Mitchell and Markby Books in Order: How to read Ann Granger’s series?

From the author of the Campbell & Carter Mystery series and of the Lizzie Martin series.

What is the Mitchell and Markby series about?

After working in British embassies in various parts of the world, Ann Granger became a crime novelist with the Mitchell and Markby series in 1991.

Set in the fictitious town of Bamford somewhere in the Cotswolds, this mystery series began when civil servant Meredith Mitchell came home after many years abroad and reinvent herself into an amateur sleuth. A murder put her on Chief Inspector Alan Markby’s path as they started working investigations, each one with their own style.

How to read the Mitchell and Markby Books in Order?

Every book in the Mitchell and Markby series works as a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one novel to the other.

1. Say It with Poison – When Meredith Mitchell agreed to stay with her actress cousin Eve in the run-up to Eve’s daughter’s wedding she anticipated a degree of drama. But she hardly expected it to include murder, blackmail and unrequited love. Or to involve a certain Chief Inspector Markby, a middle-aged divorcee with an emotional history as unfortunate as her own.
2. A Season For Murder – It is with some trepidation that Meredith Mitchell returns to the Cotswolds: the Bamford district holds memories that, to put it generously, are bittersweet, and Christmas is a difficult time to find oneself a stranger in a new area. Yet she receives a kindly welcome, in particular from her Chief Inspector Markby and from her new neighbour Harriet Needham. But Meredith has barely got to know her neighbour when Harriet is involved in a shocking – and fatal – accident at the Boxing Day Hunt.
3. Cold in the Earth – To Meredith Mitchell, marooned in a dusty London flat, the Cotswolds seem like a haven of peace and tranquillity. But Chief Inspector Markby has a rather different view of his native area, as he witnesses the bulldozing of one of his favourite boyhood haunts to make way for yet another housing estate. And when a man’s body is found buried in the foundations of one of the plots his outlook turns even grimmer. The only cheering prospect on the horizon is Meredith’s forthcoming visit.
4. Murder Among Us – When ambitious hotelier Eric Schuhmacher announces he is to turn Springwood Hall, near the market town of Bamford, into a smart Cotswold country-house hotel, the news is greeted by a chorus of local disapproval, led by the redoubtable Hope Mapple. So the gala opening, to which all the disaffected parties have been invited, promises to be quite an event – not least because the amply upholstered Hope Mapple is planning a disruptive streak protest. But Hope’s lightning dash is unexpectedly upstaged by a far more shocking event: the discovery of a recently murdered body on the premises.

5. Where Old Bones Lie – What do you do when you think your ex-lover has murdered his wife? That’s the question Ursula Gretton, an archeologist working on the Saxon burial ground on Bamford Hill, puts to Meredith Mitchell in the hope that Meredith’s friendship with Cotswold Chief Inspector Markby might cast some light on her dilemma. But Markby is dismissive of Ursula’s suspicions concerning the disappearance of Dan Woollard’s wife – until a body is found in the rubbish dump near the site Woollard and Ursula have been excavating.
6. Flowers For His Funeral – In the heart of the leafy Cotswolds a body is found. A teenage girl, probably local, somebody’s daughter who went out one evening and didn’t come back. It is not long before she is identified: fifteen-year-old Lynne Wills who habitually drank underage in ‘The Silver Bells’ pub and, on the night of her death, was seen leaving with an unknown man.
7. A Fine Place For Death – When Meredith Mitchell bumps into her old school friend Rachel Hunter at the Chelsea Flower Show, it doesn’t take Meredith long to realise that she and the effortlessly self-confident blonde have even less in common now than they had as teenagers. Apart from one thing – Meredith’s companion, Chief Inspector Markby. For to the embarrassment of all concerned, except of course the self-possessed Rachel, Meredith’s old school friend turns out to have been Markby’s former wife, from whom he was divorced years before in less than friendly circumstances. The meeting with Rachel is not the only surprise the Flower Show has in store for Markby – before the afternoon is out he has a death on his hands.
8. Candle For a Corpse – On an unseasonably chilly summer’s day a macabre discovery is made in Bamford’s ancient churchyard. A body, dead some twelve years, is unearthed in the Gresham family plot, too shallowly buried to be a legitimate interment, too recent to be the last Gresham officially laid to rest. Superintendent Alan Markby cannot resist the challenge to solve this twelve-year-old crime and suddenly his long-planned canal-barge holiday with Meredith Mitchell is in serious jeopardy.

9. A Touch of Mortality – When Sally Caswell persuaded her scientist husband Liam to move from London to the quiet of rural Oxfordshire it was in the hope of a more peaceful existence. But so far the move has led to nothing but discord. But then a mysterious package arrives that gives the couple real cause for anxiety. It appears that Liam is being targeted by animal rights activists, though Superintendent Markby, in charge of the investigation, is not entirely convinced.
10. A Word After Dying – Superintendent Alan Markby and Meredith Mitchell are in desperate need of a holiday – and the Cotswold village of Parsloe St John seems the perfect choice. Their neighbour, retired journalist Wynne Carter, is as convivial as the village itself and, over a glass of blackberry wine, indulges in her latest obsession, Olivia Smeaton, a racy old lady whose life – and death – she is convinced are not all they seem. Markby is more interested in buying Olivia’s house than the circumstances of her vacating it, but Meredith is intrigued: by the old lady, the death of a cherished horse and a dusty junk shop run by a white witch.
11. Call the Dead Again – When Meredith Mitchell picks up a hitchhiker on a lonely road outside Bamford one evening she is left feeling distinctly uneasy. What business can this confident, yet secretive, young woman have at Tudor Lodge, the beautiful old home of Brussels-based lawyer Andrew Penhallow, where she asks to be dropped? Penhallow is constantly toing and froing from the Continent, but that night, unusually, he is at home, and – with his son away and his wife Carla in bed with a migraine – alone. Which is unfortunate, for the next morning he is found murdered in the garden.
12. Beneath these Stones – Two years ago, twelve-year-old Tammy Franklin lost her mother to a long, lingering illness and now the body of the woman her father married in an attempt to replace his wife has been found on a railway embankment close to the Franklin farm. This time the death is murder. As Superintendent Markby, one of the first on the scene, well knows, Tammy now stands to have her father taken from her. But Markby begins to realise that the truth is destined to be far more complex than he ever envisaged…

13. Shades of Murder – In 1889 Cora Oakley died by inhaling a poisonous gas in her sleep, and her husband William was put on trial for her murder. Over a hundred years later, the only remaining members of the family are two elderly sisters who live in the ancestral home. Unable to maintain the mansion, the sisters decide to sell up and live off the proceeds. Then a young Polish man named Jan appears, claiming to be William Oakley’s great-grandson and threatening to ruin the sisters’ plans. When he is found dead, Superintendent Markby must look back at the events of a century ago to find the killer…
14. A Restless Evil – It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby’s spine when he hears that a rambler has stumbled on human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds. Twenty-two years ago, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure in the hunt for a brutal serial rapist preying on local women. After the third rape, the attacker went to ground, never to be heard of again. Now, with a new investigation prompted by the grisly remains, the trail could be warm once more.
15. That Way Murder Lies – When Meredith Mitchell’s old friend Toby Smythe turns up on leave, she is delighted to see him. But Toby has a problem – or rather his relative Alison Jenner has – and he wants to enlist the help of Meredith’s fiance, Detective Superintendent Alan Markby. Alison has been receiving anonymous hate mail which alludes to the murder of her aunt, Freda Kemp, of which Alison was acquitted when she was just twenty. Who is the writer, and how does he or she know about this secret in Alison’s past?
16. An Unfinished Murder – A Campbell & Carter Mystery featuring Mitchell & Markby! As young children, Josh Browning and his sister, Dilys, stumbled across a dead body while playing on the outskirts of their Cotswold village. Terrified by what they’d seen, neither of them told a soul. Now, twenty years later, Josh finds the dead woman’s charm bracelet among his sister’s possessions. Who better to tell than his trusted friend, the man he gardens for, retired Superintendent Alan Markby? As Markby listens to Josh’s confession, alarm bells start to ring. The dates and details tie in with a missing person case that was never solved.

17. Deadly Company – Superintendent Alan Markby and his wife Meredith have retired for the night when they are disturbed by a visitor. It’s not the first time someone has called at the Old Vicarage in search of a priest, but in this case, having just found a dead body in the churchyard, Callum Henderson needs the police. Accompanying Callum to the graveyard, Alan declares that this has all the hallmarks of a murder scene.

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