixty who takes her elbow on the ice a moment longer than the ice requires
– village rumour mill — Doreen Cragg at the Post Office, who has not been wrong about a face in thirty-one years behind the counter
– clean cosy fiction — no profanity, a death discovered rather than shown, and a proposal made where the kettle is
Perfect for fans of snowed-in country house cosy mysteries, British village whodunits set in the Lake District at Christmas, and later-in-life slow-burn romance between two people who have known each other for years.
Bank the range, bolt the door and settle in with Book 3 of the Lakeland Christmas Cosy Mystery series.
Heat Level: Closed Door (no on-page intimacy)
Tone: Cosy · Atmospheric · Heart-warming
Series Type: Book 3 in the Lakeland Christmas Cosy Mystery series — each book reads as a standalone
Ending: HEA — Happily Ever After
POV: Single POV · Third Person
Content Notes: off-page death, mild peril, grief
Inspirational Theme: Hopeful · faith-friendly tone
