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Deceased Before Opening: Thoroughly Inconvenient Deaths
Paperback
Series: Thoroughly Inconvenient Deaths, Book 4
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 9 2026
Pages: 318
Weight: 0.74
Height: 0.79 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
A delightfully wicked British cozy mystery perfect for fans of Richard Osman and M.C. Beaton.
The village of Little Croft has been at war for eleven years. Not the kind of war that makes the news, the kind that makes the seating plan at the Harvest Festival genuinely dangerous. Two bakeries, one village, and a grievance that has been simmering since the incident at the village fete that nobody discusses except constantly.
Mrs Constance Brierly, housekeeper at Aldermere Hall, has watched this war from a professional distance for eleven years. She has opinions. She keeps them to herself. She has a Hall to run.
Then someone turns up dead on the floor of Horton's Bakery before opening time, covered in flour, and the war stops being merely inconvenient.
Deceased Before Opening is the fourth book in the Thoroughly Inconvenient Deaths series, cosy mysteries set in the English countryside, where the villages are charming, the grudges are long, and the body count is, frankly, unreasonable. Mrs Brierly did not ask to become an investigator. She has a lime avenue to attend to, a wedding venue to manage, and a young man who keeps losing things.
She investigates anyway. Because someone has to, and because Mrs Brierly is, though she would never say so, very good at noticing things.
For readers who love a traditional English village mystery packed with dry British humour, feuding locals, and a protagonist who considers murder primarily an organisational inconvenience.
Buy Deceased Before Opening today and discover why, in Little Croft, even a perfectly baked loaf can hide a multitude of sins.
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