Cocktails and Cowardice

Cafe owner and amateur sleuth Julia South leaves the Cotswold village of Peridale behind for a shared honeymoon in Andalucia, Spain. Four friends, sun, cocktails and a villa should add up to the easiest holiday of Julia's life, especially with a baby on the way.

What begins as a relaxing escape curdles quickly. A disappearance and a web of local corruption pull Julia into an investigation far from her usual patch, and without her village and her familiar suspects she has to work the case on unfamiliar ground. Agatha Frost splits the narration between Julia and her irrepressible grandmother Dot South, letting each of them see a different corner of the mystery.

Cocktails and Cowardice is the twentieth Peridale Cafe Cozy Mystery. It keeps the series' hallmarks — British village warmth, no graphic violence, no cliffhanger — while moving the cast abroad for a change of scene.