Vertigo 42 (A Richard Jury mystery), Martha Grimes

Widower Tom Williamson asks Jury to reopen an accidental death case. Tess Williamson, Tom’s beautiful wife, suffered from vertigo and when she was found dead at the foot of a flight of stone steps on their country estate seventeen years ago it was ruled a tragic accident. Tom is still convinced it was murder.

Jury’s initial investigations seem to point in that direction. He also uncovers another ‘accidental death’, this time a drowning on that same estate. Five years before her death Tess held a party for six local children and one little girl died. Jury and Wiggins, his sergeant, try and track down the other kids at the same time as Jury pokes his nose into an apparent suicide close to his friend Melrose Plant’s North Hampshire home. Just when Richard Jury thinks he has worked out the identity of the guilty party the case takes a twist worthy of Hitchcock.

If this is your first Richard Jury mystery (how could I have missed this gem of a series?) then go back to the beginning and pick up The Man with a Load of Mischief, the first Richard Jury novel.