Blog Tour: Crow Moon – Suzy Aspley

When the crow moon rises, the darkness is unleashed…

Martha Strangeways is struggling to find purpose in her life, after giving up her career as an investigative reporter when her young twins died in a house fire.
Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, her life changes when she stumbles across the body of a missing teenager – a tragedy that
turns even more sinister when a poem about crows is discovered inked onto his back…

When another teenager goes missing in the remote landscape, Martha is drawn into the investigation, teaming up with DI Derek Summers, as malevolent rumours begin to spread and paranoia grows.
As darkness descends on the village of Strathbran, it soon becomes clear that no one is safe, including Martha…

Originally from the north-east of England, former journalist Suzy Aspley has lived in
Scotland for almost thirty years. She writes crime and short stories, often inspired by the strange things she sees in the landscape around her.

She won Bloody Scotland’s Pitch Perfect in 2019 with the original idea for her debut novel and was shortlisted for the Capital Crime New Voices Award.

In 2020, she was mentored by Jo Dickinson as part of the Hachette future bookshelf initiative. Crow Moon was also longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award. She’s currently working on the second book in the series, and when she’s not writing, she’s either got her nose buried in a book, or is outside with her dogs dreaming up more dark stories.

She lives in Stirlingshire with her family.

My thoughts: this was so good, creepy, weird, gripping, well written and from an exciting new writer in crime fiction.

When a teenage boy goes missing in the small community of Strathban and his body is found with a verse from an old poem about a witch inked on his body, Martha, a grieving journalist and mother of the dead boy’s best friend, who found the body, is drawn into the investigation.

The Scottish poem is sinister and creepy, embedded in the local landscape and the killer is definitely a local and obsessed with it. Martha suspects the parish priest, who is rather intense and knows all the young people who get dragged into the case, including her son.

There’s a terrible hidden tragedy that comes to light as the case races to it’s end, and there’s more as a fire takes hold of the kirk, and Martha has to confront her own personal losses.

I really liked Martha, she has incredible instincts and even wrapped in grief and pain, she has compassion for others and determination to help, even when DI Summers tells her to back of, but it’s such a personal case, she can’t. She thinks the police have the wrong suspect and that proves to be true.

This book had me absolutely hooked from the start and I cannot wait for the next book, I want to see more of Martha and how her next investigation goes.

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