Death at Blackthorn Hall
A 1920s Spy Mystery in Reverse

About this book:

A signed confession. Two corpses. A Soviet mole walking free by dawn—unless Captain Arthur Pendelton can unravel the truth *backward*, hour by treacherous hour.

Blackthorn Hall, October 1926. The storm has severed the phones and washed out the bridge. In the study, a forged confession names Sir Julian Blackthorn as the traitor who sold Gibraltar's defenses to Moscow—signed in the dead man's own hand. In the conservatory, Sir Julian lies murdered by a letter opener. Between them sits Christopher Vance, the nervous secretary, cyanide on his lips and a Webley in Pendelton's grip. The local constabulary won't arrive until morning. The real spy is still in the house, raising a glass to the perfect frame-up.

Pendelton has until sunrise to rewind the clock. From the midnight toast to the eleven o'clock waltz, from the poisoned champagne to the intercepted cipher jammed in the grandfather clock's gears, every chapter pulls a thread further into the past. But in a house where ruined lords, foreign attachés, and flapper nieces all wear masks, the past is a labyrinth of lies—and the first lie was spoken long before the weekend began. *Death at Blackthorn Hall* is a spy thriller run in reverse: a locked-room puzzle, a country-house betrayal, and a race against time where the only way forward is back.