Local Resistance

Book 1 of The Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery Series

According to young PC Oliver, nothing ever happens in the small Cornish village of Porthferris…

by J.G. Harlond.

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A Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery – Book One On a stormy night in March 1941, Maisie Rose Hawkins leaves her drunk husband, Stan, out in the rain–and he disappears. Detective Sergeant Bob Robbins and young PC Laurie Oliver are called out to investigate and discover that Stan’s small fishing boat is gone, the rope sawn through. As Bob searches for answers, it becomes apparent that in this small Cornish village where everyone knows everything about everybody, nobody quite knows the truth.
Beneath the surface of village life, a fierce battle is being waged against wartime deprivations. Shopkeepers quietly evade rationing restrictions. Food inspector Archibald Bantry, charged with enforcing those restrictions, dies in a suspicious car crash. Various leads connect a sea cave full of smuggled black-market goods to the missing Stan Hawkins. And what seems like the work of local malcontents becomes more complex and dangerous when Bob stumbles on the truth in a disused copper mine, where a much deadlier affair is underway.

Review & award:

A great cosy mystery with loveable characters and an authentic, well-researched WW2 setting. Karen Charlton, author of the best-selling Detective Lavender series.

A ‘Discovered Diamond’ and a Discovering Diamonds Book of the Month.

A Word from the Author

author picture J.G. Harlond by Jean Gill

Book 1 in the award-winning Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery series, Local Resistance

Cozy crime with a sinister twist.

Porthferris, Cornwall, 1941: a village where everybody knows everybody’s secrets, but nobody quite knows the truth.

Britain is under threat of invasion, but locals are more interested in getting around wartime restrictions with a bit of black-market racketeering and smuggling than defeating Hitler. That’s until a local fisherman disappears and a little old lady with a lethal score to settle arrives in the village.

Based on real events and research, this historical crime story includes some of the very serious planning for Churchill’s Secret Army, the British underground Resistance organisation.

Foyle’s War meets Arsenic and Old Lace, with a dash of Dad’s Army.

(J.G. Harlond, 2022)