Half-Muffled at Little Sedge

About this book

Seventeen-year-old Halley Brandt can count a six-deck shoe and read a liar's hands, which is no use at all in a Lincolnshire fen village where the bus comes twice a day. While her mother is in rehab in Las Vegas, Halley is sent to the silent grandfather she has never met. She brings a stolen letter with her: eight rows of numbers and a note from someone called W. On her first night in the church bell tower the old tower captain asks whether her mother got his letter. Halley lies. By morning he is dead on the spiral stair, his notebook is missing and the door has been locked from the outside. So Halley learns to ring, with two new friends and a pack of marked cards, and follows a dead man's puzzle toward a night her mother has never talked about.