THE HOMER AWARDS: A New Literary Prize Born in GREECE
A detective mystery set in GLOUCESTERSHIRE
3rd August 2026
The Shrine by Lesley Thomson. a detective mystery set in Gloucestershire
The Shrine is the tenth iteration of Lesley Thomson’s successful Detective’s Daughter crime series. It is every bit as good as the others.
The story opens on a note of domestic tension. Stella, the ‘detective’s daughter’, a natural sleuth and owner of a cleaning service, is shocked by the discovery that her partner, Jack, has been secretly consulting a psychic to contact his late mother. He has hidden this from her. Seeking a little distance and time to think, she joins a friend, DI Toni Kemp, for a quiet holiday in a small Gloucestershire village. However tranquillity is short-lived. A body is discovered at a local shrine – a site already marked by the memory of a woman who died there decades earlier.
What follows is a typical Thomson mystery: intelligent and very carefully plotted. The story features a cast of memorable locals, including a retired pharmacist and the daughter of a notorious, long-deceased medium. As Stella digs into the death, she is forced to confront the legacy of this once-famous psychic, while at the same time working her way through the emotional fallout of her doubts about her relationship with Jack.
The puzzle is quite complex, featuring clues that are inserted into the plot with surgical precision, and which culminate in a final revelation that is pretty unexpected.
The Shrine is a great addition to the series.
Tony for the TripFiction Team
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