Frances Holcombe

Another Porthaven Story

Traditional village mysteries, one story at a time

Each book in Another Porthaven Story is a standalone village mystery investigated by DI Karen Locke, newly arrived in the fictional Cornish harbour town of Porthaven. Shorter and more intimate than the Morning Men Mysteries, these are stories about a town that notices everything — told one cobbled lane, one pub, one familiar face at a time.

The Bakery on Fore Street cover
Book One

The Bakery on Fore Street

Another Porthaven Story by Frances Holcombe

Everyone in Porthaven knew Wendy Trevorrow. She ran the front of the bakery on Fore Street, and knew what you wanted before you'd finished asking for it. Then, one October, she wasn't there — and Detective Inspector Karen Locke, new to Cornwall and still finding her feet, discovers a whole town has already decided what happened.

Colin Trevorrow says he's devastated. Everyone agrees he must be. Karen isn't so sure agreeing is the same as knowing.

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The Badger's Lament cover
Book Two

The Badger's Lament (For Alison)

Another Porthaven Story by Frances Holcombe

Something goes missing from the back room of the Black Dog on a Saturday night in November — not the cash box, not the guitar leaning beside it, but a notebook. Three years of setlists and half-finished songs, and one tune never quite finished: written for a woman Mango spent a single night with in Edinburgh, and lost without ever learning her surname.

What begins as a small theft leads Karen into an older story — and somewhere in the middle of it is a song that may finally get finished.

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A Tough Day at the Office cover
Book Three

A Tough Day at the Office

Another Porthaven Story by Frances Holcombe

Betty Bellthorpe has kept the books for half of Chandler's Lane for nineteen years, and keeps her filing system in an order that makes sense to precisely one person — so when she finds three client files put back very slightly, precisely wrong, she knows exactly what it means before she even rings anyone.

By the end of it, Karen isn't sure whether she's investigating a crime, or being quietly, expertly managed by the most competent woman in Porthaven.

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The Bell Tolls for Murder cover
Book Four

The Bell Tolls for Murder

Another Porthaven Story by Frances Holcombe

Angus Bell has run the bell tower at St Petroc's for five years — steady, well-liked, the kind of man a small church leans on without quite noticing it does. On the Friday before Easter, the verger finds him murdered in a pew at the back, facing the altar. Sometime in the night, before anyone found him, someone rang the bells — one bell, alone and badly, a sound that meant nothing to most of Porthaven and everything to a few.

What Karen finds isn't a puzzle. It's a reason — and the man who gives it to her, calmly, believes every word of it.

Coming soon