An audio book.
Tom French, a twitcher (bird watcher), is found dead (head bashed in by a cylindrical object) on the Norfolk coast by young Adam (another twitcher). Adam's father (a magistrate whose young wife left him when Adam was little) doesn't want fragile Adam involved with investigations, so he asks George Palmer-Jones (a twitcher, but also a retired person with connections) to investigate. His wife Molly helps too. He gets the police report and starts questioning other twitchers. He discovers that Tom used to be friends with Sally, who has a child, Barnaby. She once tried to kill herself. He was also friendly with his female probation officer - Tom was found guilty of possessing grass 2 years before, though he denied it after.
Several people are introduced, each with a reason (though rarely sufficient for murder) and several with alibis (not always 100%). Sometime we have their point-of-view. Adam has a portable bicycle. Sally is getting threatening mail. Cranshaw (a teacher who looks after his old mother) sent a hate letter to parents of kids who Tom tour-guided. Dennis, a strong chef working at the same White Lodge hotel as Tom, might be smoking cannabis. Terry, also working at the hotel, is mentally defective. He saw Tom with a binoculared person on the day of his murder. Rob had failed to get the international tour-guiding job that Tom had been offered just before his death. Adam has a secret. He starts being friends with Tina. Ella runs the Windmill cafe. Vera, newly divorced, chases birds and young men.
Ella held a party to celebrate a TV show about the place. George saves Adam from the well in the windmill ruins (he was probably meeting someone there).
George realises that the threatening letters to Sally were written by Cranshaw. He goes to the Scilly Isles because 3 of the main characters had been there at the same time.
Sally has been lying. In the Scilly Isles she was at a party with Tom. But Pete was in love with her, and she with him. George thinks that Pete is the father. Pete was arrested for a drug offence but Tom gallantly took the blame because he knew Sally loved Pete. Pete won't leave his wife.
Cranshaw's near madness is revealed - he's bitter about not having married and was irritated when Tom belittled his reputation. But Adam was the killer - hearing voices. Why, wondered George, had his father wanted George to conduct the enquiry?
I like it, especially the description of the twitching community - the holidays abroad; the long journeys across the country if a sighting's reported; the abandoned houses where they stay; ringers vs twitchers; the dedicated twitchers vs the tick-and-run types. Some villages cater for twitchers even though they find them strange. In the cafe there's a blackboard savaged from the closed school on which info for twichers is written.
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