Soft Pedal

A ruthless headteacher. A suspicious drowning. And a musical alibi that sounds just a little too perfect.

Exam season has arrived at Breckensford Academy, and tensions are running high.

The school's new executive headteacher, Clive Arbery, is determined to slash costs. The music department, the library, and the pastoral team are all facing cuts-and so, possibly, is the job of Hilary Bird, mother of blind piano tuner Octavia Bird.

But Octavia has other things on her mind.

She's been helping a talented but difficult seventeen-year-old pianist prepare for his prestigious conservatoire audition, tackling the delicate soft-pedal passages of Debussy that demand extraordinary control.

Then Clive Arbery is found drowned in the community swimming pool before dawn.

And Octavia's mother becomes a prime suspect.

Hilary's car was spotted outside the pool that night. She refuses to explain where she was, and her silence only deepens the police's suspicions.

Octavia knows her mother is hiding something. But is it a secret worth killing for?

With the Academy divided by bitter arguments over funding, borrowed pool keys raising troubling questions, and several people having good reason to hate the victim, Octavia begins investigating.

Her most intriguing clue is an apparently watertight alibi: a neighbour's angry recording of a teenage pianist practising Debussy late into the night.

Everyone agrees the recording proves exactly where the boy was.

But Octavia hears something the others have missed.

With her faithful guide dog Crotchet at her side, she must unravel a mystery of professional rivalries, family loyalties, and carefully concealed motives before her mother's silence costs her everything.

Soft Pedal is an atmospheric, cleverly plotted British cozy mystery featuring a resourceful blind piano tuner, her loyal guide dog, intriguing small-town characters, and an ingenious musical puzzle.

Perfect for readers who love British murder mysteries, intelligent female amateur sleuths, classical music mysteries, and traditional whodunits with unexpected twists.

A clean, standalone cozy mystery with no graphic violence or profanity, a satisfying, fairly clued solution, and plenty of English small-town atmosphere, family drama, and musical intrigue.

The police have a recording that proves an alibi. Octavia has a pair of ears that tell her otherwise.