Fruiting Bodies — Natasha Cooper

Fruiting Bodies is a compelling novel featuring female sleuth, Willow King, set within the fraught corridors of an NHS hospital.

Just as Willow is giving birth to her first child, her obstetrician is found dead, face-down in his own birthing pool. To her he has always been charming, supportive and reassuring, but someone hated him enough to hold his head under water until he drowned. She has to find out why.

Her husband, Superintendent Tom Worth, warns her that it is neither easy nor safe to pre-empt a police murder investigation, but Willow cannot stop. Interviewing a hospital administrator at one moment and a leading member of WOMB (Women Overtake Male Birthing) the next, Willow starts to find out what lay behind the obstetrician's façade of charm and professional competence.

When she and her baby are released form hospital, the scope of her enquiry widens. But she soon discovers that Tom was right and, in a violent confrontation, she pays a high price for her curiosity.

In Fruiting Bodies Natasha Cooper once more mixes an entertaining, light-hearted mystery with a sidelong glance at some of the more intractable antagonisms of contemporary life and a shrewd psychological insight into the minds of those who love, those who hate, and those who cannot believe that they have to abide by the same rules as the rest of us.