DATE With Mystery is the very welcome third book in the Dales Detective series, written by Julia Chapman. The book picks up where we left off with Date With Malice. Suspended undercover detective Samson O’ Brien has decamped to Bruncliffe - his old home in the dales where he is trying to make a temporary living as a private detective before he can head back to the bright lights of London. All the while, he is getting closer to Delilah Metcalfe, his landlady, owner of the town’s dating agency, sister of his childhood best friend, and owner of Weimaraner dog, Tolpuddle. He’s also building bridges with his father, a recovering alcoholic, not to mention the townsfolk, who being dales folk, are not the quickest to forgive or forget Samson’s sudden departure to ‘that there London’ all those years earlier.

In Date With Mystery, Samson is given the job of finding the death certificate of a young woman who died apparently in a car crash over 20 years earlier in Leeds. But what seems a simple task turns out to be a lot more complicated, and far more tragic than either Samson or Delilah expected. Date With Mystery is a delight - I read it at just two sittings, and could hardly put it down. Bruncliffe is a fictionalised version of Settle, the fells, lanes and ginnels described by Chapman are recognisable to anyone familiar with the area. There’s also mention of the Dalesman magazine, of which letters are cut out to form a threatening letter, and of course, the Craven Herald, which just like in real life, is read by everyone. When they’re not private investigating, Samson and Delilah are running the fells, all the time recapturing the magic they had as youngsters. So, as well as being a crime story, Date With Mystery is also a love story - but just when the pair actually get together, is another mystery.

Julia Chapman, who is based in Austwick, also writes under the name of Julia Stagg, as who she has had five novels, the Fogas Chronicles, set in the French Pyrenees, published.

Date With Mystery, published by Pan, is out on March 22, priced £7.99.