REVIEWS

FIVE THINGS I SEE . . . Between the covers

Meet Detective Grace Hartwell, a homicide specialist in the police department of Jacksonville, Florida. Detective Hartwell is a loner, shuns social contact, and her life seems to rotate around the care of her cat, and her fierce fitness regime on the beachfront just below her house. She has two cases on the burner, both seemingly intractable. The more grisly is the murder of college lecturer Daniel Stewart and his wife Jessica. Jessica has not been sexually assaulted, but what is left of her face indicates the work of s deranged killer. The killer also abducted their young son, Shawn but, after an anonymous tip-off, he is found in the boot of an abandoned car, badly dehydrated, but otherwise unharmed.

Stewart was a serial philanderer, but who could he have upset enough to open up his femoral artery and stomp his wife to death? The death of Howie Scofield, a construction site inspector, was initially dismissed as suicide after his body was found next to a drained bottle of bourbon. It was assumed he had fallen from an unprotected balcony of the building he was expecting. But why was he there at the dead of night, and why has his house been ruthlessly turned over by burglars, and what were they searching for?

One of the Stewarts’ near neighbours is a man called Eddie Snow. Apparently a humble bartender, he has a security system of the intensity only used by federal cops and drug dealers. When Hartwell is warned off by her boss and told that under no account must Eddie Snow be investigated further, she smells a rather large rodent, both deceased and decomposing. When more female murder victims are found, with each bearing the grisly marks of what was inflicted on Jessica Stewart, the pressure intensifies on the Jacksonville cops.

If that weren’t enough, Grace becomes convinced that Howie Scofield was killed because he had uncovered a massive fraud being inflicted on the city finances by Glade, the construction firm involved. And Glade’s boss? Jackson Masters, a popular and powerful councilman who just happens to be one of Grace’s personal friends.

Each chapter begins with an italicized section of conversation. These conversations appear to be between a patient and and a therapist, but their relevance is not revealed until later in the novel. One rather obvious giveaway in this excellent novel is that, just over 70% in, according to my Kindle, Grace has her man. He has means, method and motive. Having a solution that far from the end of the book sends up a pretty obvious red flag that she has made a mistake. Or has she?

The solution to the mismatched DNA that crashes and burns Grace’s case is imaginative but plausible. The pyschotherapy conversations are eventually explained, but in a totally unexpected way. Wendy Church throws in a few well-loved tropes, such as the lazy. lack-lustre misogynist fellow officer, and the tight lipped senior cop ‘just following orders’.

Wendy Church’s novels are informed by extensive international travel and many careers. She’s been a bartender, tennis pro, management consultant, nonprofit CEO, PhD researcher, and dive bar cleaner. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner, and when not writing spends her time as personal valet to several furry housemates.

Like all the best female detectives, Grace Hartwell rides into The Valley of Death in the last few pages, and we fear the worst. In one way, and not a bad one, this novel is archetypal American CriFi, in that it is slick, tightly plotted, scattered with knowing product placement and cultural references. Fans of more leisurely British police procedurals may not find as much joy here as I did, but I shall now be on the lookout for Grace Hartwell’s next case. Five Things I See will be published by Severn House on 4th August.

August 3, 2026 0

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS . . . Between the covers

“May you be in heaven half a full half hour before the devil knows you’re dead”
(Traditional Irish toast)

In this thriller, FBI partners Gus Wheeler and Vanessa Lambert travel to rural Maine to investigate the death of a teenage boy, whose shallow grave has been discovered by scavenging animals. His face is unrecognisable and, lying on his chest inside the rough pine coffin is a cross made of lead. He is eventually identified as Adam Carson. On arrival in Maine, the two agents, who might actually be on the young side to get the movie reference, realise that they are about to drive into what we older mortals might call ‘Deliverance Country’.

Fans of John Connolly’s superb Charlie Parker novels will be familiar with the forests of Maine, with its decaying cemeteries, isolated communities and memories of ancient evil. The author gives us little opportunity to draw breath. Adam Carson’s girlfriend has also gone missing, but neither her parents or their neighbours seem particularly bothered. Then, two more bodies are discovered. One is male, purely skeletal, and has been dead for some time. The second, a woman is equally unidentifiable, but for a different reason. Her corpse is charred beyond recognition, but the pathologist delivers a disturbing conclusion. She was standing while she burned.

If there was any lingering doubt in the minds of Wheeler and Lambert that they are – literally – in a dangerous place, their motel room is firebombed and they are lucky to escape with their lives. Stories of unspeakable deeds committed by religious zealots, using their faith as an excuse, are nothing new in crime fiction. An essential staple of such plots is the existence of a spiritually powerful central figure, revered but his or her congregation. The minister of the Slaves of the Secret Heart of Jesus is a forbidding character called Father Benedict, a former Jesuit now excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church.

Few thriller writers can resist the trope of a bad guy hiding within the ranks of the good men and true. The trope works best when it comes as a complete surprise, with readers being given few if any clues, and so it is here. Authors with musical axes to grind can be mildly irritating. The late Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks had a very individual CD collection and, of course, Morse was a music lover. Mark Billingham’s Tom Thorne’s almost perpetual depression was usually accompanied by the lonesome tenor of Hank Williams. Gus Wheeler, however is a jazz man, and a string bass player. He even takes a rather dismal fold-up bass with him on his assignments. In my (probably limited) view, jazz died with Bix Beiderbecke, and so I couldn’t connect to Wheeler’s obsession, but that didn’t ruin a good novel, which has a captivating blend of menace, human frailty and the power of landscape.

R. John Dingle lives and writes from a restored 200 year-old house, on a small island in Mid-Coast Maine. The often-haunting themes of the rocky coast, as well as a lifetime of experiences in and around New England’s small towns, farms, and cities, provide excellent inspiration for the tones and moods reflected in Dingle’s mysteries and psychological thrillers. The two previous novels in this series are Karma Never Sleeps and Wings of Madness. Before The Devil Knows will be published by Tule Publishing on 29th July

The book will be available from Tule Publishing from 29th July.

July 28, 2026 0

CRIME IN THE GYM . . . Between the covers

The best fictional detective pairings are usually chalk and cheese, Yin and Yang, oil and vinegar – choose your own metaphor. DI Gilbert ‘Gil’ Markham and George Noakes fit the bill. Markham is subtle, erudite, good looking, and conflicted in love. Former Sergeant, now civilian consultant Noakes is blunt, uncouth, dressed like a nightmare – and is happily married. In their latest case, a celebrity Paralympic athlete is found battered to death in the weights room at the local Fitness For All gym. Jack Donahue, despite being confined to a wheelchair, was handsome, charismatic, and something of a poster boy. To some. To others, he was egocentric, vain, controlling and irretrievably damaged by a poisonous childhood. Donahue was doing a PhD at Bromgrove University and there is an extensive list of people who Donahue had upset, in one way or another.

Bedwell, Eloise – Secretary to the University Sociology dept.
Chase, Douglas – a right wing activist and post-graduate student
Crozier, Neil – gym manager
Cunningham, Deirdre – Donahue’s former personal trainer
Dade, Camilla – Donahue’s psychotherapist
Dawson, Vergie – Donahue’s alcoholic estranged mother
Dempser, Mr – former solicitor and gym member
Dixon, Poppy – ghostwriter of Donahue’s proposed autobiography
Eliot, Valerie – supermodel, and Donahue’s former girlfriend
Eyre, Dr Peter- Deputy Head of Sociology
Fairbairn, Isobel – ‘Silverfit’ gym member
Gage, Diana – disability rights campaigner
Gannon, Professor – Head of Sociology
Gillespie – piano accompanist for Silverfit dance classes
Goodwin, Richard – Donahue’s agent
Grosser, Michael – elderly gym member

I normally like to have a sense of place in crime novels, but I am not sure where we are here. The town is called Bromgrove but, even with a missing ‘s’ we are not in Worcestershire. There is a Medway Medical Centre, so perhaps we are in Kent, but the author gives us few clues. Markham’s love life is temporarily on hold. His long term relationship with his former lover Olivia, a vivacious but edgy woman, had ended, but they have established an uneasy platonic friendship. Meanwhile, he has distinctly unprofessional thoughts about his colleague Kate Burton, woman who is as cool and enigmatic as Olivia is emotional and impulsive.

When two older women connected with gym are also found murdered, the case becomes even more complex. I checked the sequence of Gil Markham novels, and it looks as if this is the 24th in the series since 2019, with some years producing four episodes. This may not be what it seems, as Joffe Books sometimes republishes novels under different titles. Despite the remarkable quantity of novels, here, at least, the writing is excellent throughout, with Catherine Moloney adopting a cool, almost sardonic tone and, wisely, underpinning Noakes’s near-clownish persona with hints that he is a serious copper and a decent family man. She has a wicked sense of humour as she describes Georges wife:

“Mrs Noakes, as ever when entertaining Markham, was dressed as if she expected to be photographed for Country Life, modelling a satin floral dress that made Olivia think of somebody’s missing curtains.”

Markham has a parallel case to contend with, that of a sexual predator who is targeting women at a local beauty spot known as Black Wood, but when a local journalist who has been helping the police is found dead, Markham feels surrounded by death, with no clue in sight, and no sign of a breakthrough. The sexual assaults and the murders are eventually solved, but I have a confession. In the end, I wasn’t that bothered who killed Jack Donahue. He seemed to be self-obsessed and abrasive. Not that those deficiencies should earmark someone for death, because someone, somewhere, loved him.

The reason for my lack of interest? The sheer quality of the writing describing Markham’s team and its inner dynamics made me laugh, made me think, and made me glad I was a fly on the wall. Forget who committed what, but revel in the superb characterisations that Mooney brings to the table. This is high quality writing – observant, witty, subtle and engaging. Crime In The Gym will be published by Joffe Books on 27th July.

July 24, 2026 0

THE QUIET KILL . . . Between the covers

London, early December, 1987. Detective Constable Jamie Day has been transferred from his relatively peaceful Suffolk home town to work with the Met, and his introduction to the decadent grimoire of the capital couldn’t be more horrific. He is first on the scene at Leyton railway station in east London, where the station master (with the help of urban foxes) has discovered body parts dumped in bin liners. It turns out to be the remains of Callum Michaels, a young man from Yorkshire who had recently arrived to begin work on a construction site.

It transpires that Callum was gay, and had effectively been kicked out of home by his rather puritanical father, after Callum and another lad had been rather indiscreet in a local park. Then, the frozen body parts of a middle aged homosexual, Johan Hendriks, is found in his chest freezer. The link between Callum and Johan is that they both had copies of the same ‘Tart Card’ (a business card advertising sexual services of all kinds, mostly to be found in public telephone boxes back in the day)

A third young man meets his maker, while police Top Brass are trying to keep a lid on things, due to Johan Henriks’ connection to people in High Places. In his innocence, Jamie Day is tricked into revealing details of the case to an unscrupulous journalist (is there any other kind?) and is suspended.

Robert Bryndza, like Jamie Day, is a native of Lowestoft. The Suffolk coastal town was once a thriving port but, even in 1987, it was beginning its downward spiral into being considered a significantly deprived town, with some areas ranked among the 10% most deprived in England, particularly regarding education, skills, and income. Like its near-neighbour, Yarmouth, it is a shadow of its former self.

It needs saying that this book is not a murder mystery, in the sense that there is any doubt over the identity of the killer is resolved fairly quickly. The tension comes from wondering just how the police are going to find him. It needs to be emphasised that the storyline is centred on the Gay scene in 1980s London and, in places, it is very graphic. Robert Bryndza spares us none of the gory details, but he always tells a good story, and you can read my thoughts on his earlier books by clicking this link. The Quiet Kill is published by Raven Street Books and is available now.

July 9, 2026 0

WHAT THE DYING SEE . . . Between the covers

Manchester. The present day. The central character is DI Thomas Ridpath, and member of the Major Incident Team (MIT), who doubles as Coroner’s Officer. He is a widower with a teenage daughter about to face her GCSEs. We learn right from the start that a serial killer is at large. He specialises in a warped version of Assisted Dying, and injects his elderly victims with fatal doses of pain relieving drugs. We know this. The police have no idea.

Central to the narrative is Margaret Challinor, the Coroner. She has returned to work after being debilitated by a savage random assault, which resulted in her being in a coma for many weeks. She has recovered. But has she? Thundering headaches suggest that all is not well, but she is a formidable woman, and battles on through the pain.

MJ Lee clearly has experience of being the subject of word-salad management speak. Here, a new commander (recently promoted from Traffic) gives the team an inspirational address:

“The Chief has asked me to bring managerial systems and competence to the organisation of the solution of crimes, to be data-driven in this age of AI, computers and complex analytics, an approach that builds on our core competences and resilience, but takes advantage of the sizeable opportunities afforded by this new technology and analytics to create a force that is forward-thinking, creative rather than reactive, one that uses its resources to the limits of their capabilities to serve the people of Manchester, ensuring they feel secure and protected as they go about their daily lives.”

Ridpath is resolute, persistent, and no-one”s fool. Those three qualities make him a thorn in the side of his pusillanimous senior managers who are bitterly resentful that a spreadsheet macro cannot bring to justice the person who is taking such obvious delight in ending the lives of Ill and vulnerable old people. Ridpath’s dogged attention to detail closes the case, but not before his own life is put on the line.

Apart from his scathing caricature of Ridpath’s boss and his oleagenous lanyard – class pomposity, MJ Lee doesn’t preach or wave any particular banner. The story – an excellent police procedural – did make me wonder about the overly politicised leadership of our police forces. I am not a Londoner, but the replacement of the ineffectual Cressida Dick with the operational paralysis induced by Mark Rowlands is a case in point. It you can hear my sigh of impotent despair, then it will be momentary. This particular rant is for another day. What The Dying See is published by Canelo and is out now.

July 7, 2026 0

THE WORDS I NEVER WROTE . . . Between the covers

Jane Thynne’s novel spans many decades, and takes us from London, Paris and Berlin to New York. The central characters are sisters Cordelia and Irene Capel. Born into an aristocratic English world, the sisters take very different paths when Irene marries the heir to a German industrial empire and moves to Berlin. Cordelia, meanwhile, hoping for a career as a writer, takes a job as a secretary at the Paris office of a London newspaper.

Irene discovers – at first with amusement and then, as the true nature of the party is revealed to her, dismay – that her husband Ernst is an admirer of the Nazi party – and the feeling is mutual. At social functions she rubs shoulders with, among others, Herman Goering and Reinhardt Heydrich. She also meets Martha Dodd, the captivating daughter of the American Ambassador. Dodd went on to have a career as a novelist and Soviet spy, but shortly before her father is recalled to America, she tells Irene what Berlin is really like:

“I had a lover once who was chief of police and he put the fear of the devil into me. He said Berlin was a vast network of espionage, terror, sadism and hate from which no one could escape.”

Along the way, we meet other real life characters such as Hardy Amies, Adolph Eichmann, Arthur Koestler and Kim Philby. Jane Thynne’s account of the paradox of late 1930s Germany is familiar, but still painful to read. On the one hand there was the booming economy, miniscule employment, and a burgeoning sense of national identity. On the other hand, the relentless surveillance by the Gestapo and the descent into state sponsored thuggery should haunt everyone, including modern Germans and its neighbours who sat back and watched it happen.

The narrative is cleverly constructed, and its master stroke is the introduction of modern day photographer Juno Lambert who buys an old portable typewriter for a photo shoot and uncovers a mystery that is as enchanting as it is chilling. Jane Thynne poses an exquisitely painful moral question, which is centred around the life of Irene. We see her as a newly-wed in the heady days of pre-war Berlin, with a glittering social life on the arm of her husband, Ernst. Their villa on the shores of the Wannsee, is a paradise, with a fertile garden rich with fruit and delicious vegetables. Literally ‘the house next door’ was where Reinhardt Heydrich chaired the infamous conference which drove the final nail into the coffin of Europe’s Jews.

We see Irene in the early months of 1945. The house is undamaged, but Ernst is long dead, killed on the Eastern Front. She boils the remains of vegetables to make an apology for soup. She trades her Cartier watch for a rabbit at the butcher shop. Everywhere, the talk is ‘what will happen when the Ivan’s arrive?’ The women of Berlin know only too well.

The moral question is this. Do we sympathise with people like Irene, betrayed by a corrupt and vainglorious government, or do we opt for that word (that only the Germans could invent) Schadenfreude? Although, wordwise, most of the novel is full of the stories of Irene and Cordelia, Juno Lambert is the key which unlocks the past. Juno rents the Villa Weissmuller in 2016 and, having read Cordelia’s manuscript, hidden in the case of the antique typewriter, she is anxious to find out if the sisters were ever reconciled.

There is an exquisite moment of irony when, with the Red Army rampaging through Berlin, we read how Irene’s recent lover, Obersturmbannführer Alex Hoffman, and the young Jewish man she has been sheltering for weeks, cower together in the hastily constructed hiding place behind the ornate shelves of the house’s library.

This magnificent novel is many things: a record of atrocities almost too awful to contemplate, let alone describe in words; several stories of love, some of which end in tragedy; a hymn of praise for Berlin, a city which has suffered unspeakable cruelty, but a place resilient enough to reinvent itself; finally, it is an encomium for the human spirit and an echo of Larkin’s words, “What will survive of us is love.” The Words I Never Wrote is published by Sharpe Books and is available now.

July 1, 2026 0

NEVER TO BE FOUND . . . Between the covers

A new Jo Spain novel is always to be welcomed. I still believe that her Tom Reynolds police procedurals (link to reviews here) were the best of that genre I have ever read. Now, however, she is making a name for herself (and, I imagine, much more money) as a screenwriter and, indeed, this new book has already gone into development as a major network TV series.

The premise of Never To Be Found is both original and very clever. Veronica Page has a skill-set which was highly valued in Japan, the art of johatsu – the ability to make people disappear. People who have buckled under pressure, people with futures they are unwilling to contemplate, people who are burdened with some sense of shame or failure. Page isn’t a killer. Quite the reverse. She sees herself as a restorer of lives. She erases the old identity, and gives her customers the chance to reinvent themselves somewhere else, as someone altogether different. Now, she has an English client. A young man called Ben. He is due to inherit a huge fortune somewhere down the line, but now is trapped in the relationship between his feckless alcoholic mother and a bullying stepfather. Ben, however, isn’t the problem.

A man called Mark Drake most definitely is. Fifteen months earlier Veronica helped him disappear and, according to chapter three, he killed his wife. I use the words ‘according to’ advisedly. Problem is, with Jo Spain plots, you never quite know if she is telling you the full story. She has this sublime skill of encouraging the reader to make assumptions, which can lead to all manner of surprises. Anyway, it seems that Mark Drake has fled a murder scene, leaving behind two bodies. One is that of his wife, Amy. But there is another, and there, as WS once said “lies the rub”.

Veronica is approached by suspended police office named Seb who is determined to find Mark Drake and, by a mixture of persuasion and coercion, Veronica agrees to help him. She and Seb get a clue, and head to York, which was where Drake was headed. We know that Mark is in town, because he gets a couple of brief chapters to himself. It is at this point that seasoned Jo Spain readers may begin to suspect that there is s definitely something she is not telling us, at least explicitly. Veronica is nearly run down by a motorcyclist, and then she learns that one of the experts in her chain of identity changers, the man who produces fake IDs, had been found dead. And the police are very keen to speak to her.

Almost exactly half way through the book we learn more about Veronica’s backstory. Her father worked in the restaurant industry, and his main job was sourcing seafood – and in particular, tuna – from Japan. This meant frequent absences from home, but there was one final trip from which he never returned. The 18 year-old Veronica and her mentally fragile mother travel to Japan to find him. They are faced with the chilling truth that Veronica’s father’s rented Lexus was pulled from the water of the Seto Inland Sea. His wallet was there. His passport was there. His phone was there. But he wasn’t. Local contacts suggest that he may have wanted to disappear, and this is Veronica’s introduction to johatsu.

I mentioned WS earlier, but what happens in the later part of the book reminds me of Macbeth, rather than Hamlet. In the Scottish Play, there is a recurring theme of reversal, paradox, of black becoming white, of good becoming evil: the celebrated quote is:

“Fair is foul and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

This book has more tricks up its sleeve than Tommy Cooper, but unlike Tommy, Jo Spain delivers them faultlessly. The narrative is taut and the dialogue is convincing. Compared to the Tom Reynolds novels I mentioned earlier, this story has TV mini-series stamped all over it, and is clearly designed for international consumption. It is none the worse for that, however, and I can heartily recommend it. It will be published by Zaffre on 2nd July.

June 30, 2026 0

A WASP IN THE BEEHIVE . . . Between the covers

The Brigid Reardon Mysteries by Mary Logue are historical mysteries centered on an Irish immigrant navigating the American West in the 1880s. Starting with The Streel (2020) and followed by The Big Sugar (2023), the series features a determined, independent protagonist who solves murders in places like Deadwood and Cheyenne while seeking a better life. This is the third in the series, and begins in Salt Lake City where the eighteen year-old Brigid is applying for a job in a bookstore owned by a Mr Cutter.

We know from a brief preface that this gentleman has five wives, but this is, after all, Mormon central. Mr Cutter is something of a nasty piece of work. Not content with his five wives, he has his eyes on a sixth, Amelia. Normal terms for relatives become a problem in pluralistic marriages, but I think Amelia is his step daughter, as she is the daughter (by a previous marriage) of his second wife, Sarah. Unfortunately for Cutter’s equilibrium, sixteen year-old Amelia has fallen in love with Brandon, Cutter’s son by his first wife, Eliza.

When Mr Cutter is found dead in the sewing room of their house – a room he never has reason to visit – Brigid is reacquainted with Dr Kohler, a man she met in the bookstore. Doctor K has little to do with live patients – he is the city coroner. Cutter’s demise ushers in a delightful (for us readers) whodunnit, as a longish list of suspects is instantly available. Was it one of the wives, driven by jealousy? Brandon – or even Amelia – angered by his refusal to countenance their affection for each other? Or is it someone outside the family with a grudge against Cutter due to some slight or grievance borne out of the complex local religious politics? Whoever, the relationship between Kohler and Brigid is a CriFi match made in heaven.

At 200 pages, this is more of a novella, but none the worse for that. Spoiler alert – we are introduced to the murder weapon early in the piece, but as to who wielded it, that is rather more nuanced. There is one trivial, but unfortunate, research error. Dr Kohler refers to the methods of Sherlock Holmes. This is 1881, and it would be another six years before the character would appear, in A Study In Scarlet.

Written in the first person, the narrative of A Wasp In The Beehive ensures that we know plenty about Brigid. She is a bright, resourceful and courageous heroine. Categories are subjective, I suppose, but they are useful for tags, so I class this as Cosy Crime. Not my chosen genre, for sure, but I enjoyed this tale. It is published by The University of Minnesota Press and is available now.

June 30, 2026 0

THE CLIFF’S EDGE MURDERS . . . Between the covers

I’ll be upfront and say that I loved this book from the very first page. There were two initial reasons, the first being that it is set in my favourite county of Shropshire, a place where I spent happy years, and somewhere that remains a repository of golden memories. Secondly, joy of joys, it has a simple and uncluttered chronological narrative, with none of the contrived ‘two years earlier’ or ‘six months later’ chapter headings so much in vogue with some authors.

Priscilla Masters sets Shrewsbury coroner Martha Gunn and DI Alex Randall a grim problem to solve. Two teenage joyriders have died when their stolen car dives headlong off the edge of a steep disused quarry. As the police are cleaning up the scene, they pop the boot, and find the emaciated corpse of an elderly woman. And a third boy, who may well have been in the car, is nowhere to be found.

Martha Gunn and Alex Randall are complex but attractive characters. Gunn was widowed some years earlier, and brought up her twins Sam and Sukey while balancing the demands of her job. After a career in sport that didn’t quite work out, Sam is now at university, while Sukey is well-known actress in a popular TV soap. Randall’s back story has an element of tragedy, too. His wife, Erica, died after falling downstairs. She was an unstable woman, and their marriage was unhappy. For a while, the circumstances of her death were considered suspicious, but Randall was cleared of any culpability. The couple had a child, but Christopher died shortly after birth, of a genetic defect.

The missing teenage joy rider is eventually found, and he confesses that they had been taking the car – which belonged to their deceased tutor at a local college – out for illicit drives for some time, but it wasn’t until they opened the boot to find a foot pump that they discovered the body. Panicking, and convinced they would be blamed for her death, they decided to dump it at Clive Quarry, but it went disastrously wrong. The surviving boy, Sol Raintree, managed to jump out of the back seat before it plummeted down the badly eroded cliff side.

The body of the elderly woman, tagged with generic name Jane Doe, poses seemingly unanswerable questions. Why was she kept in a cold place – but not frozen – before she was put in the boot of the car? Who had dyed her hair, and painted her nails, and made a loving professional job of both? Why does her broken femur, an accident which occurred not long before she died, not show up on any contemporary medical records?

I am not normally a huge fan of romantic entanglements between investigating officers in crime novels, but Priscilla Masters handles the growing relationship between Gunn and Randall with the lightest of touches. As I hinted earlier, I loved the Shropshire setting, and many of the topographical references chimed with me, in particular the powerful presence of The Severn, deceptively beautiful but also a powerful bringer of destruction when in flood. There is also the occasional hint of the ‘blue remembered hills’, and it was pleasant to be reminded of places like Baschurch and Church Stretton.

The author keeps us waiting for some time before she delivers a beautifully complex but elegantly credible solution to a puzzling death. Jane Doe finally gets a real name, the dignity of a funeral, and a mourner. The Cliff’s Edge Murders will be published by Joffe Books on 25th June.