Matthew Palmer

Matthew Palmer writes atmospheric British crime where quiet respectability hides something rotten underneath. His novels dig into the dark corners of historic villages, Gothic cathedrals, and institutions built to protect their own.

He's best known for his ecclesiastical crime series featuring DI Eleanor Brand, a vicar's daughter with an unnervingly precise understanding of what churches hide, and her steadfast partner DS Matthew Thresher, working cases from the bell tower of St Cedd's to the arches of Salisbury Cathedral.

His wider catalogue includes meticulous mortician Celia Hertley (An Autopsy of Lies) and detectives Harcourt and Redgrave, who cut their teeth on a ritual killing in Norfolk before becoming the country's go-to investigators for crimes with a ritualistic edge, most recently in the Cornish moorland of The Secrets of Bodmin Moor. Journalist Charlie Fitz-Gerald, first introduced in The Shadows of Hawthorn Vale, returns to chase the story in Bodmin Moor too, a recurring thread for readers following Palmer's wider world.

Palmer is currently expanding the DI Brand series and is entered in the Kindle Storyteller UK 2026 contest.