The Healers

by Ann Cleeves

News of the murder came to Inspector Stephen Ramsay early on Monday morning: isolated farmer Ernie Bowles was found lying on his kitchen floor, gruesomely strangled. Ramsey fears this case will not be simple. In his experience, most murders are straightforward: an explosion of family pressure, the loss of control in a fight. But Bowles seems to have kept himself to himself and had lived alone since his mother’s death. A seemingly unconnected women is then found strangled too—surely two such killings in the same locality are more than just chilling coincidence? When Ramsay hears of a third suspicious death, a very tenuous link between the victims takes on a new importance, for all were connected in some way to the Alternative Therapy Center in Mittingford. Could one of the healers be a killer?