NOTHING TO HIDE

SYNOPSIS

Suspended from duty after her last case ended in a high profile arrest of one of Britain’s wealthiest men, DC Constance Fairchild is trying to stay away from the limelight. Fate has other ideas....

Coming home to her London flat, Constance stumbles across a young man, bloodied, mutilated and barely alive. She calls it in and is quickly thrown into the middle of a nationwide investigation.... It seems that the victim is just the latest in a string of similar ritualistic attacks.

No matter that she is off duty, no matter that there are those in the Met who would gladly see the back of her, Con can’t shake her innate determination to bring the monsters responsible for this brutality to justice.

MY REVIEW

This can be read as a stand alone novel but I would recommend you read the first book in the series before reading this one (No Time To Cry) a lot more of the story will make sense especially relating to Izzy Cons half sister as well as other references which pop up all the way through the story.

Lady Constance Fairchild or Con as she likes to be known, is a Detective Constable currently suspended from duty after the case she worked on in the previous book which led to some high profile arrests of people of importance including some police officers. Which explains why she is not well liked around the station. She is being hounded by the press being called “posh cop”.

She doesn’t get on with her parents as they disapproved of her choice to become a police officer. Despite her upbringing she is far from being the Lady she was raised to be. She has tattoos on her arms, swears and likes to drink a pint when in the local pub.

This story revolves around a young mans body that Con finds behind the bins her where she lives he has been brutally mutilated but is still alive. It seems this is not the only incident if this happening but has happened nationwide.

Despite Con being suspended rom all duties and warned to stay away she defies her superiors and continues to look into what is happening. She goes to Edinburgh in what is supposed to be her getting away from the press but she has an ulterior motive which is to visit the mother of the young man she found.

She stays with a friend of her aunts Rose who claims to be psychic she is a unique character that hopefully will appear in future books. 

Cons mum seems to always be attracted by cult like leaders who she donates money to. 

I loved the first book in this series and Oswald previous books with Inspector McLean but there was something missing in this one and I struggled to stay with it. It is supposed to be a police procedural but there wasn’t a great deal of police procedure going on except for when looking through CCTV footage. I felt some of the story to be repetitive when Con was running away from whoever was chasing her both times it was written that she would be ok as she had the advantage of knowing the area so could evade capture by using back alleys and side streets. I can understand this being written once but the same thing being said a second time just irritated me.

There are some good new characters introduced in this book which I am hoping we will get to know more as the series progresses. I have only given this book 3 stars as it just seemed to be lacking something.

THE AUTHOR

James Oswald is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling Inspector McLean series of detective mysteries, as well as the new DC Constance Fairchild series. James's first two books, NATURAL CAUSES and THE BOOK OF SOULS, were both shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger Award.

James farms highland cows and Romney sheep by day, writes disturbing fiction by night.

Thank you to #netgalley and #Headline Wildfire # Nothing to Hide #JamesOswald for letting me have an ARC of this book all opinions are honest and my own.