‘Night Watch’ by Biba Pearce

Published by Liquid Mind Publishing.
4 March 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-68533384-3 (PB)

Kenzie Gilmore is an award-winning crime reporter, currently working for the New York Times.  Her long-distance boyfriend, Reid Garrett, is a Lieutenant in the Police Department of Sweetwater, a small community in Florida, near the Everglades, a place of danger and mystery.  Kenzie decides to pay Reid a surprise visit, looking forward to just relaxing.

However, her interest is captured by a rusty old Nikon F1 camera that Reid has just discovered, hanging on a tree in the Devil’s Swamp, a local area in the Everglades.  She gets the film developed and the photographs retrieved are disturbing enough to start a cold-case investigation.

Locals are reminded of incidents decades ago when 4 people disappeared – and also of the tale of a frightening individual called the ‘Night Watchman’.  Old enmities are recalled, old crimes remembered.  The history of the swampy glades becomes important, as the local police force has to start investigating in treacherous, unmapped territory.

This is an atmospheric story, the claustrophobic atmosphere of the glades hangs over the area as old relationships and crimes unexpectedly surface.  Local families have their own experience of the glades and are struggling to make a living in a harsh environment, so are not keen to talk about the past.  But, gradually, the fates of the 4 people are revealed and old mysteries laid to rest.

This is the 8th of the Kenzie Gilmore series and marks an important development in Kenzie’s personal and professional life - current readers will be interested to see how the changes work this develops.  It works as a stand-alone and should catch the attention of new readers.
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Reviewer: Jo Hesslewood
Other books by this author:  Kenzie Gilmore series:  Afterburn, Dead Heat, Heatwave, Burnout, Deep Heat, Feverpitch, Storm Surge

Biba Pearce grew up on the wild eastern coast of Southern Africa. She now lives in Surrey, and when she isn’t writing, can be found rambling through the countryside or kayaking on the river Thames. She writes gritty police procedurals and is the author of the bestselling DCI Rob Miller series published by Joffe Books. Her latest release, The Marlow Murders, was published in October 2023.  Look out for The Frost Killer, published 9 January 2024.

Jo Hesslewood.  Crime fiction has been my favourite reading material since as a teenager I first spotted Agatha Christie on the library bookshelves.  For twenty-five years the commute to and from London provided plenty of reading time.  I am fortunate to live in Cambridge, where my local crime fiction book club, Crimecrackers, meets at Heffers Bookshop .  I enjoy attending crime fiction events and currently organise events for the Margery Allingham Society.