Murder in the past

Gabby Darin is still acting DI of North Wales MIT. When there’s a lull in serious crimes, they start looking at cold cases. One of those is the murder of Angelica Brook (18), the sister of DS Owen Bates’ wife. 25 years ago, the young woman disappeared from her 1st-floor bedroom and was later found dead on Great Orme (a limestone headland stretching into the Irish Sea). It was never established if she had a secret rendezvous or was abducted. The post-mortem revealed no other cause of death than that her heart stopped beating (that’s what pretty much kills everyone). The only strange element is that she was dressed in a Victorian nightdress. There were no leads, no witnesses, and no clues. DI Stewart Tipping, who’s at home suffering from cancer, lead a serious investigation but to no avail. Owen asks Gaby to reopen the investigation.

This is the 3rd book in this series and I read all of them, but if you join in now you won’t have any difficulties as all the elements of the background story are given where necessary. And in this story, there’s a lot of activity in the team’s private lives. Owen and Kate are expecting their second child and she’s unhappy with his long hours. Marie is separated from her husband and stuck in a miserable bedsit. And between Gaby and dr Rusty, there seems to be a never-ending rollercoaster between attraction and push backs.
The author has a beautiful way with words. On the first page, you find a gem like: “Yet here she was doing a cop’s version of twiddling her thumbs: flicking through the stack of cold cases they had lurking in the storage room in the bowels of the station.” And there are many more that are sometimes missed because of the high suspense level of the story. The story starts out a bit slow when all the elements and people are introduced but draws you in nevertheless. Then, when you think you have the picture, you discover that you and the team are chasing a red herring and that you have to start out from zero again. The story does gain momentum and eventually, everything starts happening at once and events race to the finale.
The ending was a bit unexpected and rather complicated. I suppose it could happen and I’ll buy it because of the story’s quality. Another promotion lurks at the horizon for Gaby and that’s a bit soon in my calculations. She’s only been acting DI for a short time, in my knowledge.
I thank Netgalley and HQ Digital for the free ARC they provided and this is my honest, unbiased review of it.