The Refusal. A Jack Penrose Crime Thriller - Phillip Strang

A retired insurance adjuster is found dead on a Cornish breakwater at dusk. Town shoes. No grip. A man dressed for a meeting, not a walk.

Detective Sergeant Jack Penrose attends as a matter of routine. The post-mortem ends that. A single blow from behind. Murder.

Raymond Voss spent thirty-eight years as a loss adjuster for Meridian Insurance. Penrose must reconstruct a long professional life - hundreds of cases, decades of decisions - to find the one that gave someone a reason to follow a retired man to a Cornish village and kill him on a path in October.

The decision was made in 1987. The claim was a house fire in Lyme Regis. The refusal destroyed a family. The woman it destroyed spent thirty-nine years working through every legitimate route available to her. She exhausted them all.

The investigation runs on evidence: a prepaid mobile, an ANPR trace, a forensic match. The evidence is exact. The case, when Penrose finally closes it, is exactly what it looks like. That is not the same as simple.

The Refusal is the third novel in the Jack Penrose series.