The Expectant Detectives: A Mystery

Fresh, funny and heartfelt, The Expectant Detectives is Kat Ailes’s charming debut mystery about a group of soon-to-be moms-turned-detectives.

＂A darkly witty debut. Archly funny and highly recommended!＂--Deanna Raybourn

Can they solve the mother of all murders?

For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she’ll learn to make jam? But the rural idyll they’d hoped for doesn’t quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local prenatal class, and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.

With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice and her new-found pregnant friends set out to solve the mystery and clear their names, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. However, there are more secrets and tensions in the heart of Penton than first meet the eye. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier, and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.

KAT AILES works in publishing as an editor and freelanced for several years to allow her to take a couple of belated gap years, including hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. She now lives in the Cotswolds with her lovely husband, their young son and her beautiful but foolish dog. The Expectant Detectives is her debut novel, the first draft of which was written largely (and frantically) in three weeks after she submitted the first few chapters to the Comedy Women in Print Prize and was unexpectedly shortlisted.