Payback: A Mystery

It is early February and security consultant, ex-cop and some-time detective Billy Oliphant is suffering from more than just winter blues. His girlfriend is on a year’s sabbatical in North America. His ex-wife is on honeymoon with her new husband - and Billy’s left babysitting his 16-year-old daughter. Billy's friend, Sly, thinks that a free luxury weekend at the Forestcrag Moorland Holiday Village will be just the thing to cheer Billy up. But, having battled the worsening weather to get to Forestcrag, they discover that things are far from idyllic. David Morland, the manager of the park, believes someone is poisoning his staff. And though Billy is reluctant to get involved, he soon has little choice when the Village is snowed in and the body of Eric Salkeld, the Payroll Manager, is discovered.

It looks like a straightforward suicide. There’s even a note, left on a computer disk, containing Salkeld’s confession of embezzlement. Left nominally in charge of the investigation by police unable to get to the crime scene, Billy can’t help but feel that the suicide looks a little too perfectly staged. Amongst the guests trapped at the Village, there could be a killer. And, if the police are right about the recently escaped prisoner --- a man Billy put behind bars --- is heading for Forestcrag, perhaps more than one...