Nicola Whyte’s Murder Like Clockwork is a locked-room mystery that will have you scratching your head while you turn the pages. Perfect for cosy crime lovers, it is the sequel to 10 Marchfield Square, which received acclaim and award nominations on its publication a year ago.
Audrey Brooks is a cleaner who arrives at the Petrov residence midday each Thursday to clean the house and maintain the owner’s collection of clocks. But on this particular Thursday, shivering from the cold, Audrey arrives half an hour early and discovers a mess she wasn’t expecting: a bedroom full of blood and a dead man at its centre.
Like any sane person would, Audrey gets out quickly and calls the police – who arrive, in less than 20 minutes, to find a pristine room and no dead body in sight. Thus Murder Like Clockwork presents a fascinating conundrum: how could someone clean up a crime scene so fast, and remove a body from a house in broad daylight without being spotted?
While the novel reintroduces characters from 10 Marchfield Square, despite having not read the first book myself I found Murder Like Clockwork thrives as a standalone cunning crime mystery.
