Discover Amy Rowlings: quick-witted movie buff, avid reader of crime fiction, and amateur sleuth.
May 1939. A black-tie civic awards ceremony promises a dull evening for Amy Rowlings and Inspector Bodkin – until the ‘Businessman of the Year,’ called away to answer the telephone, is found stabbed to death.
The victim’s lucrative new armaments factory contract means half the town’s elite had a motive to kill him. When a sudden manpower shortage leaves an overstretched Bodkin to handle the investigation entirely alone, amateur sleuth Amy steps into the breach.
Armed with her sharp mind and borrowed investigative techniques of her fictional hero, Hercule Poirot, Amy must help Bodkin navigate a web of wartime corruption and lies to bring a brutal killer to justice.
Betrayal in Black Tie is the third in the cozy, historical Amy Rowlings Golden Age Mysteries series, which can be read in any order. For fans of Verity Bright, Helena Dixon, and Felicity Penn.
Perfect for readers who enjoy:
Small-town mysteries
Amateur sleuths
Clever whodunnits
Female detectives
British village life
Detective love interests
Agatha Christie-style puzzles
Clean, traditional cozy mysteries
Previously published as The Murder Awards
Former children’s writer T. A. Belshaw is a British author best known for the Amy Rowlings Golden Age Mystery series, a collection of character-driven cosy crime novels set in 1930s Kent. Blending gentle humour, classic whodunit plotting and rich period detail, his books follow the adventures of Amy Rowlings – a sharp-witted, film-loving amateur sleuth with a knack for uncovering secrets in the most unexpected places.
A lifelong fan of Golden Age detective fiction, Trevor draws inspiration from the works of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and other classic mystery writers, while bringing his own warmth and modern-storytelling style to the genre. His stories are filled with village intrigue, colourful characters and the charm of pre-war Britain, offering readers a nostalgic escape into a world of clues, gossip and slow-burn romance.
When he isn’t writing, Belshaw enjoys researching 1930s life, especially about his hometown of Ilkeston in Derbyshire, where he lives with his chatty rescue cat, Mia. Trevor is also the author of the five-book, dual-timeline, family-saga series Unspoken, and the four-book, short-format, politically incorrect comedy series Tracy’s Hot Mail.
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