The Bookshop Detectives 3: Murder and Mojitos | Gareth and Louise Ward

Art Deco glamour, a Cuban crime queen and a grammar-obsessed killer collide in the #1 best-selling Bookshop Detectives’ high-stakes final instalment. The Bookshop Detectives are on the case! Booksellers Garth and Eloise Sherlock (and their cowardly dog, Stevie) have been roped into hosting Murder and Mojitos, a glamorous Art Deco festival event starring Cuba’s queen of crime fiction. Between flapper frocks, rooftop hijinks and competitive cocktail shaking, it should be the bookshop’s biggest break yet. But when mysterious parcels arrive at the shop and a body turns up on a quiet local beach, every clue points back to Arthur Pinter – the literary-obsessed serial killer from the Sherlocks’ past. With the mojitos flowing and half of the town in costume, Garth and Eloise must untangle a web of old betrayals, new alliances and international intrigue before the festival’s finale turns into a bloodbath. Can they protect their staff, their small town and their beloved bookshop – or will this be their final chapter?

Gareth and Louise Ward are the real-life owners of independent bookshop Wardini Books, with stores in Havelock North and Napier, New Zealand. Louise is known among the staff as Fearless Leader and Gareth as a bit of a dick; he is, however, the author of the Tarquin the Honest and The Rise of the Remarkables book series, as well as being the bestselling and award-winning author of The Traitor and the Thief and The Clockill and the Thief. Gareth and Louise met at police training college in the UK and are both ex-coppers. Louise has one murder arrest to her name, is an English Literature Graduate and as an ex-teacher inflicted Shakespeare on inner-city twelve-year-olds. She regularly reviews books on RNZ. Both are obsessed with their rescue dog Stevie, avoid housework and gardening, and live in the cultural centre of the universe that is Hawke’s Bay, Aotearoa New Zealand. The Bookshop Detectives is Gareth and Louise’s first book together.