Sarah Ward (1)Rezensionen

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I read this in one sitting on a flight and it certainly held my interest. The initial set up, with cleaner Elsa discovering one of her holiday homes having been abandoned with the kettle left on and sandwiches half made etc was really intriguing. I like the character of Mallory Dawson, who helpfully gets co-opted as a police consultant for each of these books, although I am beginning to wonder if her son needs to be dragged into all her cases - no wonder his father is concerned about him staying with Mallory.

On the other hand, after that really excellent opening set up, the logic of the rest of the plot didn't really hold together. I had questions both about the circumstances of what happened to the parents who disappeared in the present day - why did they succumb so easily? - and about the sections set in the past, where I didn't understand why certain things were kept secret. Without being spoilery it is hard to be more specific, but many of the characters seemed to be required by the plot to act in ways which seemed to me to be illogical.

Still, I will continue with this series - I need to find out if Mallory goes on holiday with Harri!½

Sarah Ward has written a compelling page turner of a crime novel that keeps you guessing right to the end. The story follows the police investigation into the deaths of a father, mother and their young son and subsequent fire in their house. As well as this, the lives of the police involved are also highlighted, with the demands of their job leading to difficulties in forming lasting personal relationships. As the investigation progresses, there appear to be links to an unresolved missing person case from 30 years before, although these are not clear cut. These elements make for a complex and shifting puzzle, with a few false leads before the resolution, one that still appears to leave an element of jeopardy for those involved.

Fifteen years ago, a man was murdered - by his wife. She's served her time and is back home again. But lo! The same man has been murdered again. So who was the first man? And who's murdered the second man? And why did the wife successfully claim that the first victim was her husband, murdered in the marital bed? There's a lot here for DC Connie Childs and the team she works with to unpick, and it doesn't always reflect well on police procedures in place at the time of the first crime.

In many ways a satisfying story, well told. But the chapters are short: the action rushes hither and yon from present to past and back again, and I couldn't always keep up. I'm glad I did though. I'd cheerfully read more about Connie Childs' career.

4 / 5 ⭐️‘s

"The Birthday Girl" by Sarah Ward

Mona, Beth, and Charlotte find themselves at The Cloister, a remote boutique hotel on a Welsh island, each with their own reasons for being there. But as Mallory Dawson, the night manager and former police detective, discovers, one of these guests is a serial killer with a dark past.

The characters are unique, each with their own secrets and motives.

The tension builds as Mallory realizes that the killer, known as The Birthday Girl, is among the guests at the hotel. The sense of danger and suspicion permeates the story, keeping you on the edge trying to unravel the mystery. The plot has twists and turns that keep the suspense alive until the very end.

The sense of isolation and the hidden secrets of Eldey add to the intrigue, making it a perfect backdrop for a murder mystery.

The ending and the reveal of The Birthday Girl's identity is both surprising and chilling.

Out TODAY: https://amzn.to/3m9LUjF

This ARC was provided by @netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

Mallory, who has retired from the Met on medical grounds is working part time in a cathedral shop when she is asked to be a civilian investigator for the local police. A woman called Heledd has been found dead, and years ago her three year old son Huw went missing and was found at the bottom of a cliff. Mallory is asked to look again at the circumstances surrounding the boy's death in the light of a mysterious note which claims each of the six main witnesses told a lie.

I found this an easy read, although it didn't always make a lot of sense - why was Mallory asked to help out in this way? Was she really so much cheaper than using a real police officer? I found it hard to believe that Gruffydd in particular had not immediately come clean. The whole story of the note was a bit of a stretch and the unveiling of the murderer at the end came out of nowhere. This might have been a better read if any of the characters had been likeable. Heledd seemed nice in the first chapter, but she was a shadowy presence after that.

In the start of a new series, Sarah Ward takes readers to a luxury hotel on a rugged, isolated Welsh island, where an ex-detective, still recovering from the knife wound that ended her police career, has taken a job as a night manager, keeping guests safe. Bad timing: one of the newly-arriving guests is a cold-blooded serial killer, When one of the guests dies after apparently recognizing another of them, Mallory Dawson figures out that she was the only surviving victim of the "birthday girl," who years earlier poisoned all of the girls who came to her party. But which one is it? There are several plausible suspects, but the number dwindles as, one after another, poisoning continues.

There are definite Agatha Christie vibes here, as well as an overall gothic feel, with the rugged island, once a cloister for nuns, cut off by a bad storm. The plot is nicely tangled and the tension ratcheted up along with the characters' anxiety. Yes, it's all pretty implausible, but it makes for an entertaining thriller that's also a palimsest of crime fiction classics, written by someone who knows her genre.

After I finished reading The Birthday Girl by Sarah Ward, I thought this was a good book, but when I started thinking about what I wanted to write for the review I began to realize it was just an okay book for me…. But others may really love it.

Usually if a thriller is thrilling I’ll have it read in a day or two, but I kept reading a few chapters and then put it down to do other things. While I wanted to find out who the birthday girl was, I didn’t find myself rushing to finish.

While there were numerous suspects and Ward started out their chapters with something like; My time table is rushed now and I must finish what needs to be done, so it felt like any/all of them could be the killer, I still didn’t feel deeply compelled to read quickly. I think it could be because we don’t get a lot of back story on many of them and some of the characters felt a bit one note.

We do get more backstory on Mallory, the former cop, but even her information is a bit scarce. We get a mention of the serial killer who hurt her, but not much more. And in regards to her son and ex-husband, the reader gets a feeling that there is more coming in regards to their relationships, but you’ll have to wait for future books. If you loved this book and will be reading more, that works out fine, but if you’re undecided if you want to continue then that may be more frustrating than anything.

I did really enjoy how Ward handled the killer at the end and some of the things in regards to the poisonings were interesting. I could see myself trying the next book in the series, but I hope that Mallory would not hold back so much in making intelligent decisions quickly in regards to the investigation… maybe when her leg is more healed and she’s been on the job longer she’ll be more sure of herself.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

In some ways this was a bit of a repeat of several books I have read recently - a group of people are cut off on an island and get murdered one by one, and it turns out the murders are related to a secret from the past. On the other hand, this was a cut above, partly because Mallory, the heroine, was a reliable narrator and a competent and sensible person. There was a fair amount of 'action' and wandering around in gale force winds etc, which was well-depicted. The identity of the murderer was worked out by a process of elimination and clearing away of clever misdirection, and my only real quibble was that the murderer's motivation was hard to relate to.

I will be looking out for the next in this series.

In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward is a debut novel that although was a little slow moving, was well crafted, thoughtful and quite chilling. In 1978 two young girls, Rachel and Sophie, were kidnapped as they walked to school, Rachel got away but Sophie was never seen again. This cold case was brought back to life 30 years later by first, the suicide of Sophie’s mother and then, the murder of a woman who had been a teacher at the girls’ school.

DI Francis Sadler is put in charge of the case and he is ably assisted by DC Connie Childs. They return to the original case and try to look at it from new angles to see if they can find answers. They are convinced that all three cases are connected but finding the connection is difficult. The child victim Rachel, is now a full grown woman but doesn’t remember much about her abduction. It’s only when the police start to dig into family connections that some long buried secrets come to the surface.

This investigation of a cold case set in the chill of a peak district winter made for an atmospheric read. I found plot very intriguing but felt that the author got bogged down in details which caused the story to get off-track every so often but overall this was a solid debut that was absorbing and intelligent. I will certainly be looking for more by this author.

In Bitter Chill begins when the body of an elderly woman, Yvonne Jenkins, is found in a Derbyshire hotel room. DC Connie Childs informs her boss, DI Francis Sadler that it appears to be a suicide. As they investigate further they begin to wonder if the death is somehow connected to a decades old cold case. Thirty years ago, on the same date, two eight-year-old girls, Rachel Jones and Sophie Jenkins, were abducted on the way to school. Rachel was found unharmed at the edge of the forest, but unable to remember anything except that her abductor was a woman. Sophie, Yvonne’s daughter, was never again.

Rachel Jones is now a genealogist, determined to live her life away from the shadow of the 1978 tragedy. Her grandmother Nancy, is the only remaining family link for Rachel to her troubled childhood. The story gets more complicated when the body of teacher, Penny Lander, with clear signs of having been strangled, appears on the same spot where Rachel Jones turned up after her abduction.

I enjoyed this book and thought the story line was quite interesting. The author managed to conceal as much as possible until the very end. Nothing is clear and no one is quite what he or she seems to be. DI Francis Sadler and young, eager DS Connie Childs were interesting characters and well drawn. The way in which the novel switches between the viewpoints of the investigators and of Rachel kept the story moving quickly. I really enjoyed it and look forward to another book by this debut author.

A good police procedural mystery

Six girls enter a railway tunnel and only five emerge. This takes place in 1953, and in the present day Mina's mother is dying and believes she has seen Valerie, whom she thought was dead. There are plenty of twists and turns, and people turning out to be not quite what we had been led to believe. I enjoyed the present day sections where Connie and her new colleague Dahl investigated.

On the other hand, the whole thing seemed to be a lot of fuss about nothing.

SPOILERS

Not to diminish what happened to Valerie/Ginnie, wouldn't it have been more normal for the sane adults to approach her in later life and apologize? Why was it such a big deal that Dahl had to leave early to look after his mother? On the other hand, why was so little made of the fact that Ginnie had had an allegedly platonic "affair" with the father of one of her school friends. I found that appalling... Why did Mina keep things from the police? Why on earth did Mina feel she would be safer in Cold Eaton - that was surely counter-intuitive? What was the point of Patrick's car accident?

Disappointing.

Susan definitely saw 6 girls enter the tunnel and then only 5 emerged at the other end. She walked through the tunnel in trepidation but did not find the missing girl. For her it simply confirmed the sinister and evil nature of the place. After that she avoided going near the tunnel and and years passed, then decades.

Six decades later Mina's mother Hilary is hospitalised with an aggressive cancer. She has a raging temperature which doesn't seem to respond to treatment. Hilary becomes frightened when she receives a visit from someone from her past. She is unable to explain much to her daughter Mina about who this person is. At one stage she tells Mina that she killed Valerie, that Valerie is dead, and then asks Mina to find Valerie. When Hilary dies Mina becomes determined to find Valerie, but then the possibility arises that Hilary has been murdered.

This story is a real page turner. The story is full of mysteries and fascinating scenarios.

The Shrouded Path – The Mysteries of the Peak District

Sarah Ward has once again brought DC Connie Childs back to Bampton, a quiet Peak District Town, where time stopped in about 1950. Or so it seems. Once again Sarah Ward has delivered a macabre masterpiece, that deals with the present while looking back to 1957.

Connie Childs is busy working away chasing up paper work and checking up on unexplained deaths, Bampton has not been this quiet for a while. It does not help that DI Sadler has actually bothered to go on a holiday and Matthews is acting up in the role and is making sure all the paperwork is up to date, she does not want Sadler pulling her up about it when he is back.

Connie is given a new partner DC Dahl who has transferred in from Glossop, which is on the edges of Derbyshire, could all most be in Greater Manchester. They are cannot find anything suspicious, but both have a gut instinct that something is not right. When a suspicious death in hospital things seems to be connected, but they cannot quite see how. With what looks like a saline drip murder, reminiscent of the murders at Stepping Hill Hospital not to far away, Sadler is called back from holiday.

What they do not realise is they will have to discover what happened in 1957 to crack the case. For Sadler that means things are a little too close to home. Especially when the drowned village of Derwent is central to the story. A story that stands in the mists of time and only ever reveals itself when Ladybower reservoir levels drop.

While Sadler slowly puts the picture together, Connie Childs has a more important task of finding a missing vulnerable teenager who has been missing. This teenager seems to be the centre of everything that has been happening, but not sure how.

I love what Sarah Ward writes, and always is able to keep my Mancunian prejudices alive about the Peak District towns. Down here in the valleys of the Peak we tend to think of people up there as owners of three armed cardigans and six fingered gloves, where your brother can also be your uncle!

Once again Sarah Ward has written a macabre thriller that draws the reader in and keeps them hooked throughout. Sarah Ward is one of the most able crime writers we have at the moment.

A suspense-filled read - loved this, and demolished over the course of a day.

The overall story for this novel was quite interesting. I liked reading from the perspective of all of the characters, especially since they all have their unique take on the situation. There was the police angle but also the family angle, which is interesting because I don't think I've really ever read a book that has both of those perspectives. The theme of the story was really strong and carried through the entire book. I felt that the author really took the time to develop the story and shed light on every aspect of this problem. I liked the detective characters more than I liked Kat and Lena, or any of the other civilians; they just seemed more cohesive in terms of their organization and thought process compared to Kat, who sometimes acted like a chicken with its head cut off. There were two romance angles that were also worked into the story; one was more successful than the other in terms of its belieavability and growth trajectory. All in all, this was quite a good detective novel that was unique because of its dual perspectives on the same situation.

I received this novel as an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Connie and her superiors investigate a house fire in which the three members of a family have died. It turns out that before the fire got to them, two were bludgeoned to death and the third hanged. Then it emerges that the father of the family (Peter) was previously married to a woman who disappeared (and was subsequently declared legally dead) and Connie is convinced this holds the key to the current case.

The narrative switches between the perspectives of Connie, Francis, her boss, and Julia, Peter's daughter from his first marriage. This sometimes made it difficult to keep tabs on whether the police or Julia were aware of a certain fact. It also switches between the present, the night of the fire, and the childhoods of Julia and her brother George, which was confusing, particularly with the time switches between the more recent past and the present - although dates were given, there were too many to sort out the chronology without making notes.

I found the ultimate conclusion (there were many twists and turns) satisfactory, but

SPOILERS

Elizabeth's character made no sense whatsoever. I found her entirely unsympathetic and unconvincing. I had issues with George too, but these were resolved by the end. Although... I thought the forensic scientists were convinced they would have detected the presence of a third party in the house that night...?

Two girls disappear in a small English countryside town in 1978. One of them walks out of the woods alive, while the other is never found. Over thirty years later, the mother of the still missing girl commits suicide. Days later, another body is found. For present day detectives and Rachel, the girl who survived the day she still has no memory of, the present day murders are bringing to light questions that have never been answered and the 1978 case is looked at with fresh eyes. At some points in this novel I was a tad confused because a few of the characters weren't as well developed as I would have liked, and I think it made them slightly less memorable than they could of been. But, overall, this was a quick read with a great setting I enjoyed sinking into. I really wanted to keep reading to know how all the murders were connected and what happened in 1978, and I was not disappointed. I will definitely be keeping an eye on this author.

Sarah M. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

A Patient Fury – There is always a dark side to a family

DC Connie Childs has just returned to work and she is not too sure if she has come back too soon, but no matter, it is a job that she loves. When the call comes through in the early hours Connie is being dragged out of bed to a suspicious fire at the request of the Fire Brigade in Brampton. With DI Sadler, they head for the fire, more in silent resignation than hope, as these calls only ever mean one thing, death.

Once again, Connie goes her own way on the case, does not listen to Sadler or any other of the team and ends up in the Daily Mail, after the case has been closed. When she is suspended she still ignores all the known evidence and goes head long into a secret investigation to uncover the secrets that the family involved seem to be hiding. As she gets further involved in the case, she notices her car gets vandalised, but carries on regardless. She does find that time has not healed any rifts in the family have never really healed. Connie really would like to bridge that and bring closure for her and the case.

Once again Connie Childs is on a one-way career destruction course, ignoring her detective inspector, because she knows she is correct, even if the evidence does not show that. Her health is not at its best and it looks like she may lose the one things she cares more about, her police career.

Sarah Ward really knows how to bring a family’s secrets out in to the open and make them interesting and throw in a few added twists to the story. She is really developing Connie Childs into a character you can believe in, if not love, and scream at her to eat something for a change too. This really is a fantastic mystery that keeps you guessing all the way to the last sentence, and always a sting in the tail.

A fantastic story, I cannot recommend highly enough.

If you like your mysteries somewhat mindboggling, this is the thriller for you: the second book featuring Detective Inspector Francis Sadler combines murder and dysfunctional relationships, leavened with love.

Sadler and his team are investigating a corpse found in a long-abandoned morgue: the problem is the body is that of a man who was killed [and cremated]12 years ago, and his wife Lena has recently been released after serving time for his murder.

But then she disappears, and a second body is found. Where is Lena? Who was the man she killed 12 years ago? Riddles and mistaken identities abound in a pleasantly puzzling tale.

This book grabbed me from the beginning but that did not last.

The idea of the book is intriguing - a woman is sent to prison for 15 years for the murder of her husband yet after she is released her husband turns up dead. Who was the man she murdered 15 years ago? Who murdered her husband? How are the two crimes related? Of course I wanted to know what happened and how and why.

The first problem is that clearly Lena knew something, possibly everything, yet everybody asks her what happened and doesn't press her when she refuses to talk. In reality she would have been taken downtown and threatened with an obstruction of justice charge for refusing to talk. Of course she couldn't say or there would be no reason to flog through the entire 380 pages of this book.

The second problem I had was that the mysteries were too contrived. At one point the sister is sent a series of odd things through a boy that knows Lena. This is a mystery within the larger mystery but when we find out what is going on (the sister never does figure it out) I am shouting at the book "How ridiculous. Why didn't you just...(no spoilers here)". Then when we find out the larger mystery, it is so illogical and preposterous that I want the hours spent reading the book back. I skimmed the last 100 pages.

The writing was acceptable but even there the author fell down with things like "she hissed" and very wooden writing in what should have been an emotional scene.

There seem to be plenty of people that liked this book. Frankly, I don't see why they did. To me the word that mostly comes to mind with this book is - contrived.

Not recommended.½

Sarah Ward’s second police procedural to link a present-day crime with Derbyshire’s recent past is a knockout. Certainly the best example of the genre I’ve read so far this year. The most difficult thing about reviewing it is explaining why I think that without giving too much away. But I’ll have a go.

Firstly there’s the story. It opens with a body being discovered in an abandoned building. Nothing very original there you might be thinking. But the dead man is quickly identified as Andrew Fisher; a man who was supposedly killed a decade ago. The husband who Lena Fisher has served an entire prison sentence for murdering. I’m not going to give you any more plot details but will say the twists kept coming and kept surprising me. Lots of novels have a good premise. The elevator pitch if you will. But A DEADLY THAW is one of the much rarer offerings that has an intriguing premise and manages to deliver ever more intrigue until the very end.

As with Ward’s first novel, 2015’s IN BITTER CHILL, I think the main character is DC Connie Childs but she is not such a lone wolf that she is able to investigate crime without assistance. Her boss, the enigmatic DI Francis Sadler, and fellow DC Damian Palmer are both very involved in the investigation. We are exposed to a little of their personal lives (but not too much) and we see how difficult and frustrating their professional lives can be. People lie and obfuscate and forget. And for every tip that leads somewhere useful there are a dozen or more that go nowhere but, of course, you don’t know which is which until the time is wasted. Who’d be a cop eh?

We also see a lot of the civilians who are involved in or impacted by the case in some way. I like that the book lets us see things from different perspectives, not just that of the police. Among the people we meet here are Lena Fisher and her sister Kat who has never known why her sister murdered her husband (or whoever he was) and is now caught up in more inexplicable mess brought into her life by her secretive sister. Their relationship is complex but believable.

It must be near-impossible for a genre author to come up with something even vaguely original these days but Sarah Ward’s mix of contemporary procedural and cold case storyline does so. I really liked the way A DEADLY THAW unfolded, showing how events of the past can have a long-lasting effect and also offering a sobering reminder that one person’s perspective on events is rarely the whole story. I think what I liked most about the book was its deliciously unsettling resolution. Sometimes doing the right thing is downright dangerous.

A thoroughly intriguing read with twists and turns aplenty. Stories about missing children are always fascinating and this one has a completely unique back story. Rachel who survived the kidnapping has developed a career in genealogy but why does she focus only on the female side of her family? and what secrets is her feisty grandmother hiding? This kept me reading well into the night and the next in the series is a must buy for me. Excellent.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

Lena serves a prison sentence for the murder of her husband Andrew, but a year or so after her release Andrew’s body is found in a disused mortuary. Where has he been for the last twelve years and who did Lena murder back in 2004? Who has actually murdered Andrew now? Both the police and Lena’s sister Kat wonder these things and then Lena disappears.

This is the second in the Francis Sadler series and, while I quite enjoyed the first, I thought this one was excellent. There was just the right amount of focus on the detectives’ personal lives; it rounded them out as characters without distracting from the main plot. Each was likeable and sympathetic and there is potential for further development in later installments.

The first two chapters really drew me in and grabbed my interest (especially as I had forgotten the gist of the blurb – I recommend this approach!) Each chapter was short and this added to the pace and urgency of the investigation. I liked the chapters from Kat’s point of view and the suggestion of a romance there. The descriptions of Kat and Lena’s house were effective and added to the sense of lives ruined and hollow. The wider issues within historic policing practices which were touched upon here integrated seamlessly with the plot.

If I had to quibble it would be over the explanation of Lena’s motivations, although within the text characters admit her actions are open to question and criticism. The final chapters kept me guessing, but I was happy with the conclusion.

Highly recommended; I look forward to the next book.

This is the second book in a series, centering around Inspector Francis Sadler and his detectives. A very intriguing mystery here, but be prepared to suspend disbelief to make it work.

The set up was good. The body of a murdered man is found in an abandoned morgue, except everyone thought he had died over a decade earlier. In fact, his wife had only recently been released from prison for committing the original murder. So, who was the first victim, and why would she lie about him being her husband? Then when she disappears, it's up to her sister Kat to help police figure the whole thing out.

This was an okay police procedural, just kind of hard to believe once the big secret is revealed. The last third or so of the book seemed to drag, probably could have wrapped up quicker after learning the who and why. I enjoyed Kat's character, but the others seem to blend together. It might have helped to have read the first book and already known the backstory of the cast.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.