Death by Numbers

Hardback

'Clever and very funny' Ian Moore, author of Death and Croissants

Set between London and the south coast, we are introduced to Una, a risk-averse insurance actuary, who uncovers a series of mysterious deaths at odds with her research and must put herself in danger to find out what's going on.

Una and her colleague Tim are vying for a promotion in the life insurance department of a huge city financial house. So when Una's latest research - predictions about causes of death in seaside towns - fails to match the number of unusual deaths that are actually happening, she is on the back foot. There are some strange outliers in the data - death by hanging basket? - but even so, the numbers have never let her down before.

As if things couldn't get any worse, Una visits her mum in Eastbourne for the weekend and learns she is getting re-married. Una, still grieving her father's death, is set against it. However, when she learns that two of the deathly data points she's looking into were friends of her mum's flashy new fiance Ken, she decides to stick around to investigate. Soon after, another of the local bingo crowd is found dead in questionable circumstances and a pattern emerges - and if Una has interpreted the data correctly (and until now, she's never doubted her numerical ability), the next 'accidental' death will happen on the day of the wedding.

Una's always been more comfortable working with numbers than people, but if she's going to stop the killer, she will have to put her spreadsheets aside - and unite with her arch-nemesis Tim - to find out the truth hidden in the numbers.