‘What The Dark Whispers’ by M J Lee

Published by Canelo.co,
3 July 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-80436904-2 (PB)

Detective Inspector Thomas Ridpath is the kind of copper you’d want on your doorstep in a crisis. Unlike several of his colleagues, he likes to do the job properly, make sure the innocent are protected, and get the right result. Seconded for several months to the coroner’s office from one of Manchester’s Major Crime Teams in the wake of personal tragedy, his meticulous approach is now needed back at the MIT when two baffling deaths occur within days of each other.  

Ridpath arrives at the scene within minutes of the first death. Megan Muldowney, a young DC sent to cover the incident, describes how the victim walked into the petrol station, doused himself in petrol and set himself alight. Next day, an MIT briefing reveals details of the second occurrence: a young teenage girl has called 999 and confessed to killing her mother. Ridpath finds himself seconded again, this time to an understaffed suburban police station where both these deaths are under investigation. 

What sets Ridpath apart from the average DI is his ability to see past the facts of a case and into the minds of the people involved. But these two cases are a puzzle even to him, especially when he is faced with laziness, misplaced ambition and incompetence from fellow officers. Fortunately, rookie DC Muldowney is neither lazy nor incompetent, and proves keen to learn from him. Together they unpick the mysteries, find connections, follow a trail and eventually arrive at the truth in the nick of time.   

Meanwhile, another character, unnamed, has his own agenda, given voice in a series of interwoven chapters which drip-feed information to the reader, sometimes explanatory, sometimes misleading, and all with a pervading sense of menace.  

Ridpath himself is a complex character. He is perceptive, dogged and compassionate in his working life, respected by his hyper-efficient colleagues at the MIT, but despised by the work-shy bunglers at the smaller station, where the one bright spot is the sharp and astute DC Muldowney. His vulnerable side comes out when he is faced by his damaged and confused teenage daughter Eve, whom he adores but finds a little bewildering. 

The sum total is a well-constructed page-turner with plenty of changes of pace and tension, characters to root for and sigh over, and the kind of high-octane denouement that cries out to be made into TV drama.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick 

M J Lee has worked as a university researcher in history, a social worker with Vietnamese refugees, and as the creative director of an advertising agency. He has spent 25 years of his life working outside the north of England, in London, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Bangkok and Shanghai.

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.