Published By: Hutchinson Heinemann
Pages: 336
Released On: 07/05/2026
Her 3 o’clock just became a murder case…
When a body washes up near Beachy Head, the Police chalk it up to suicide — a tragic but not uncommon end in these parts.
But local psychotherapist Patricia Philipps isn’t convinced.
The victim? Her three o’clock patient, Henry Clayton.
The cause? Supposedly self-inflicted.
The truth? Pat suspects murder and she’s trained to spot what others miss.
After all, she spends her days listening to secrets, resentments, fantasies and motives. And she’s certain someone wanted Henry Clayton dead.
With her chaotic best friend Pritchard in tow (part-time brewer, full-time meddler), Pat swaps the therapy room for the crime scene. It’s time to unpick the lies, untangle the egos and catch a killer hiding in plain sight.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Hutchinson Heinemann for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I think this is Philippa’s debut novel but I know she is an accomplished writer. I don’t know much about her to be honest, outside of being a psychotherapist and Grayson Perry’s wife, so I was going in blind. But I know I like cosy crime novels so I was hoping it would be good.
But it didn’t hit the heights I wanted it to.
It’s got all the tropes I was expecting and wanted in a cosy crime novel.
The chapters were a little longer than my preference which drew the story out a bit longer.
It felt a bit like a painting-by-numbers at times, a bit formulaic.
I didn’t find any of the characters likeable. She’s given us a reasonably broad spectrum of characters but most of them were these rich upper-class snooty types and I couldn’t take to them. Even with the characters who were introduced as opposites of them didn’t hit the mark.
This is going to sound weird because it’s a fictional novel and it’s not meant to be real, but I do still expect there to be a certain amount of believability in a book and this wasn’t. Mainly to do with the police force. They were so unbelievable, and not in a fun quirky way, and that spoiled it slightly for me.
it doesn’t take a whole lot of concentration and I think that was at its detriment because I kept losing focus and felt reluctant to continue reading at times.
The ending doesn’t really feel in keeping with the rest of it and it felt rushed like she suddenly realised she had to finish it.
I read a lot of cosy crime novels and I do enjoy them. They’re good to lose yourself in and relax to, but this one fell short to what I was expecting.
It was okay. Would I recommend it? To fans of really cosy, cosy crime books probably yes. But it is a very basic story, done well but nothing overly special.
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