Anne Cleeland’s Doyle & Acton series returns with another grand installment in the series Publisher’s Weekly praises with: “Distinctive characters compliment the finely wrought highly charged plot.”

The time the fey police sergeant Doyle and her Chief Inspector and multi-titled husband run into a nest of Spanish aristocrats with murder on their minds. As the bodies have mounted up, the person behind the murders has been difficult to pin down.

And it isn’t Doyle’s imagination that her husband, prickly and evasive at the best of times, has something on his mind. With threads of several cases adding up, Doyle fears her husband has something up his titled sleeve.

Add to that the dreams Doyle has at time, with portentous visits of spirits and even the ghost of a knight at her husband’s family home, and you have enough ingredients for a fast-paced mystery that takes the usual procedural and twists it on its head.

Doyle’s Irish accent adds a charm to her character as the new mother juggles her young son with work, overlapping cases, and the designs of her husband behind the scenes. She’s also the voice of reason to Acton, and she despises the trappings of his aristocratic heritage as much as she loves the man.

There will be a wedding and christening before Doyle has to assume yet another title at her husband’s familial estate. Being Lady Acton there is bad enough. It’s a cracking good mystery with a most unusual married pair at the helm.