The Pie & Mash Detective Agency

by J. D. Brinkworth

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery; Amateur Sleuth; Private Investigators; Humorous Fiction

Synopsis

Oddball couple Jane and Simon take a private detective class and must use their (admittedly limited) skills to solve a series of mysterious disappearances in this delightful debut mystery.

Jane Pye and Simon Mash are a millennial couple with a little extra time on their hands. Jane was recently let go from her position as a back-end programmer, having never been quite sure what that meant. And Simon’s career as a corporate collaboration consultant seems to be less collaborating and more scrolling the internet in search of matching velour tracksuits and well-balanced charcuterie boards. When they sign up for a private detective class on a whim, they quickly realize they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. 

Their instructor, having a feeling his two worst students don’t have a chance of solving anything beyond finding the classroom, assigns them the case of Nellie Thorne, a woman recently reported missing. But she's not the first Nellie Thorne to disappear. In fact, she's the fifth in fifty years. Jane and Simon set out to solve the case, armed with just a few days of notes, matching trench coats, and a feeling they should have enrolled in a different class. The investigation leads the newly minted Pie and Mash Detective Agency to places they never thought they'd go, including haunted woods, mysterious archives, and, most terrifyingly for Jane, Simon's mum's house. 

As clues emerge, more questions than answers begin to pile up. What links the missing Nellies? Why do locals think she's a ghost? Is their teacher hiding something? So what if they’re heavy on heart but light on experience. Jane and Simon are determined to uncover the truth in time to pass the class and save the day.

Release date: March 10, 2026

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 368

Sample

Monday, April 8-Present Day

Dev Hooper came home from work to find his front door hanging open.

The hallway lights were on, and Nellie's handbag was missing from its usual spot on the banister.

"Nellie? Nellie!"

She wasn't in the kitchen, making one of her herby veggie stews. She wasn't on the sofa reading, or in the bathroom peeing, or hauling laundry from the dryer in the basement.

Dev strode upstairs in his outdoor shoes, shouting: "Nellie? Are you here?"

Don't be silly, he thought. Yes, it was unlike Nellie to leave the front door open, but everyone makes mistakes. She must have gone out. Dev established that they hadn't been burgled, as he'd first suspected. The TV was in its right place, and the thick cookbook on the shelf above still had his stash of cash tucked safely inside. Nellie must have taken her handbag and gone out somewhere. No need to panic. He always panicked over nothing.

In the kitchen, he poured a drink over ice, and his hand began to jitter, spilling gin on the counter. He cursed and moved things out of the way-unopened post, some papers, Nellie's handbag . . . Nellie's handbag?


“I will of course make a report, Mr. Hooper, but please try not to worry. Many people who go missing turn up within twenty-four hours, with a reasonable explanation. Have you tried her phone?”

"As I said, her phone's here. In the handbag."

"Oh, right. So this isn't like her, then? To go out without her things?"

"No." In fact, Dev considered how it wasn't really like his girlfriend to go out at all.

He'd expected flashing sirens on his driveway to throw red and blue light through the hallway, for police radios to buzz and crackle, for the footsteps of the search and rescue team to pound through the house, sounding the hubbub of the investigation opening. Instead, two uniformed officers stood in the kitchen-PC Boughton, who'd cheerily introduced herself on the doorstep, and a large, silent colleague, who hadn't introduced himself and showed no desire to. He leaned on the countertop behind her, six foot four and silently solid, like a bouncer or a brick wall.

"I'll need to take some details," PC Boughton said. Her police hat and strands of strawberry-blond hair framed her freckled face. She pulled a tiny notebook from her vest pocket. "Age?"

"Twenty-five."

"Sex: female, and, uh-regular address is here?"

"Yes, 36 Shipwell Drive."

"Are you worried about the missing person?"

"Yes, very!"

She wrote that down.

"Any particular reason to be worried? Has she gone missing before, or do you think she's likely to harm herself or another member of the public?"

"No! But, I mean, just because she wouldn't hurt anyone, I still think we should worry. This is very out of character."

"Right . . . Oh, and what's her name, Mr. Hooper?"

"Nellie Thorne."

"Pardon?" PC Boughton didn't write this down.

"Nellie Thorne," repeated Dev.

The silent partner bristled. Dev noticed how wide the man's shoulders were.

"And does Nellie have any friends we can talk to?" PC Boughton's voice had changed. It was snappy, impatient.

"Oh, well, I haven't really met her friends . . ."

"Have you checked any local favorite places?"

"Um, not yet . . ." Dev faltered. Did Nellie have favorite places?

"Is she likely to have traveled abroad? Any other countries she has links to?"

As the more talkative officer barreled out questions, Dev felt dizzy. All he wanted was for them to get out their long poles and search every inch of town for Nellie.

"N-no, I don't think she has any links to other countries, no."

"And I'm guessing she doesn't have a job?"

"Pardon?" Where had that come from? He hadn't said that, had he? "Actually, Nellie does have a job," said Dev. "Well, she's self-employed. She has a little business where she buys clothes from the charity shop and then sells them on, erm, that app where you sell secondhand clothes? Depop? I think that's it."

PC Boughton scribbled on her pad, mouthing along: "No job." She grabbed her radio.

"It's a Nellie Thorne."

Dev felt the room spin.

"What's a Nellie Thorne? It's just her name. I know it's a bit old-fashioned-"

"Mr. Hooper," said the officer, putting the notebook back in her pocket, "you should be aware that wasting police time is an offense."

"I'm not wasting your time, I'm reporting a missing person!" PC Boughton and her colleague exchanged a look. Dev's time was up. They turned to walk away, and Dev lurched after them. "Where are you going?"

In the hallway, PC Boughton turned to him one last time.

"I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. Hooper, that Nellie Thorne is not real. Maybe you knew someone using that name, maybe you didn't, but I need to escalate this internally before we take any further action. We'll be in touch about an interview at the station."

"Are you even going to look for her?" wailed Dev, to no reply.

The words not real echoed around his head as the police car crunched off the gravel driveway.

Dev was white hot and trembling. Part of him wanted to sit on the steps by the door, but his body wouldn't move. His neighbor Ian came outside holding a suspiciously half-empty bin bag, keen to see what the police had been called for.

"Everything all right, Dev?"

"Have you seen Nellie? She's missing. I can't-I don't know what to-"

"Nellie? That the girl you've been seeing?"

Dev nodded. His mouth was as dry as a tax return.

Ian shook his head. "Sorry, mate. Wish I could help you. You've not brought her round to meet me yet. In fact, I don't think I've ever even seen her."

Chapter Two

Tuesday, April 2-Six Days Earlier

Jane Pye and Simon Mash, detectives in training, were in the middle of an important lecture.

"Next slide," said their teacher to himself, clicking heavily on his mouse. He was a grizzled man in his forties who looked like he was in his sixties and occasionally vaped into his armpit between slides. "Due diligence and background checks."

Jane tapped brisk notes into her whirring laptop. Simon tried to play Toto's "Africa" on the desk using pens.

On the outside of the door, a peeling sign read: private investigation level one. In Jane's opinion, the classroom shouldn't have been signposted at all, and the first test should have been finding it.

During working hours, this room was used for what Simon called "important things," like certifications in social care and food hygiene courses for managers of Wetherspoons. It had, in fact, been a bit of a struggle for Jane to get Simon to enroll in detecting with her.

"Ooh, look, Jane!" he'd said. "You can get a qualification in running hairdressing exams for trainee hairdressers!"

But Jane had been sure: it had to be Private Investigation Level One. That was her new hobby. So here they were, at the training center in Croydon, in their brightly colored raincoats, among a dozen ex-military men and bouncers who were squeezed into tiny school desks and plastic chairs. Even though the class had been running for a few weeks, the tougher students still occasionally turned and stared at Simon and Jane, sizing them up. She wished Simon hadn't worn his tie-dye bucket hat.

". . . and I'll stress that again: while you can use this tool to find someone else's criminal record, there is nothing you can do to erase your own."

A couple of the burly men groaned.

"Right," continued the teacher. "Coursework."

Jane sat up straighter in her chair. The sleeves of her home-knitted jumper were already rolled up.

"As you'll know from reading the syllabus, this course finishes in three weeks, and to get your certificate, you'll need to submit coursework. A case of your very own."

Jane grinned and turned to make eye contact with Simon, who was googling "hot fashion looks for private detectives" on his phone.

"So, when we all meet back here next week, I'll be giving you real cases. It'll be up to you to solve them. But be warned . . . You might think you're tough. But not everyone passes Private Investigation Level One. You'll soon find out why I assign coursework. It's where you'll find out if you can really handle the danger."


Jane brought wine into the living room: small amounts in extremely large glasses, just like she’d seen on TV.

Their first-floor flat was in South London, close enough to Clapham Junction station that the trains sometimes rumbled the floor. Simon would boast that he lived next door to the busiest rail interchange in the world (a fact that wasn't true), and when the freight trains bulleted past, they'd give a honk, which Jane would mimic. Their living room was a bold terra-cotta red that the landlord still didn't know about. Their wide bookshelves were stacked high with books that had never been opened, and board games that had. Simon was lighting candles in the shape of women's bottoms.

"Ah, thank you, babe," he said, taking his wine. He sank happily onto the velvet sofa and stretched his long legs out over the coffee table, showing off a pair of his signature patterned socks. Simon was a little over six feet tall, with a knack for making clothes look great. He liked using this skill to push fashion boundaries-especially in the office, where his collection of velour jumpers was causing a stir. He sighed, ready for a night of peace, and Jane sat beside him at the angle she always did when she had something bad to say. Feet flat on the floor, little body positioned at forty-five degrees to him so that eye contact was optional.

"Simon. I don't mean this to sound like an accusation or a criticism, but why are you always late?"

"Hmm?" Simon looked up from the inside of his wineglass. Jane pushed her glasses up her nose and tugged down the sleeves of her jumper.

"To detective class," she said. "I worry that you're not taking it seriously."

"Oh, I'm not," he said. "I never take anything seriously. It's one of my top five Values to Live By." He gestured to his homemade Values to Live By wall chart. "But it's a way for us to spend more time together, isn't it? A shared project?"

"Right. Yes. And that is lovely. It's just . . . I wonder if I'd enjoy the class more if I felt you were engaged?"

"Oh, OK. So you're getting the impression that I'm not 'engaged'?" Simon swept his floppy brown hair out of his eyes. He couldn't believe he'd been rumbled.

"Well, you spent most of today's session reading an article about Cher's best Vegas stage looks, so no, I know you're not into it, or even learning anything at all, for that matter. I mean, just for example, which record would you check to see if someone's on the sex offenders register?"

He thought about it. "You would ask at a nearby school."

Jane sighed and pulled her legs onto the sofa, getting into a less combative, smaller, and rounder position. "It's just, I'm really enjoying the course, and I'm starting to wonder if it could be something I do for a job. Detecting, I mean."

"Oh." Simon leaned his head to one side like a Labrador.

"I know it sounds silly and like a pipe dream. But I'm not getting anywhere with applying for developer jobs either, so maybe having a nine-to-five is a pipe dream too-and in that case, I may as well do something I find interesting."

"I didn't realize you hadn't been liking . . . umm . . . rear-end development."

"Back-end development."

"Yes, exactly." Simon worked as a corporate collaboration consultant, which meant he was on hand to help teams in his company work together better. Or, at least, the teams that knew he existed. Judging by his very manageable inbox, most did not.

"I thought I liked being a developer, but now I haven't been doing it for a few months . . . well, it turns out I prefer not being a developer." Jane put her wineglass on a geode coaster and lay back on the sofa, combing her scalp with her fingers. "Or do I just like not working?"

"Not working is excellent," mused Simon, who had plenty of experience in the field. "But how are you doing for, you know, cashola?"

When Jane had been laid off, she'd seen it coming. First it had been "The Nespresso pods are for clients only," then the next thing she knew, she was handing back her MacBook and collecting one month's redundancy pay, which she'd been stretching out for three months with online survey work and one-pot tomato pastas.

"I don't think I have to worry about money just yet," she said.

Simon looked down at Jane's big brown eyes and the spray of freckles across her nose; he found her beautiful in a nerdy way, and thought she could star in movies as a cheeky librarian or a clumsy archaeologist. Jane, on the other hand, saw herself as a "little goblin," which Simon found too funny to correct.

"You don't have to worry about it at all. You know I don't mind lending you whatever you need."

Jane sat up and tensely twirled a curl in her fingers. "That's very nice of you." But last week, she'd seen him stuffing their latest energy bill down his trousers as she walked into the room. She stared off into nowhere for a while. "Anyway, there's an application I'm going to do tomorrow morning, and then maybe I'll watch another season of Frasier, and then, eventually, death . . ." Jane wished she had the coursework project now. Why make them wait another week?

"Jane. I hear you. You're enjoying the course, and that makes me feel happy for you. So I will bring some dedication to our coursework. It's just-and don't take this the wrong way-but I don't know if you really understand how serious crime is."

"Huh?"

"As you know," continued Simon, "I'm a perfect example of how crime can ruin lives."

"Oh yes, that."

"And how some cases can just never be solved, no matter how much you want them to be. For example, when my mum was a victim of credit card fraud."

Jane leaned forward and looked into his handsome, slightly beavery face. Were his eyes getting misty?

"Not only did they never find out who cloned her M&S card, but it was only a few short months after later that my dad moved to Marbella with his friend Francesca, and . . ." Simon's voice cracked. "And I've always felt that the two things were linked."