Say It with Poison

Blurb

Say It With Poison is a whodunnit or mystery novel by Ann Granger. It is the first in a series of 15 Mitchell and Markby Mysteries.
Although they feel curiously attracted to each other, the two protagonists who solve the case, Mitchell and Markby, are not a team. Rather, they work against each other. Meredith Mitchell, aged 35 at the beginning of the series, is a British civil servant who, unmarried and without relatives to take care of, embarks on a career in the diplomatic service and, at the beginning of the novel, has spent many years abroad, most recently in Yugoslavia. On her arrival back home, she metamorphoses into an amateur sleuth. Chief Inspector Alan Markby is a 42-year-old divorced policeman working from the fictitious town of Bamford somewhere in the Cotswolds. The two meet when the police have to investigate a death in a small village near Bamford where Mitchell is staying.
Granger is renowned for writing traditional detective fiction but also for bringing the classic whodunnit up to date. As opposed to, say, Miss Marple's St. Mary Mead, the village of Westerfield is a soulless place with a dwindling population, with all the young people leaving.