Thank you so much to Mai's Musings @maitaylor01 for the amazing review of the fifth book in The Edinburgh Crime Mysteries during the blog tour run by @rararesources . You can read it here: https://maitaylor567291325.wordpress.com/category/book-review/ or below.
Having read all of The Edinburgh Crime Mysteries so far, I have always found Hunter Wilson to be something of an enigma, much more difficult to fathom than the rest of the characters. Discovering more about Hunter’s past in this fifth book, and witnessing his first encounter with both a dead body and the police, explains both a lot about the man he became and about the animosity between him and Myerscough (old Myerscough that is, not young Myerscough who I will confess to having a bit of a crush on). It was interesting to see a more vulnerable side to Hunter, and see beneath the tough exterior that he presents to the outside world.
As ever I was delighted to see the return of Jamie and Frankie. I love their dynamic, and their efforts to remain on the straight and narrow (ish) always add some light relief to the story. The second Jamie was spotted on his “walk” you just knew that the hapless cousins were about to find themselves right in the middle of something big again.
The motivation behind the perpetrator’s crimes in this book is shocking, and whilst I had my suspicions about who was behind the mysterious missing bodies, the reasons for their actions came as a surprise to me.
The character relations on both sides of the law are as incestuous as ever in a way that always make Val’s books feel like returning to a familiar community. It is these relationships that draw me back to each new book as it is released.