Cause of Death
Reviewed By Ian Banks February 7, 2018
Author Peter Ritchie
Distributor: New South Books
ISBN: 9781785301322 |
Publisher: Black and White Publishing
Release Date: December 2017
Website: https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au
FaceBook:
YouTube:
Instagram:
X Formally Twitter:
DCI Grace Macallan has been shifted to Edinburgh after an incident in Belfast, which made it impossible for her to remain there as an operative police officer. Seconded to the Edinburgh CID she is placed in what is a new unit being set up to tackle organised crime, to be headed by none other than Superintendent O’Connor who is returning from Germany, along with Detective Sargent Mick Harkins, a local man with a formidable reputation for solving crimes.
Grace cannot believe that she has been co-opted into the newly formed Lothian and Boarders Major Crime Team, given her disastrous end in Belfast, but is thankful for the opportunity.
Once things get underway the team find out that criminals in in Edinburgh rank up there with the best of their kind and nothing is as straightforward as it seems. Several horrific crimes have been taking place, which somehow begin to look like they could be connected. But are they, or is it just a case of coincidences.
Somewhere out there a man is brutally murdering prostitutes, beating them senseless for no apparent reason and someone else is committing burglaries that are equally as brutal: targeting the richer neighbourhoods and torturing the occupiers until they come up with the money.
It is not until one of the robberies goes horribly wrong, leaving the owners of the house dead and their children terrified, hiding in a cupboard, that the Major Crime Team is called in. As the many and various threads of the two cases come together, the lives that are that are affected also begin to change, and secrets are uncovered on both sides of the law.
What lengths do they have to go to, in order to find the mind behind the robberies and is the person murdering the women, the man who has given himself up to the police?
The members of the team need to take stock of what is going on and work together, regardless of the threads that are beginning to bind them, and the conflicts beginning to appear, because when the ties become unravelled, when they can no longer trust each other, what then?
Peter Richie is an undoubted master of the suspenseful thriller in that he uses his many years as a Police Officer in the CID, murder squads, Serious and Regional Crime and Europol to give a solid and totally factual basis to this story. The chapters are short and succinct giving an added punch to the story line which is as intriguing as it is enthralling as all good thrillers should be, concluding in an ending that is as unexpected as real crime most definitely can be.
DCI Grace Macallan’s career is far from over, as even though she has not emerged unscathed, she is far too valuable to let go and so she will most definitely return to the pages once again, in another thriller from the pen of Peter Ritchie.