‘The Last Girl to Die’ by Helen Fields

Published by Avon,
1 September 2022.
ISBN: 978-0-00-837936-0 (PB)

A downside of reading crime fiction is that there aren’t many picturesque places in the UK where I’d feel safe to live; sooner or later one author or another will choose it as the background for some gruesome murders. In a departure from her police procedural series set in Glasgow, for her latest novel Helen Fields has added the Isle of Mull to an already long list.  

Natives of Mull, at least the version of Mull in Helen Fields’s imagination, tend to be suspicious of outsiders, and the American Clark family, father Rob, Mother Isabella and teenagers Adriana and Brandon, have not been welcomed with open arms. When Adriana goes missing the police reaction is lukewarm, and ace Canadian private investigator Sadie Levesque is brought in by her desperate parents.

Sadie isn’t welcomed either, especially by the island’s senior police officer, Sergeant Harris Eggo – even more especially when it is she who finds Adriana’s body. She finds an ally in pathologist Nate Carlisle, and together they start to look into aspects of Adriana’s death which suggest some kind of ritual. But without the co-operation of either the police or the island people, all of them determined that no local could possibly be guilty, Sadie finds it hard going, especially when a second girl disappears, this time from a local family.

Helen Fields has shown her talent for creating a diverse and intriguing cast of characters in her earlier books, and she uses it to good effect here. They’re far from black and white; not all the locals are unsympathetic, and not all the outsiders are accommodating. Even Sadie herself sometimes shows poor judgement which sets the investigation back.

Mull itself, with its narrow roads, secluded coves and gloomy weather, forms the kind of background which is guaranteed to add a sinister layer to the unfolding story. Even in the town there’s an air of glowering menace, notably in one of the pubs where Sadie soon finds herself unwelcome. This underlying discomfort is leavened only by her developing relationship with Nate and an occasional warm word from the landlady and barman of her hotel – but even those positive signs are scant protection.

Helen Fields’s Mull is not a place you’d want to visit, even when all the mysteries are solved, and the murderer is revealed. Small wonder she feels it necessary to apologize in an author’s note to real-life residents of this bleakly beautiful island. But the Mull of her imagination is the ideal forbidding backcloth for a tense and gripping mystery in the best tradition of the genre.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Helen Fields studied law at the University of East Anglia, then went on to the Inns of Court School of Law in London. After completing her pupillage, she joined chambers in Middle Temple where she practised criminal and family law for thirteen years. After her second child was born, Helen left the Bar. Together with her husband David, she runs a film production company, acting as script writer and producer. Her debut book Perfect Remains published in 2017 is set in Scotland, where Helen feels most at one with the world. There are now seven books in the series. Helen and her husband now live in Hampshire with their three children and two dogs.

 www.helenfields.co.uk

 

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.