Thanks to Random Things Tours for my place on the blog tour and copy of this book for review – as always, opinions are entirely my own.
The Blurb:
When Hannah Lloyd falls from her third-floor balcony at the end of her birthday lunch party, suspicion falls immediately upon the three guests who had only just left the apartment, alongside Hannah’s estranged husband Adam and a jealous neighbour with an axe to grind. But as the investigation develops, so does the network of suspects, eventually revealing a chilling connection between the crime and those in charge of preventing it. Forced to work alongside her arch-nemesis DCI Matt Preedy, DS Ronnie Delmar finds herself looking over her shoulder at her own colleagues and questioning the motives of those she thought she trusted.
My Review:
This seems like the ultimate in a closed circle mystery – a young mother, Hannah Lloyd, is found under her third-floor balcony after a birthday lunch. However, is it as simple as finding out which of her guests was last to leave – and therefore who had the opportunity to push her? Things are rarely that simple, as DS Ronnie Delmar is about to find out…
This is the third book in the DS Ronnie (Veronica) Delmar series, but the first I’ve read. I don’t think it matters too much if you haven’t read the previous books in the series as the key things to understand are explained or referenced enough to get the gist – Ronnie’s family set-up, difficult history with DCI Matt Preedy (who she has to work with here) and the mysterious disappearance of her father in her past. I picked it all up quite quickly and didn’t feel out of my depth at all.
The mystery itself is a well-plotted police procedural and we watch DS Delmar and her team work through the stages of the investigation – there’s lots of the police leg-work described here, from repeated interviews with the suspects to sifting phone records and waiting for crime scenes to be processed by SOCOs (Scenes of Crime Officers, to us in the know!) However, there’s also moments of real peril for DS Delmar which help to ramp up the tension in the book.
I absolutely loved DS Delmar as a main character – she’s teetering on the edge of the menopause with teenage kids, family tensions and a job that occupies too much of her mental load. Gosh, that all sounds very relatable! I liked the fact that she was also a feminist, looking at cases from the female perspective and trying to fight the misogyny within the police force. As I read about her idly trying to decide whether a man holding a door open was “human kindness” or “stifling patriarchy”, I’ll admit I grinned. Again, totally relatable thought!
There’s lots more to enjoy in this novel too – the police team surrounding Ronnie are realistic and credible, plus instantly recognisable as types of people we all work with – the lovely try-hard with his spreadsheets, the one struggling with his work-life balance, the one you wouldn’t trust as far as you could throw him…all life is here!
This feels like a timely novel too, dealing with misogyny and corruption within the police force; we are in, after all, a time of British police being under intense scrutiny after several high-profile and shocking instances of malpractice (and downright criminality). Indeed, Lucy Martin’s feminist approach seems totally appropriate and a respectful response to events such as the shocking murder of Sarah Everard.
Overall, I’d suggest that this lively and thought-provoking police procedural would be enjoyed by fans of contemporary crime fiction. This is especially true for those of us who enjoy a strong female lead – and particularly a middle-aged one who is eminently relatable!
About the Author:
Lucy Martin grew up in London and Brussels and after gaining a first-class degree at Oxford in French and Russian became a lawyer working mainly in central Asia, before retraining as a languages teacher and eventually settling into a less frenetic life of French tutor and thriller writer. She wrote a series of language revision guides before turning to fiction and realising her dream of getting published. She has written four novels including Stop at Nothing and The Choice, which are the first and second in the DS Ronnie Delmar trilogy leading up to Last to Leave, and published by Welbeck. The thread running through the three books comes through loud and clear in Ronnie’s character – an uncompromising quest for justice alongside a fierce commitment to female victims of crime. Like her creator, she’s not afraid to push a few boundaries, take risks and break the rules, not always with the result she imagines…
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