This story has way too many complicated facets…. all of which involve many suspects who each had various motives…adequate opportunities… and a quagmire of unanswered questions. I'll have to say that the story was interesting but only up to a point, and then it rapidly galloped straight down hill. In spite of the fact that there was another murder after Kenton’s, the story stalled…if anything it became even more complicated. The author made matters even worse by introducing a host of new characters in the last few chapters. This was a major distraction when the reader had to try to sort out who these people were and what did they have to do with the victims thus far. By the time that the murderer was revealed, I had lost interest and I just did not care any more. I gave the book 3 stars mainly because like another reviewer had said, I enjoyed the first part as much as I disliked the remainder. The reader will need a lot of patience to make it through this book. ( )

I have been a fan of Pauline Rowson's Andy Horton series for some time now and this one did not disappoint. The book will really work best if you have read earlier titles in the series, but even so, there are plenty of hints about details from earlier novels.

The story follows the pattern of earlier ones: a police investigation into a local case, in this case a missing person involving Portsmouth CID and progress in Andy Horton's personal investigation into what happened to his mother nearly three decades earlier.

Once again it is meticulously plotted and the central characters are well drawn. Horton is a maverick, and the tensions between himself and his superiors puts his actions on a knife edge. By the end of the book, you can't help feeling that knowledge of what happened to Andy's mother is just around the corner. ( )