Landscape with Corpse(1996)

Roger Ormerod

The idea was excellent—a week’s course at an Adult Residential College.

Philipa Lowe and Oliver Simpson were looking forward to a relaxing week of landscape painting and some quality time together - and also a chance for Oliver’s injured arm to heal.

Although the couple feel out of place at first among the experienced artists and regular students, the group prove to be friendly and encouraging.

There is no more than a hint that past animosities might resurface to ruin the week.

But when one of the group is violently killed, suspicion falls upon the young, naïve Elise Harcourt, whom Philipa has kindly befriended.

She has a credible motive, and was at the scene of the crime.

Elise denies the charges —Philipa believes her, but is having a hard time proving it.

When the mystery is compounded by a second brutal killing on the same afternoon, seemingly by the same hand, the plot thickens.

In this bloody mystery, a small clue will unveil a much bigger secret...

‘Landscape with Corpse’ is an expertly plotted thriller that will leave readers guessing until the last page.



“Eclectic, underrated Ormerod can be relied upon to come up with the startling goods” - Sunday Times

“I am glad to announce that the detective novel is still alive and well in Mr Ormerod's skillful hands” - The Spectator

“Fast-moving, with well-orchestrated jiggery-pokery; not unlike an early Dick Francis in tone and method” – Times Literary Supplement

Roger Ormerod (1920-2005) was a prolific writer of ingenious and densely plotted crime novels—some 35 in all—which were published in the UK and the USA. He lived in Wolverhampton and amongst other things worked as a civil servant and as a Social Security inspector—backgrounds which he made full use of in his fiction, as he did with his hobbies of painting and photography.