A Crime Suspense Fiction Story Collection Begins in a Kent Graveyard

It starts on a Sunday night. A stranger, a shovel and a churchyard that has stood since the twelfth century. The body goes into the grave without ceremony, no hymns, no flowers, just soil shovelled back with meticulous care and a torch beam swept across the headstones to check no one is watching.

By the time the owl screeches from the tall oaks and the brake lights disappear into the dark, the grave marker reads: Here Lies Ivy Hodges, 1936–2024. The man buried beneath her has a different name. He will not be found until a Labrador with no respect for other people’s graves goes looking for something to chew.

That opening scene sets the tone for everything Patrick Gillan builds in Ladder to Murder. This is not a crime novel that holds its darkness at arm’s length. The murder has already happened before the first character speaks. The reader knows something the village does not. And that gap, between what Meadowhaven believes and what the reader has already seen, is where the suspense lives for the chapters that follow.

It is a precise, confident opening for a debut novel. And for a gripping crime thriller series, it is exactly the right place to begin.

The Victim the Village Thought It Knew

Reverend Robert de Beaumont was not easy to dislike. In Meadowhaven he was a fixture, Saturday nights at the Plough, dancing to sixties music on the jukebox, Guinness in hand, knowing everyone’s name and most of their problems. He ran a food bank, supported domestic abuse charities, spoke at Westminster focus groups, and still found time to be on the local council.

He was born into privilege, grew up at Chimneys, an eighteenth-century manor house in Surrey, went to Eton, then Oxford to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at his father’s insistence.

Jane Thomas runs the church with a fastidiousness that borders on devotion. She sets the offertory table the night before, irons Edwin’s vestments, worries about her memory and prays quietly for Rob when she feels watched in an empty church. She is warm, loyal and more observant than anyone gives her credit for.

Donna Bridges is the one who finds the hand. She is practical, dry-humoured and unreservedly fond of Monty, despite his habit of disgracing her in public. Her son’s battle with addiction runs quietly beneath the plot, one of several threads Gillan uses to give Meadowhaven texture beyond the murder investigation.

Edwin Langley, the curate, is young and a little lost without his mentor. He is handsome, private, and wrestling with how to preach a passage about submission to a congregation that includes domestic abuse survivors. He is not a detective. He is simply someone caught in the middle of something he did not choose.

These are not stock characters placed around a plot. They are people the reader misses when the chapter moves on.

What a Gripping Crime Thriller Series Needs in Its Central Character

A series needs someone the reader will follow beyond the first book. Not just a capable investigator, but a character with enough interior life to sustain a second case, a third, a fourth, someone whose presence changes the texture of every scene they are in.

Philippa Abbott is that character.

She is introduced in Ladder to Murder arranging lilies in a church, making conversation with a curate about a tricky passage in Ephesians. Before the first body is officially identified, the reader already knows she was a criminal psychologist who spent her career profiling killers. She notices the curate’s study is chaos. She notices he misses Rob. She notices, very quietly, when things in Meadowhaven begin not to add up.

Philippa does not rush. She does not make dramatic accusations or put herself in unnecessary danger. She builds a picture from detail, the way someone does when they have spent decades learning that the first version of events is never the whole one. She has seen the inside of the most devious minds in the British criminal system. Meadowhaven’s killer, however composed, is not beyond her reach.

Patrick Gillan is already working on the next Philippa Abbott novel. Readers who finish Ladder to Murder will understand immediately why.

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.

The Supporting Cast That Makes Meadowhaven Real

A village mystery lives or dies on its community. If the people surrounding the investigation feel like furniture, the reader has no reason to care what happens to them. Gillan avoids that entirely.

These are not stock characters placed around a plot. They are people the reader misses when the chapter moves on.

The Ending That Earns Its Resolution

Crime suspense fiction rises and falls on whether it delivers what it promises. Ladder to Murder promises a lot, a centuries-old conspiracy, multiple murders, a corrupt senior police officer, a killer embedded in the community, and a sacred relic that half the world does not know exists. It delivers all of it, and it closes on two scenes that could not be more different in register.

The first is the Old Bailey. Two separate sentencing hearings. Nigel Montgomery, Detective Chief Superintendent, convicted of three counts of conspiracy to murder and one count of conspiracy to kidnap, receives life with a minimum of 28 years. Felicity Deveraux, convicted of two counts of murder, four counts of conspiracy to murder, kidnap, torture and false imprisonment, receives life with a minimum of 35 years. The judge calls her dangerous, manipulative and entirely without remorse. She smiles as the guards approach.

The second scene is Canterbury Cathedral in December. A golden reliquary carried down the nave by clergy, flanked by archbishops, cardinals and the royal families of six European nations. King Charles III in attendance. The service broadcast live across global media. The relic, missing for a thousand years, returned to its rightful home.

Philippa stands in the nave and looks up at the vaulted ceiling. Outside, light snow begins to fall. Edwin asks what Rob would have made of it all.

Why This Crime Suspense Fiction Story Collection Spans More Than One Book

Ladder to Murder resolves completely. The case is closed, the killers are sentenced, the relic is returned. Meadowhaven goes back to its Facebook page, potholes, parking on pavements, lost cats. The amateur dramatics society stages a summer play. Nobody dies.

But Philippa Abbott, sitting on a coastal path in New Polzeath in December, watching fishing boats on the bay toward Padstow, does not feel finished. She asks herself whether she acted quickly enough. Whether she could have stopped the killings sooner. Whether she missed something.

That is the question a series character carries between books. Not closure, but the particular weight of someone who has looked directly at what human beings are capable of and cannot quite unknow it.

There is nothing ordinary about human beings, she thinks. Our capacity to lie, deceive, to hide. Where there is strife, ambition and power, there will always be the will to manipulate, to control and, too often, to murder.

Patrick Gillan is working on the next novel. Philippa’s niece Catherine arrives the next morning. They will reminisce, laugh, and try to put everything behind them.

Philippa knows how that tends to go.

Behind the Tales:
Reader FAQs

. Is Ladder to Murder the start of a series?

Yes. Ladder to Murder is the first novel featuring Philippa Abbott, a retired criminal psychologist living in the village of Meadowhaven, Kent. The novel is complete and fully resolved as a standalone story. Patrick Gillan is currently writing the next book in the series. Readers who want more of Philippa after the final chapter will not have long to wait.

2. What order should I read Patrick Gillan’s books in?

Ladder to Murder is the first and, at present, the only published novel. It is the natural starting point, it introduces Philippa Abbott, establishes Meadowhaven and its community, and sets up the character dynamics that will carry into the next book. Start here.

3. How long is Ladder to Murder?

The novel runs to 82 chapters plus an epilogue. It moves between multiple perspectives, Philippa Abbott, DCI Garry Alexander, DC Jayesh Banerjee and several Meadowhaven residents, and covers the full arc of the investigation from the night of the burial to the sentencing at the Old Bailey and the ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral.

4. Is there a recurring detective character in the series?

The series centres on Philippa Abbott rather than a serving police officer. She works alongside DCI Garry Alexander and DC Jayesh Banerjee throughout Ladder to Murder, and that relationship is likely to continue. But Philippa is the constant, the retired criminal psychologist whose instincts drive the investigation forward where official procedure cannot reach.

5. Where can I buy Ladder to Murder?

Ladder to Murder by Patrick Gillan is available on Amazon. Click the link below to order your copy.