3.5 Stars

There are eight books in this series, so this debut must have been popular enough. Not so for me, even though the blurbs intrigued me enough that I found I had sprung for two copies of this book at different times: paperback and Kindle.

Stella, the titular daughter (oh my, I'm so weary of book titles with 'daughter', 'wife', mother' and so on). Anyway, Stella - I wanted to slap her many times. That's probably not enough to dislike a book, but it certainly made reading this frustrating. ( )

This was a bit annoying at first but picked up. This could probably be made into a movie. ( )

Set in my old stamping ground in Essex (UK) and with enough local scenery to make it authentic and relatable.

A police procedural that holds you, willing the female detective to succeed in her quest for justice.

Nothing great or deep here just a well written novel that has bite and substance. If you like crime novels don’t miss this one. ( )

There are some good things in this: there is an interesting analogy drawn between the mindset of the professional cleaner and that of the SOCO, and the author can write excellently chilling horror when required. But yards of tedious minutiae do not characterisation make, and the studious avoidance of the obvious (good) was, in the end, I thought, counterproductive (bad). ( )

I thought this book would never end. ( )