Fear in the Sunlight

The final cut is the deepest... Summer, 1936. Crime writer Josephine joins her friends in the holiday village of Portmeirion to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Joining them are Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville - there to sign a deal to film Josephine's novel, A Shilling for Candles. Hitchcock has one or two tricks up his sleeve to keep the holiday party entertained - and expose their deepest fears. But things get out of hand when one of Hollywood's leading actresses is brutally slashed to death in a cemetery near the village. The following day, as fear and suspicion take over in a setting where nothing - and no one - is quite what it seems, Chief Inspector Archie Penrose becomes increasingly unsatisfied with the way the investigation is ultimately resolved. Several years later, another horrific murder, again linked to a Hitchcock movie, drives Penrose back to the scene of the original crime to uncover the shocking truth.

Nicola Upson's debut novel, An Expert in Murder, was the first in a series of crime novels whose main character is Josephine Tey, who - along with Agatha Christie - was one of the masters of Britain's Golden Age of crime writing. She was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2018 for Nine Lessons and longlisted in 2021 for The Dead of Winter.