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  • Published: 9 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804961483
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

Time and Tide



A million-copy-selling crime writer comes into print for the first time. In the seventh book of A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series, two crimes take place in different centuries. DC Smith is determined to find the connection.

Change is afoot at Kings Lake Central police station.

A most unexpected new detective inspector takes up his post this Monday morning, and the oldest detective in the place takes a momentous decision. Around them, other officers are considering their own situations, and even the building itself seems to be facing an uncertain future. But life and death go on, nevertheless, and by lunchtime someone will make a grim discovery on the Norfolk saltmarshes. A stranger seems to have suffered a slow and agonising death out there.

As the team from Kings Lake uncover his story, they reveal another, much older one with its origins far back in the previous century. In the tide that governs the affairs of men, it seems, love and loss, betrayal and revenge are timeless themes.

  • Published: 9 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804961483
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 464
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Peter Grainger

Peter Grainger is the 'creator of the greatest fictional sleuth you’ve probably never heard of' (FT magazine). A former sixth-form English teacher, Peter is the author of 23 self-published novels, 19 of which are now scheduled for release by major British and North American publishers. Peter lives with his wife, sometimes a grandson and a dog in a cottage in the Cambridgeshire fens. He travels as often as possible to the Norfolk coast he once called home.

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Praise for Time and Tide

Once I was ensconced in Kings Lake, in the company of Smith and his team, I didn’t want to leave … What sets Grainger’s books apart from the typical police procedural is the fully realised characters, who appear to live in a gentler world, on a time continuum that makes sense, progressing and evolving from book to book.

Financial Times

The books are comforting, the writing is subtle and the plots are gripping.

The Times