A Quiet Place to Kill

In this tense thriller set on a WW2 airbase, a female pilot faces danger in the sky―and a murderer on the ground.

July 1940. As the Battle of Britain begins, the women of the Air Transport Auxiliary carry out the dangerous task of ferrying warplanes to RAF airbases. But for the ATA detachment sent to the base at Scotney, it’s not only in the skies that they’re a target―it seems a killer is stalking them on the ground…

On the day pilot Lizzie Hayes arrives in the quiet village, one of her new comrades is found murdered. One of the few women in Britain with a psychology PhD, Lizzie thinks she can use her skills to help identify the killer among the military staff and local villagers, but DI Jonathan Kember isn’t convinced. When a second pilot is murdered, Lizzie’s profile of the killer comes into sharper focus―attracting anonymous threats against her own life.

With Kember’s investigation stalling and events at the airbase becoming ever more sinister, Lizzie’s talents are given a chance. But can she and the still-sceptical Kember work together to find the killer before Lizzie becomes the next victim?

Born in Croydon, Surrey, in 1959, Neil Daws has been a decent waiter, an average baker and a pretty good printer, but most notably a diligent civil servant, retiring in 2015 after thirty years, twenty spent in security and counter-terrorism. Enthralled by tales of adventure and exploration, he became a hiker, skier, lover of travel, history and maps, and is a long-standing Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Following the death of his father and uncle from heart disease, he became a volunteer fundraiser and was awarded an MBE for charitable services in 2006. An alumnus of the Curtis Brown Creative writing school, he achieved Highly Commended in the Blue Pencil Agency’s First Novel Award, 2019, where he met his agent, Nelle Andrew of Rachel Mills Literary. He is finally making use of his Open University psychology degree and interest in history, especially World War Two, to write historical crime fiction. Most importantly, he has a wife and two daughters and lives in his adopted county of Kent.