A burnt body, that of a child, is discovered near the shore of Haweswater on a Sunday, near the village of Burnbanks.
D.C.I. Satterwaite is joined by his team and new arrival D.S. Ashleigh O'Halloran to investigate.
It seems Satterwaite and his team all have their personal problems to deal with during the case, and I didn't take to O'Halloram's character. Unfortunately I did find the plot predictable and not all that exciting, so a like and not a love rating.
A NetGalley Book ( )

After a grass fire, the charred body of a pre-teen boy is found in a barn in the Lake District. Detective Chief Inspector Jude Satterthwaite leads the investigation. His team includes Detective Sergeant Ashleigh O’Halloran who has just joined the police force in the area. They soon determine that his death was not accidental. But who is the boy? Why was he not reported missing? As the investigators search for the murderer, they take some wrong turns and another death occurs. Of course, eventually all secrets are uncovered.

The mystery is not difficult to solve; in fact, it is rather predictable. Because there are not that many characters, the suspect pool is small. And the clues tend to be too obvious. The only real mystery is the motive and exactly how the murderer carried out the crimes.

What detracts from the case is Jude and Ashleigh’s personal lives. Both are recovering from relationships that ended recently, but they have not moved on. As a result, they spend a lot of time thinking about their previous partners. As expected, there is an immediate attraction between Jude and Ashleigh when they meet so it is not difficult to predict what will happen. This is supposedly the first book of a series so, undoubtedly, subsequent books will develop the romance. I’d definitely have preferred less focus on romance.

I did not find that I warmed to either of the two main characters. Jude is handsome and intelligent but he just doesn’t come across as a warm person. We are told that he has “too strong a conscience” and is “too uncompromising on too many fronts.” He is certainly driven by duty. Ashleigh is supposedly the strong female lead but some of her behaviour, especially towards the victim’s mother, is unprofessional. Members of the police team like her almost immediately, but I don’t understand the appeal other than the fact that she is attractive.

There are some needless repetitions in the book. Over and over we are told that Jude’s romantic relationship suffered because “there had always been a part of his soul that he’d held back”: “Sometimes the bleakness of his chosen path was too great for comfort, some of the things he saw too grim to share.” Ashleigh’s interest in tarot cards comes up again and again. Some judicious editing would be useful.

Mediocre is the adjective that best describes the book. It is not terrible, but there is really nothing to differentiate it from so many other similar books.

Note: I received a digital galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

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