In Penraven, everybody knows everybody.
Jan Vale knows what they borrow.
At sixty-two, widowed librarian Jan Vale has settled into the familiar rhythms of life in Penraven, a picturesque Cornish town by the sea.
She knows the regulars, the holidaymakers and the children who would rather be anywhere than staring at another screen. She knows which borrowers mistreat their books, which parents treat the children's library as free childcare, and which locals can turn a five-minute visit into half an hour of gossip.
Jan isn't a detective. She isn't even a particularly enthusiastic reader. But after years spent surrounded by other people's stories, she has become very good at noticing when something doesn't quite belong.
Then a familiar library user leaves behind a disturbing message:
HE'S GOING TO KILL ME THURSDAY.
When the woman is found dead, what initially appears to be a tragic accident begins to trouble Jan.
There is a returned book that shouldn't be there. A name buried in old library records. The faint scent of lavender where it doesn't belong. And a trail reaching back twenty-eight years to a secret somebody has worked very hard to keep hidden.
More unsettling still, that trail leads uncomfortably close to Jan's late husband, David.
As Jan begins asking questions, the Penraven she thought she knew starts to change. Old friendships take on new meanings. Memories become unreliable. Acts once mistaken for kindness begin to look very different when viewed from the other side.
With only her sharp eye for detail, dry sense of humour and stubborn refusal to leave things alone, Jan must separate what people remember from what actually happened.
Because someone in Penraven has spent years protecting the truth.
And someone has just realised that the librarian is looking in the right place.
Set against the atmospheric Cornish coast, RETURNED is a character-driven mystery about grief, loyalty, memory and the dangerous things people do in the name of protecting those they love.
The first Jan Vale Mystery.
About the Author :
Robert Porter grew up in London, but Cornwall has been part of his life since childhood, through family holidays spent exploring its seaside towns and villages. The contrast between the constant movement of London and the quieter rhythms of the Cornish coast has remained a lasting influence on his writing.Robert works as a railway manager, in a world where millions of people travel through the network every week. Years spent observing people, their habits, conversations and the small details of everyday life have helped shape his interest in character-driven stories.His fiction crosses genres, from dark fantasy and post-apocalyptic horror to crime and mystery. In Returned, Robert draws on his affection for Cornwall to create the fictional town of Penraven and introduces widowed librarian Jan Vale-a sharp, sarcastic and quietly observant woman who has learned that people, like books, rarely reveal everything on the cover
Review :
"Atmospheric, sharply observed and full of twists that feel earned."
"A wonderfully distinctive Cornish mystery with a heroine who notices what everyone else misses."
"Dark enough to unsettle, warm enough to make Penraven somewhere you want to return to."
