NOVELIST Ann Granger publishes a new crime novel every year, working on stories set in two different time periods.

One is present day, with detective Jess Campbell and her superior, Ian Carter. The second features Inspector Ben Ross and his wife, Lizzie, who between them solve murders in Victorian London.

Granger’s latest, Dead In The Water (Headline, £19.99), finds Campbell and Carter leaving the comfort of their Cheltenham offices to find the murderer of Courtney Higson, a pub waitress. Her body has been washed up in a flooded river, caught up against a jetty at the end of the garden at Neil Stewart’s home in a Cotswold village.

Their efforts are hampered by torrential rain that makes the river waters rise.

Suspicion falls on members of novelist Neil’s writers’ class at the local academy, as Courtney was last seen serving at their end-of-term dinner. It seems the young woman was known to some of the class on more than just a casual basis.

Then Courtney’s father, a local villain, is released from prison on compassionate grounds and it turns out that he is also keen to find out who murdered his “princess.”

Granger, of Bicester, has plenty of scope here for her astute observation of people and an opportunity for humour. Another virtue of her crime fiction is that she maintains a fine balance between plot and the personalities of her detectives.

Next up will be a sixth and final outing for Ross and wife in Victorian London.