Brokenwood Mysteries

When the wife of a tourist-trap owner is discovered dead, the other local tourism operators are not particularly sad about her demise. The medical examiner traces her cause of death to New Zealand’s only native venomous spider—the katipo. But how could one spider administer 10 times the lethal dose?

Brokenwood mourns when a beloved local poet, Declan O’Grady, passes away from cancer. But the town gets a shock when the coffin accidentally falls from the hearse, revealing that the corpse inside is not Declan but rather a young woman identifiable only by a scarlet tattoo.

On the morning of Brokenwood’s annual classic-car show, the chairman of the Classic Car Restoration Society is found dead with a lungful of gasoline next to his beloved El Dorado. Shepherd and Sims try to determine if it was a petrol-siphoning accident or something more deliberate.

It’s Christmas in Brokenwood, but not all is merry and bright. When the mayor is murdered in his home after the annual holiday parade, Shepherd, Sims, and Breen question those locals vying for the mayoral position. But when more bodies turn up, the detectives believe there’s a darker motive at work.