What Lies In The Dark CM Thompson
The book starts with a young girl running through the woods. She is scared of the woods but she is more scared of the big boys at school who might be on her safe route home. The opening few pages explores and explains her fear. The rest of the book examines the fears of a community.
The main story starts with Detective Sergeants Victoria “Bullface” Bullrush and Aaron Fletcher attending a murder scene. There is a marking on the body which confuses the detectives, and about the significance of which they disagree about.
As the story unfolds it is evident that there is a serial killer in the area and that they are killing women, the attacks becoming more frequent.
Thompson looks at the fear of local people and the affect the crimes are having on them, and also looks at the affect the investigation is having on the Police Officers.
The story rattles to its conclusion with a bit of padding. The author uses case files to remind the reader about each of the victims, and by the time you get to them you need them to bring the story back into line.
I’m tempted to say this book is a series of very small stories linked by some slightly unbelievable main characters. It’s almost a scatter gun approach to a Police Procedural. For the first 2 chapters I wasn’t sure what country it was set in, and I still don’t know where in the UK it was set.
This all led to it being a very frustrating read