Spiteful Village - Jo Kemrich

Newcomers and old residents feud with one another in a crackpot rural village. The power to control the village hall, the church, the local shop, and even the gardening club and the inn, is fought over with increasing spite and mounting harm. Tit for tat wars continue with complete indifference to the consequences. Crimes are committed, relationships destroyed; people even die. The villagers find it all amusing - it's just collateral damage - and the police take little interest.

Four damaged people gather together to find two killers; the farmer whose partner dies; the young curate living with the death of her sister, the woman betrayed by her husband and the broken, worldly man, suspected of killing his wife, who fights the battles that they all need him to win.