On deadly tides

Duncan's solid 11th Penny Brannigan mystery (after 2019's Remembering the Dead) sends watercolorist Penny to the picturesque Welsh town of Beaumaris on the island of Anglesey for a painting course taught by Bill Ward, a TV personality turned artist. In a bar on her first night in Beaumaris, Penny meets Colin Campbell, a charming Canadian wildlife photographer, and Jessica Graham, an enthusiastic young reporter from New Zealand, who tells Penny she's on assignment to interview Ward, as well as research a New Zealand man's disappearance in Beaumaris seven years earlier. After Penny finds Jessica's body at the bottom of a cliff the next morning, the police decide it was an accidental fall. But Penny suspects foul play, and when Jessica's grief-stricken mother shows up to claim her daughter's body, Penny feels compelled to get involved. Penny's subsequent inquiries uncover a link between Jessica's death and the missing man. The romance that develops between her and Colin complements the sleuthing. Duncan skillfully takes her classic village mystery series in a new direction. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Nov.)

A chance meeting with a journalist plunges an amateur detective into another case of murder. Businesswoman/artist/sleuth Penny Brannigan and her friend Alwynne are staying at a hotel on the Welsh island of Anglesey for a painting weekend organized by sleazy former actor Bill Ward. In the hotel bar Penny shares a table with a fellow Canadian, wildlife photographer Colin Campbell, and Jessica Graham, a young New Zealander who's digging into the disappearance of a wealthy compatriot seven years ago. The next morning Penny discovers Jessica's body on the beach, apparently fallen from a steep cliff. Her old friend DI Bethan Morgan investigates, and although the autopsy is inconclusive, both of them sense that something isn't right. Penny feels the urge to sleuth while pursuing a budding romance with Colin, who's flitting back and forth between assignments. Penny invites Jessica's distraught mother to stay with her in her cottage in Llanelen, North Wales. When someone breaks in, she knows her hunch about murder was on point. She and Colin fall for an apartment in Anglesey, a stunning Georgian terrace that Ward's selling now that his lover, hotel assistant manager Sarah Spencer, has agreed to move out. Little do they know that the apartment may contain a crucial clue to the murder--and indeed play a major role in their own future as a couple. Fans of this long-running series will delight in both the mystery and the romance that bids to change the heroine's life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.