Independent
British Publisher
Nostalgic Cosy Mystery
Stylish cosy mysteries about fame, faded glamour, and murder in questionable taste.
Kitty Brookstone remembers every scandal, every lyric, and every outfit from 1983 to 1989. She writes about fame with the affection of someone who lived through it and the precision of someone who took notes.
Her mysteries are glamorous, sharp, and a little wicked: puzzles with good lighting, populated by people who have survived headlines and heartbreak and know that ego is both absurd and necessary. Nobody in a Kitty Brookstone novel is quite as retired as they claim.
Kitty divides her time between an art deco semi in South London and any hotel lobby with comfortable chairs and good sightlines. She is deeply suspicious of anyone who says they are just here for the canapes.
The Fame & Fortune Mysteries follow Ron Ashcroft, a faded 1980s pop star, and his wife Eva, a retired supermodel with a sharp eye for human nonsense. Ron only agreed to a televised comeback for the nostalgia and the catering. He did not agree to a corpse in the green room.
What follows is a globe-trotting series of standalone mysteries, from reunion gigs in Brighton to villa parties on the Riviera, each one a closed-circle puzzle drawn from the worlds of entertainment and fame. At its heart is a marriage: two people who genuinely like each other, navigating absurd situations with wit, loyalty, and the occasional spectacular row.
The Red Lion Mysteries unfold in the back room of a South London pub, where a loosely organised crime club meets every Thursday night. It begins as conversation. It becomes something else entirely when the regulars, week after week, turn out not to be who they seem.
These are not extraordinary crimes. They are ordinary lives under pressure, told with the same dry wit and sharp eye as the Fame & Fortune books, in a smaller and more shadowed room.
The Fame & Fortune Mysteries, Book One
Coming 3 November 2026
A British television comeback show promises Ron Ashcroft sequins, nostalgia, and a flattering amount of soft lighting. It does not mention the body in the green room.
Eva has survived three decades of her husband being famous. She knows that where there is a camera there is trouble, and where there is Ron, trouble has a backstage pass. As old rivalries resurface and the cameras keep rolling, the Ashcrofts must work out which of the has-beens and hangers-on is a murderer.
Fame is a killer. Retirement might be worse.
The Red Lion Mysteries, Book One
Coming 2027
Thursday nights in the back room of the Red Lion are for the crime club: a few regulars, a few drinks, and a great deal of theorising about other people’s misdeeds. Then one of the regulars stops turning up, and the theorising stops being a game.
The first Red Lion mystery, where the smallest secrets turn out to be the most dangerous.
Before Ron Ashcroft became the reluctant detective of the Fame & Fortune Mysteries, he was the frontman of Silk Purse. These are the artefacts that survived the glory days.
Original tour poster, 1986
Reunion tour poster, 2024
Gold in the Gutter
Silk Purse
Discover what happened when the fame faded in A Killer Comeback, the first Fame & Fortune Mystery.
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