The Crooked Shore by Martin Edwards
DCI Hannah Scarlett is an acknowledged expert in solving cold cases, but she is struggling under the weight of bureaucracy when Ramona Smith’s disappearance from Bowness more than twenty years ago crosses her desk.
The prime suspect was charged but found not guilty. Now the case comes back into the public eye as the result of a shocking tragedy on the Crooked Shore, the fount of dark legends in the south of the Lake District.
Tensions mount in the summer heat as a ruthless killer who has already got away with one murder plans further appalling crimes. Hannah finds herself racing against the clock as she strives to solve the mysteries and save innocent lives.
About the author
MARTIN EDWARDS was born in Knutsford, Cheshire. He read law at Balliol College, Oxford and trained as a solicitor. He is the author of the legal mysteries featuring Harry Devlin and writes the popular crime series set in the Lake District. He is also a critic and has edited various short story collections and writes The Martin Edward's Column on BookNoir.
Review
‘The Crooked Shore’ is once again a great return to ‘The Lake District Mysteries’ a series which I absolutely adore. This outing for Hannah and Daniel is another riveting cold case mystery, well written and well paced, with a great twist towards the end. This is the eighth in the series but you can read it as a standalone. It turns out somehow I missed the last book to be published but although there were minor references the story in this one, it's completely isolated from that.
Kingsley observes a young man run onto the Crooked Shore a notorious section of Morecambe Bay due to it's quicksand and tidal currents. It turns out that this is the son of a Gerry Lace who was accused of the murder of Ramona Smith but was acquitted. He later took he own life at the Crooked Shore, twenty years to the day later his son does the same. Of course, there is uproar and Hannah is asked to look the case over to see if the police had made mistakes and also it turns out it was Ben Kind, Hannah's old boss who ran the case.
To begin with I didn't like how the book was spilt between Hannah’s perspective but also Kingsley and his love interest Tory having their own say. Normally, the series has it spilt between Hannah and Daniel and I missed that. Daniel seemed to be missing from most of the action. I felt as if his plot and his meeting of Alex could have been fleshed out into a really exciting book of it's own. However, it felt regulated to the sidelines and over and done with very quickly at the end.
I did not see that resolution coming at all. I felt as if it was going to be one character throughout who was going to be in the frame for Ramona’s murder and it definitely didn't turn out to be them! It made me go back and reread the ‘afterword’ at the start of the book. It was a surprising resolution let's put it that way.
This is a great continuation of the series and I'm already looking forward to reading the next one!
