Ladder to Murder,
Patrick Gillan

Monty was only after a bone. What the Labrador dug up in the churchyard of St Ethelbert’s Old Church, Meadowhaven, was a human hand, and with it, a murder that had been carefully, methodically hidden in plain sight.

The body belongs to a priest. The priest belonged to something far older than his parish, a secret order of guardians, sworn since the third century to protect a relic that certain people would kill to keep buried. And kill they did.

Ladder to Murder is Patrick Gillan’s debut novel, set in the villages and country lanes of West Kent. It begins in a graveyard at midnight and ends in Canterbury Cathedral, live on global television. Between those two points, a retired criminal psychologist pieces together what four murders, a missing vicar, and a parish council chair with cold eyes have in common.

The village knew. It just did not know it knew.

Meet the Author

Patrick Gillan

Patrick Gillan is a British author from the UK. Before he wrote a single chapter of Ladder to Murder, he knew two things: the village had to feel real enough to live in, and the killer had to be the last person you would suspect.

He got both right.

Gillan’s dedication gives something away about him. The book opens with a note to everyone living with dyslexia, not a polite acknowledgement, but a direct one. Do not let it be a barrier. Let it become your superpower. That directness runs through the writing too. He does not dress things up. He puts his characters in difficult positions and lets them behave like people.

The community at the heart of Ladder to Murder, the flower rota volunteers, the parish councillors, the dog walkers on the woodland path, is drawn from genuine familiarity with how English village life works. More importantly, how it conceals.

Monty, the Labrador who discovers the body in chapter four, is a real dog. He lives on Gillan’s street. He is reportedly very pleased with himself.

Discover the Book

Philippa felt the village’s buried truths rising along with its ghosts.

e-book

Paperback

Hardcover

Meadowhaven Runs on Gossip, Flower Rotas and Facebook.

Within hours of the police tape going up around St Ethelbert’s Old Church, the Meadowhaven Chatters Facebook page has the news. People in white suits. Like the kind you see on the news. The comments move fast. Someone makes a joke about bodies in graveyards. Someone else likes it.

That is Meadowhaven. Warm, nosy, self-contained, and absolutely convinced it knows its own business.

The village in Ladder to Murder is built from the kind of detail that only comes from knowing a place. The Norman church standing since the twelfth century. The Upper Church built in the Victorian era when the coaching traffic shifted the population uphill. The Plough, still going, once called the Five Bells. The woodland path where Donna walks Monty every morning. The church kitchen where Jane always has the kettle on before Edwin has found his keys.

Patrick Gillan uses that familiarity to do something precise: he makes Meadowhaven feel safe, because that is the only way the danger inside it lands properly. By the time the full picture comes into focus, you will have already accepted the village on its own terms. That is the point.

Two Detectives. One Village. Nothing Is What It Looks Like.

DCI Garry Alexander did not come to Kent by choice. A Glaswegian who spent fifteen years heading CID, he rebuilt himself after his wife’s death from cancer, an eighteen-month serial killer manhunt, and the breakdown that followed. He bought a cottage near Loch Lomond and put it back together stone by stone. Then he came south and started again.

He is not warm. He is not patient. But he reads a crime scene before anyone has briefed him, and he knows when the story he is being told does not match the one in front of him.

Beside him is DC Jayesh Banerjee, younger, greener, still getting his coat off the floor, who turns out to have the instincts the job demands, once someone pushes him out from behind the CCTV desk.

Then there is Philippa Abbott. She is not on the force. She is not officially involved. She is a retired criminal psychologist who spent a career inside the minds of killers, and she attends the church where the dead priest served. In Ladder to Murder, Patrick Gillan gives the investigation to three people who approach it from completely different angles. None of them gets there alone.

The Body Has Already Been Found.

Monty found it. Now it is your turn.

Ladder to Murder by Patrick Gillan is available now. A debut crime novel set in Kent, built on a thousand years of buried secrets, and centred on a retired criminal psychologist who is considerably more dangerous than she looks.

Start at the graveyard. See where it takes you.

Behind the Tales:
Reader FAQs

What kind of books do you write?

Murder mysteries set in villages that look peaceful but really aren’t stories about people, secrets, and what happens when the past won’t stay buried.

Who is Philippa Abbott?

Philippa is a retired clinical psychologist in her seventies. Quietly observant, curious, and very good at noticing what others overlook.

What inspired Ladder to Murder?

After reading one too many tired murder mysteries, I decided to write the book I wanted to read.

Where is it set?

In Kent, in and around the fictional village of Meadowhaven the sort of place where everyone thinks they know one another.

Is it part of a series?

Yes. Ladder to Murder is the first in the Philippa Abbott mystery series.

"Subscribe To The NewsLetter"

“A hidden secret never stays silent, it whispers until someone listens”

Ladder to Murder, Patrick Gillan