Alan Cotterell's Reviews > Secrets on the Fens

My thanks to Joy Ellis, Joffe books and Netgalley for the ARC, in exchange for an honest opinion.

Returning to this series is like sitting down with old friends. I enjoy meeting up with Nikki, Joseph, Eve and the gang. The stories always include a smart mystery but also quite a bit of the interactions of everyone.

This time, there are two stylized murder scenes Someone is killing young goths in Greenborough and it is up to Nikki and her team to solve why. As ever the main characters, Nikki and Joseph, are very well developed and complex They make a well-matched couple, both in their private and their professional lives.

There’s also a side story as Eve and Wendy research a long dead painter who met a mysterious end and a missing painting. Of course, someone in the present is trying to stop this investigation. Might just have been me being inpatient, but this part of the book seemed quite drawn out, and spoiled the pace of the book to me, this time. Not had a problem with them in the previous books.

Whereas this is part of a well-developed series, you could fairly easily read this as a standalone. Although I do recommend reading the whole series.

Scoring this book is difficult. The main story is easily 4-5 stars, but the side story I can’t give more than 3 stars, so overall 4 stars.