Body in the Park

Book One in the Rita Patel Mystery Series

Human remains are found in Bradgate Country Park near Leicester. Rita Patel, aged 16 and waiting for her GCSE results, learns that the body may belong to a girl who lived in her house 40 years ago and she decides to find out more.

For Rita it is the summer of 2012, while the dead girl, Claire Watson, also 16 years of age, left the house in Elm Drive for a better life in February 1972. Circumventing her parents' attempts to protect her, Rita manages to enrol her unwitting family and her History teacher, into her investigations into Claire's death. Rita has a keen interest in history, and also explores the fate of Lady Jane Grey who lived in Bradgate Park.

Her discoveries highlight many social and cultural changes that have occurred in Leicester in the period which separates the worlds of the two girls, as well as identifying several sinister figures in Claire's life. We travel forwards in time with Rita's discoveries, and backwards in time with Claire's activities, until the truth of what happened is revealed.