Individually, the deaths of three elderly people aren’t suspicious. But when DCI Christine Caplan discovers the victims are linked and the truth of their identities twists the investigation ever darker, one question haunts Caplan’s every step: who needs these people dead… and how many names are on their list?
Four siblings. Three dead bodies. One twisted bloodline.
DCI Christine Caplan should be celebrating her daughter’s wedding. Instead, a journalist gives her a lead on a potential murder case with four whispered words: Witness protection. Suspicious death. The dead woman is Juniper Greene — a recluse found alone in her cottage, the doors locked from the inside.
Officially, nobody cares. And since Caplan’s team is days from being shut down, she has nothing to lose by following the faintest trace of evidence. What surfaces is a family that shouldn’t still exist. Four estranged siblings—two buried, two vanished or living under names that aren’t their own.
One by one, these relatives are being picked off.
It isn’t a family tree.
It’s a murder tree.
And someone is chopping it back to the roots. Caplan has to save the survivors. But can she find them before the killer?
CARO RAMSAY is the Glaswegian author of the critically acclaimed Anderson and Costello series, the first of which, Absolution, was shortlisted for the CWA’s New Blood Dagger for best debut of the year. The ninth book in the series, The Suffering of Strangers, was longlisted for the McIlvanney Prize 2018.@CaroRamsayBooks | caroramsay.com
My thoughts: DCI Christine Caplan is celebrating her daughter’s wedding when a body washes ashore, possibly linked to an ongoing case, but she’s more interested in the apparent accidental deaths of several elderly people, who when she investigates are in fact connected.
It all seems to link to a care home, and a man there, called Bernie. His carer, Dorothy (Doro) attracts the attention of Caplan and her team, she has a sick child and Bernie has been giving her money, could she be behind this series of deaths?
This was a really clever and compelling case, it was rather fiendish and felt a bit like a Golden Age crime novel – I was completely hooked.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of the book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
🧡💙 Thank you so much for being a part of this adventure x
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