The Leroy Cunningworth Murder Mysteries Volume 2. Leroy Cunningworth Murder Mysteries, #2

He notices what others walk past. Leroy Cunningworth spent decades in South African courtrooms dismantling lies with surgical precision - reading witnesses, exposing contradictions, following the thread that everyone else had dismissed as irrelevant. Retirement brought him to Phillip Island, Victoria, and a quiet second life restoring fine art. It did not bring him peace from crime. Because crime, it turns out, follows him.
Not loudly. Not with flashing lights or dramatic confrontations. It arrives the way Leroy himself works - quietly, beneath the surface, hiding in the detail that the casual observer steps over without a second glance. A misplaced word. A painting that has been recently moved. A death that everyone has agreed to call natural. Leroy disagrees. In these twelve standalone murder mysteries, Cunningworth's investigations range from the rain-slicked streets of Cowes and the rugged cliff-tops of Bass Strait to destinations far beyond the island he calls home - locked rooms in Melbourne, fog-wrapped Venetian canals, desert opal fields, international flights sealed at thirty thousand feet, and the roaring amphitheatre of an AFL Grand Final.
Each case drops him into a different world. Each world contains a buried truth. He has never once failed to find it. Beside him: Inspector Jack Flint of the Cowes Constabulary - pragmatic, long-suffering, and quietly grateful that Leroy's methods, however lateral, consistently produce results no conventional investigation would reach. What makes Leroy Cunningworth exceptional is not instinct alone.
It is the rare combination of a barrister's forensic discipline - trained to test every assertion against the evidence - and an art restorer's eye, accustomed to seeing beneath layers of obscuring varnish to the original truth underneath. He does not theorise wildly. He observes precisely, considers carefully, and moves only when he is certain. The effect, for those watching, is that he always appears to be doing very little - right up until the moment the entire deception collapses.
Each of these twelve mysteries is complete and self-contained. No cliffhangers, no unresolved threads. Pick any story, start anywhere. Each plants its crucial detail in plain sight and earns its resolution honestly. For readers who love the tradition of British detective fiction - clever plotting, fair-play clues, satisfying resolution - but want something fresher, sharper, and grounded in the coastal light and dry wit of southern Australia, Leroy Cunningworth is exactly the detective you have been waiting to find.
The surface is always the lie. What is underneath is always the truth. Leroy Cunningworth has never needed reminding of either. The Leroy Cunningworth Murder Mysteries - twelve gripping cases, one extraordinary mind, not one discrepancy left unresolved.