Blog Tour: Without Trace – Leigh Russell

With a terrifying certainty, she knew she was going to die.

DI Geraldine Steel knows people go missing all the time. So when her partner Ian asks her to look into the disappearance of his football-buddy’s girlfriend, her first instinct is to reassure him there’s no need for concern. Until she’s called to a suspected murder. The young woman has earth and fragments of twigs in her hair. It’s as if she’d been completely encased in earth. And yet she was found on the pavement, at the side of a suburban road, where she wasn’t in contact with any soil or mud.

Without a crime scene, the investigation focuses on her boyfriend. But then another young woman is reported missing. Unless he has an accomplice, they have an innocent man in custody. And Steel is running out of time . . .

A page-turning puzzle of a case with an unexpected final twist. If you’re a fan of Angela Marsons, Mel Sherratt and Karin Slaughter, you’ll love Leigh Russell.

Leigh Russell is the author of the internationally bestselling Geraldine Steel series, which has sold over a million copies worldwide. Her books have been #1 on Amazon Kindle and iTunes with Stop Dead and Murder Ring selected as finalists for The People’s Book Prize.

My thoughts: another gripping and perplexing case for DI Geraldine Steel and her team. Several young women have gone missing in a small area of York, and now another. But this time, she survives just long enough to stumble into a road and be found, only to die in hospital.

She was covered in leaves and dirt, like she’d been buried alive and clawed her way out. Was her boyfriend the one who did this to her or is something more sinister going on?

Meanwhile Geraldine has been feeling a bit off, is her relationship with Ian in trouble? Maybe she just needs a holiday.

As the case unfolds, we’re offered the killer’s obsession and his strange justification for the deaths he’s responsible for. A twisted mind that the police can’t understand.

Clever, twisted and compelling, this is another excellent book in this series.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.