Some bodies just won’t stay buried…
After putting a stop to one of Edinburgh’s most notorious serial killers 3 years ago, DCI Liam Brodie is known as a man who can handle – and solve – the hardest of cases. But when he’s assigned to Fife’s
Major Investigations Team, he soon realises that he’s walking into a minefield. The previous DCI is missing, presumed dead, and the case he’s been called in to lead becomes dangerously close to
home.
When a child’s bones are unearthed beneath the floorboards of an old house in Fife – the same house where his girlfriend, psychologist Ruth Calder, grew up as a foster daughter – Brodie uncovers a
tangled web of lies and jealousy. Ruth’s foster mother, now gripped by dementia, holds fragments of the truth but in a community haunted by its history, Brodie must navigate betrayal and buried guilt to
bring a decades-old secret to light.
But at what cost to those he loves most? ⚠️
John Carson is the multi-million, bestselling author of numerous Scottish-set crime series.
Facebook: @john.carsonauthor
Instagram: @johncarsonauthor
My thoughts: Brodie has been working on a case involving a now imprisoned serial killer, trying to locate and identify his victims. Seconded to Fife, where their DCI has gone missing and key people connected to him have died in supposed suicides, he’s involved in two very different cases.
The first is the terribly sad case of the remains of a young boy found under the floorboards of a house. He might be the son of the owner – a child who supposedly ran away after his father committed suicide. If that’s true, someone in the house killed him and hid his body. To complicate matters, Brodie’s partner Ruth, was fostered by the family as a child. She remembers the house and the family as not a happy place or people. Brodie’s got to find out what happened, and it stirs up difficult memories for all involved.
The MIT officers are also looking for their boss, after returning from holiday, he just vanished. It distracts them from the murdered boy, and Brodie, while sympathetic, has to pull them up on it and get them back to work.
Meanwhile his Edinburgh colleagues are attempting to identify the body found in a shallow grave, one their serial killer didn’t put there. It turns out to be connected to Brodie too, and there might be another serial killer out there.
This is a gripping, clever read, there are twists and turns and the three cases overlap and interweave as the two police teams attempt to solve them. Brodie is torn between the work he’s doing in Fife and what’s happening in Edinburgh, wanting to help there too. As for the missing DCI, it doesn’t look good for him either. I really enjoyed this and if you’re into thrillers or police procedurals, you will too.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 