The Windmill Murders: A Mulligan & Martin Mystery

An island in the South of England, isolated, remote, one road on, one road off. The island still has its own quaint ways, including a Court Leet, a kind of self-appointed council of local characters wielding powers handed out in the days of William the Conqueror. The members are voting on whether to allow an historical but ruined windmill to be knocked down and replaced with a new car park for the fancy flats up by the castle. Voting if they survive, that is, because someone is sending threatening letters with words cut from a library book on local history. And then the Leet start to die in ways ironically linked to their council role; the bailiff is stabbed with a fountain pen, the chairman beaten with a gavel. Could it be to stop the demolition? Mulligan and Martin are on the case. She is hard-working and focused but disappointed that she's working two jobs to stay solvent, he is arrogant without the talent to back it up. Their detective agency is under-funded and situated above a coffee shop. Soon, they're discovering a skeleton that has been buried for 20 years, uncovering clues to a robbery that was thought a cold case, and entirely missing the fact that the story of what happened at the Leet last time the windmills were threatened decades ago possibly adds Mulligan to the list of potential victims...