Carol Wyer has done it again.
This is the fifth book in this series and everyone of them has had me gripped from the very start, and this is no different.
Although this book is part of a series Carol does a great job of filling in the skeleton of the running theme in the first two chapters. So, anybody reading this as a standalone novel will not be left totally in the dark.
What’s on the back of the book, or in this case on the Amazon page
DCI Kate Young never meant to shoot Superintendent John Dickson at the reservoir that night—even if, as a scheming corrupt cop and head of the shady syndicate, he probably had it coming. But now Kate has photographic evidence that someone else knows her terrible secret…
Tormented by guilt and the voices of the dead, Kate is desperate to unmask the rest of the corrupt officers before her own sins catch up with her. When DI Harriet Khatri, awaiting trial for the murder of Kate’s mentor, claims she was framed by Dickson’s syndicate, Kate reluctantly agrees to help in the hope of finding answers.
Meanwhile, DI Emma Donaldson finds herself on the hunt for a double murderer—a man who incapacitates his victims with a powerful narcotic called Devil’s Breath. Desperate to measure up to her role-model boss, Emma finds herself hurled into the deep end in more ways than one…
While Kate’s grip on reality wavers and the syndicate closes in, and with the mystery killer taking a special interest in Emma, could this be the case that defeats both detectives?
What I think
Kate Young lost her husband to a murderer. He was an investigative journalist and he was on to a ring of sex offenders.
At least one of which was a high ranking police officer.
Every investigation since his murder has almost been a “side hustle” as Kates main focus has been catching his killer and busting the sex ring.
I have questioned her mental health from the start, she hears voices, mainly that of her husband but latterly the dead Superintendent Dickinson.
It’s like having an Angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other.
What I began to realise, or for my own opinion on, was that actually she was just hypothesis building, the voices she was hearing was just a manifestation of her own thinking.
Police shouldn’t investigate with a bias, and Kates way of building her case was to have the two voices neutralising each other to make sure she was getting things right.
Haven’t we all had that little voice saying “one more drink” and another saying “no you’re going to regret it in the morning”
This book brings that story to a head and draws a line underneath it.
But will it silence the voices?
Is this the end of the DCI Kate Young series?
I sincerely hope not, but Carol Wyer has left us with an ending that might mean it is.
It’s not a cliffhanger, it’s the end of a running story, the logical place to conclude and for Kate to walk away. But the last few lines give me hope that we may see her again.
What a series, what a book, what an ending.
Print length 381 pages. Publisher Thomas and Mercer.