23 January 2023.
ISBN: 978-1-80405-757-5 (PB)
It’s Jemima Huxley’s first day back at work after a year’s maternity leave, and she’s already wondering if coming back was the right decision. Instead of enjoying cuddles with her year-old son Fin and helping her stepson James with his homework, she is dumped straight in at the deep end when an eminent judge is abducted, and a trussed-up body tumbles out of a car boot. Jemima is a detective inspector in the South Wales police force, in charge of a squad tasked with investigating the first of the crimes – and she soon gets involved with the second.
We’ve come to expect police officers in crime fiction to have a bit of history and an issue or two, so it came as no surprise to find that Jemima has been the victim of a serious sexual assault, used to self-harm and is the innocent party in a tricky marriage break-up. The only problem she doesn’t have is with childcare; her businesswoman sister, with whom she lives, employs a nanny for her own children who is more than willing to care for Fin and James as well. Jemima has talents in addition to problems: she’s an accomplished kick-boxer, and knows how to stay fit.
The real surprise is that she slots straight back into her working life and functions quite efficiently right from the start, even assuming control when her senior officer, DCI Ray Kennedy, is clearly in trouble himself. In the first few chapters Jemima reads the riot act to the abduction victim’s aggressive alcoholic wife, sorts out an incompetent family liaison officer, makes a good impression on a somewhat sceptical officer new to the squad and forms a good working relationship with the DI running the investigation into the body in (and out of) the car boot.
It becomes plain that the two cases are connected, and as time starts to run out for the abducted judge it’s vital Jemima and her team find out how. Questions need to be answered: why has DCI Kennedy failed to carry out the one task he took on, and trashed his office before rushing out of the building? What are the judge’s sons hiding? And most important of all, what is the relevance of the mysterious Marquess Club?
Gaynor Torrance has assembled a large and varied cast of characters for the fifth in this police procedural series. Some will be familiar to readers of earlier books, others, including some of the police, are new. Many are presented colourfully, with plenty of memorable detail. There’s plenty of catch-up detail for those who are meeting Jemima and her cohorts for the first time, but it doesn’t affect the galloping pace with which the case develops.
I wasn’t especially aware of the Welsh background, but that doesn’t impact on the progress of the story. There are many more complications in store before justice is finally served, and by the end Jemima is well and truly back in the swing of things.
This was my first dip into
Jemima Huxley’s eventful career even though it’s the fifth book in the series.
The fans she has gathered along the way have a treat in store, and for
newcomers there’s plenty to grab their interest.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick
Gaynor Torrance lives near Cardiff with her husband and their rescue cat, Cleo. The area is the setting for her Detective Inspector Jemima Huxley Crime Thriller series of books. Like Gaynor, Jemima has a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Though, apart from them both having a keen interest in human behaviour, that’s where any similarity ends. When she’s not writing or glued to her Kindle, Gaynor enjoys listening to music, playing the piano, walking, travelling, and eating far too much chocolate.
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.
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