A cold case suddenly becomes very hot...
An old man has fallen down the stairs and when the police arrive to check on him at the behest of a concerned neighbor, they are warned not to go upstairs. Intrigued, they investigate and discover a skeltonized body in a suitcase inside a padlocked room. It turns out that this is the body of Oliver Fox who went missing over 30 years previously. In addition, a note is found in the kitchen and reads: "it's time to pay for your crime." The old man, Albert Johnson, succumbs to his injuries before the police get a chance to question him about the body and the note, but he's the obvious suspect when a postmortem exam proves that Oliver Fox was probably murdered. So, the death of Fox is old but the note is new. Have DS Karen Hart and DI Morgan stumbled upon a case that is going to be more complicated than they first imagined? After some investigation, Hart and Morgan discover that Johnson and Fox worked together at Greenhill Secondary School. Was Johson's death an accident or was there foul play involved? Hart and Morgan, along with DCs Jones and Cooper, are pulled into a complex web with an unsolved crime that happened so long ago that it will be difficult to figure out.
NO SPOILERS.
This was an evenly-paced, if somewhat pedantic, police procedural that weaves the past into the present with a connection that presents them with many suspects and strong motives. I hadn't read the first book in the series so the characters were all new to me and I was able to enjoy this without having done so. I can see that Hart is a fairly genre-stereotypical female detective -- she's had a loss, she's on her own, and she's mentally tough. Hart, however, doesn't seem to have a dark side or engage in maverick behaviors at this point -- for which I am glad. I'm tired of damaged female police detectives! I'm a bit wary of a potential romantic development on the horizon as the signs are there. This was easy to read in one setting and though some red herrings are dangled, the revelations didn't come as a big surprise. I liked it well enough that I'm sure I'll try to read the next in the series.
Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer Publishers for the e-book ARC to read and review.
This is the second book in the DS Karen Hart series. The first one is titled Bring Them Home.
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