'A splendid piece of work' - New York Times

Chatfield, 1986.

After a private art viewing on a bleak February evening, the local gallery owner - the flamboyantly camp Minim Minikin - is found murdered.

A painting on display has also been stolen. The case has DCI Sheldon Hunter stumped. After months of enquiry, the investigation has turned up nothing. No suspects, no murder weapon, no painting and, indeed, no artist.

The identity of the painter, Fayne, whose work disappeared that fateful night was as much a mystery to the police as to the art world at large. Reluctantly, with no leads to pursue, the case is marked unsolved and forgotten amongst heap of other unresolved cases.

Four years later and Hunter receives a series of anonymous letters and phone calls alleging that a family in the picturesque town of Rush Deeping is somehow involved in the death. His interest piqued, he decides to investigate further. Apart from being pillars of the community and monstrously self-regarding, the Saddlers seem somewhat unremarkable.

But as Hunter digs around, he soon discovers that their son, Ian, is missing and his mystery caller claims it has something to do with the artist Fayne. Can Hunter get to the truth before another body turns up?

Private View is the first enthralling mystery in the popular series featuring DCI Sheldon Hunter and his team.

Praise for Meg Elizabeth Atkins

'It is a pleasure to read such a sparely written, well observed novel' - The Sunday Telegraph

'This civilised novel demonstrates that traditional crime writing is alive and well' - Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News

'Brilliant' - The Sunday Times

'Atkins' writing is dry, witty and effervescent. Here is vintage champagne' - Writers' Monthly

'Atkins clearly knows all about the hushed panic lurking under the leaves and in her new novel she conjures it with crisp economy and a cold shudder' - Cosmopolitan

Meg Elizabeth Atkins has won many plaudits for her fiction on both sides of the Atlantic, and reviewers have compared her to Elizabeth Bowen and Barbara Pym for the elegance of her writing. In several of her earlier novels, such as Samain, Palimpsest and Tangle, she has explored the disturbing undercurrents beneath the polite surface of English middle-class life, and in Cruel as the Grave forces erupt through the repression and containment of daily existence with violent consequences. Meg now lives with her husband in a North Yorkshire village. She teaches creative writing and also writes non-fiction books such as Haunted Warwickshire.

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