The Bernie Fazakerley Oxford Mysteries

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These stories were published between 2015 and 2017. They are police procedural crime novels, set in the university city of Oxford. Bernie Fazakerley, an eccentric Oxford don with a penchant for marrying police officers, has a habit of becoming involved in murder cases, which often turn out to have a more personal side for her and her long-suffering friends and family.

Two Little Dickie Birds is set in 2002, when Bernie’s daughter Lucy is two years old and her friend, DI Peter Johns is struggling to combine a busy police career with giving time to his wife and student son. His investigations into a drowning reveal that he and his assistant, Sergeant Paul Godwin, have more in common that they realised.

Murder of a Martian takes place a few years later, after Peter’s beloved wife, Angie, has died. Peter is now married to Bernie, and Lucy thinks of him as her Daddy. Two students discover a murdered man aboard a narrow boat and Peter is called to investigate. He soon finds that things are not as they first seemed and a second murder brings DCI Jonah Porter on to the scene.

In Grave Offence, Lucy has reached the age of nine and is beginning to develop an independent spirit. A trip on the river with a friend from the university comes to an abrupt end when she is assaulted by a strange woman, who hits her and then runs off. Things start to become more complicated when the same woman is found dead a few days later. Peter is struggling to put the pieces of the jig-saw together, but help comes from an unexpected quarter when DCI Jonah Porter takes a hand in the case from his hospital bed.

Awayday is Jonah’s case. Set in 2014, we see him tackling an investigation despite the disabling injuries that he sustained when he was shot by an unknown assailant. This is a traditional-style “whodunnit” with a cast of suspects drawn from the staff of an Oxford college. Peter, now retired, offers advice, which is sometimes welcomed! And Bernie comes along for the ride in her capacity as Jonah’s personal assistant.