The moors are a perfect hiding place for a serial killer. And a chilling return to the past for nascent private investigator Kate Marshall in a pulse-racing thriller by the author of Nine Elms.

Criminology academic Kate Marshall is on a scuba jaunt with her son when they dive toward a shocking discovery: the body of a teenage boy entangled below the surface of the Shadow Sands reservoir. The detective chief inspector’s too-quick narrative of a tragic drowning doesn’t add up, and when Kate follows the evidence, it leads to a darker discovery.

The victim is only the latest in a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances linked to the moorlands—and a mythic phantom said to hide in the rolling fog. When a researcher of urban legends vanishes without a trace, Kate and her associate Tristan Harper must act fast and look deep if they hope to find her alive.

But the elusive serial killer they’re hunting isn’t the only one a step ahead of Kate and Tristan. Someone else is making dead certain that the secrets of Shadow Sands stay buried.

My thoughts on Shadow Sands…

Sometimes you come across an author who seems to hit the mark every time, no matter how many of their books you read. This is definitely the case for me with Robert Bryndza (at least when it comes to crime fiction – I know he writes other genres but I haven’t read these). From the opening page to the final chapter, I find myself drawn into the dark worlds he creates. They are worlds that feels comfortably familiar at the same time as new and different, meaning I never get bored.

Here, Kate Marshall, former Detective turned lecturer comes across the body of a young man in a local reservoir. It’s a grisly scene. Kate calls the local police, whose response seems less than professional. Which is probably why when the young man’s mother asks her to investigate, she can’t help herself. What she finds out is something deeper and darker than she could have imagined.

Add to this a missing teacher, and you have a great mystery on your hands. One that kept me turning pages and staying up late at night to finish the book. It’s hard to say more without spoilers, other than this is a great read with twists, turns and red herrings and I highly recommend anyone who loves crimes fiction reading it.

Enjoy!

Emma x

Note: I received a copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review. All thoughts, feelings and opinions are my own.

About the book…

The stories in Emma Cline’s stunning first collection consider the dark corners of human experience, exploring the fault lines of power between men and women, parents and children, past and present. A man travels to his son’s school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she’s playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father.

These outstanding stories examine masculinity, male power and broken relationships, while revealing – with astonishing insight and clarity – those moments of misunderstanding that can have life-changing consequences. And there is an unexpected violence, ever-present but unseen, in the depiction of the complicated interactions between men and women, and families. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories are unforgettable.

My thoughts on Daddy by Emma Cline…

After the end of her marriage, Kate Granger has retreated to her parents’ home on Lake Superior to pull herself together—only to discover the body of a murdered woman washed into the shallows. Tucked in the folds of the woman’s curiously vintage gown is an infant, as cold and at peace as its mother. No one can identify the woman. Except for Kate. She’s seen her before. In her dreams…

One hundred years ago, a love story ended in tragedy, its mysteries left unsolved. It’s time for the lake to give up its secrets. As each mystery unravels, it pulls Kate deeper into the eddy of a haunting folktale that has been handed down in whispers over generations. Now, it’s Kate’s turn to listen.

As the drowned woman reaches out from the grave, Kate reaches back. They must come together, if only in dreams, to right the sinister wrongs of the past.

My thoughts on Daughters of the Lake…

An unlikely pair teams up to investigate a brutal murder in a haunting thriller that walks the line between reality and impossibility.

When small-town police officers discover the grave of a young boy, they’re quick to pin the crime on a convicted criminal who lives nearby. But when it comes to murder, Officer Susan Marlan never trusts a simple explanation, so she’s just getting started.

Meanwhile, college professor Eric Evans hallucinates a young boy in overalls: a symptom of his schizophrenia—or so he thinks. But when more bodies turn up, Eric has more visions, and they mirror details of the murder case. As the investigation continues, the police stick with their original conclusion, but Susan’s instincts tell her something is off. The higher-ups keep stonewalling her, and the FBI’s closing in.

Desperate for answers, Susan goes rogue and turns to Eric for help. Together they take an unorthodox approach to the case as the evidence keeps getting stranger. With Eric’s hallucinations intensifying and the body count rising, can the pair separate truth from illusion long enough to catch a monster?

My thoughts on Forgotten Bones…

I’m not a huge fan of books with a supernatural element. Every now and then, though, I read one and am surprised. So when I see one with good reviews, I sometimes think “why not?” That was the case Forgotten Bones, and I can see why people like it. Susan and Eric are interesting and likeable and the plot has some good twists and turns and an ending I almost didn’t seem coming,

However, for me, it didn’t quite hit the mark. There’s a couple of reasons for this. One is hard to explain without spoilers so I’ll just say Susan makes a decision early on that I didn’t understand and kept bugging me because it I didn’t think the type of cop she was then described would have done the same thing, the second was the FBI. They turn up and don’t seem to do much but make coffee and ignore the local police. I could have done without them to be honest.

In reality, these are small gripes that probably wouldn’t bother anyone else. They’ve just left me not able to go the full four stars I would give it otherwise (on Amazon as I don’t rate on the blog).

Emma x