“His eyes drifted back to the road, a shocking state of panic –

  — something in the middle of the road –

  — you’re going to hit it!….

Slam. Jolt. Stop.

Breathe.

The bodywork ticked and creaked in protest at the emergency halt. The 

engine had stalled at his carelessness.

Ewan checked himself. Spike of adrenaline subsiding.

First thought: maybe it’s a deer.

Second thought, as he peered through the windscreen: that’s not a deer.”

At three a.m, Detective Sergeant Nicola Bridge gets a call that is difficult to believe. In Chris Chibnall’s Death at the White Hart, she is newly returned to her childhood village of Fleetcombe in Dorset, a place of 300 houses, many still thatch-roofed, and 800 people.

Nicola made her reputation fighting big-city organized crime in Liverpool, but in a desperate attempt to hold her marriage and family together, she’s come back home, only to find that the job she’s accepted is nothing like what was promised. She has half the staff she’d been expecting – exactly two officers, neither of them very promising – her headquarters is in a disused bank building, and the local police she thought she was joining has been given a much larger three-county brief.

And now this: the dead body of a man, tied to a wooden chair, crowned by a full set of deer antlers.

 The victim is Jim Tiernan, who ran one of the two pubs in town, The White Hart, and it isn’t long before Nicola figures out what everybody else in Fleetcombe knows: “He knew all these people by name, he knew their lives and their lies, their secrets and delights, their joys and their shame, their finances and their addictions.”

Everybody knows something. Nobody tells her anything.

There’s Tiernan’s sister, Patricia,  renting out her house as an Airbnb and washing out bloodstains from a sheet. There’s his lover, Irina, from Ukraine, who says she was out driving that night and slept in the car. There’s Christine, the woman who oversees the company that owns his pub and, thanks to tricky bookkeeping, has a good reason to be glad Tiernan is dead. There’s another lover, who is quite a surprise. There’s a farmer who seems to know an awful lot about the case. There’s a local hairdresser frantic to guard a secret. There’s a delivery man who may be delivering more than parcels.

And there’s a nine-year-old girl named Shannon, from a troubled home, who escapes to a playground late at night. No one sees her there, but she sees them, and she sees what they do.

For Nicola Bridge, it will be a case like no other, not even in the snake pit she left behind in Liverpool. She came back to Fleetcombe to save herself and her family. Instead, she has discovered ghosts, some from her past, some much older.

And they do not like to be awakened.

Death at the White Hart is an extraordinary debut novel, filled with atmosphere and layered mystery and characters that live and breathe and leap off the page. Nicola Bridge is a terrific addition to the investigative ranks, a professional of consummate skill who is also, she must admit, “a terrible detective of her life.” She has many surprises in store for her.

So do you.

To read more of Neil’s review and discussion with Chris Chibnall, go here.