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The unidentified body of a young man is found in Nant Fawr woods, Cardiff, giving DI Mandy Wilde and her team a big problem. There’s only one clue – his expensive handmade shoes.
But where is he from? Why has no one come forward to identify him?
Then… a local boy disappears, a rash of burglaries breaks out and the pressure is on.
Yet again, DI Wilde is fighting on all fronts. Not just the criminals and her boss, but even her fly-by-night twin sister. She needs every ounce of her famous off-beat thinking to create order from the chaos.
Another strong showing from Cardiff's own frizzy haired DI Mandy Wilde. Mandy throws herself into her job, partly to keep her occupied and away from her feckless twin sister. But she does love her niece/surrogate daughter Tabitha. So a fully dysfunctional female household! Absolutely terrifying.
Luckily Mandy is up to her neck in work. A body is found in the local woods, wearing expensive shoes and carrying a wad of cash. He carries no identification however. It is suspected that he may have died from natural causes. Undeterred Mandy and her crew of oddbods and sods investigators spent a huge amount of time and effort trying to find out all about the mystery man. To be honest, I don't know if the Cardiff five-0 would spent that amount of manpower tracking down a dead Dai Doe. Still this is crime fiction and if you wanted accuracy and realism you would watch a documentary.
Eventually the troop make progress and I want to tell more but am wary of giving spoilers. Suffice to say some widows gain a second wind 🤪. The latter portion of the book is given over to some intriguing interrogation scenes, that are tense and provide a fitting climax to a well plotted crime caper.
The writing is straight and to the point without being too much so. The cast is mostly made up of strong female characters. A solid sequel to The Nesting Place.
As a side note I imagine that DI Mandy Wilde inherits the same Cardiff "cinematic universe" (as my son calls it) as Jonah Greene the Coroners Officer from The List and Buzzard House by Graham H Miller. Would love for them to collaborate on a case one day.
Igor was slouched in a corner of the room. He was wary when they entered, watching like a fox surrounded by hounds
Ruth Crozier fiddled with the wedding band she still wore. Interesting how some widows dispensed with their rings as soon as their husbands went underground, while others hung on, clinging to a rosy image of the deceased. Perhaps Ruth Crozier was insecure in her singledom.
Close up she could see the wrinkles on her hands, nearer fifty than forty, well preserved. Another widow. Wonder what her husband died from. A tongue lashing perhaps.
- If You Liked This, Then You May Like These
The List by Graham H Miller (Click Here for our review)Crimson Snow by Jason Vowles (Click Here for our review) The Couple at No9 by Claire Douglas (Click Here for our review)
Jacqueline Harrett was born and brought up in a small village in Northern Ireland. After living in various places in South Wales she settled in Cardiff with her husband of many years, Lola the mad cat and Speedy, an ancient and territorial tortoise. Her two grown-up children – critical reader and technical advisor – live nearby.As an only child she was a voracious reader and loved stories. Her father was a wonderful storyteller, encouraging her to tell her own stories and developing her love of oral stories. This was the inspiration behind her mini-book, Tell Me Another… Speaking and Listening Through Storytelling and her PhD on the effects of oral stories on young children’s language and imagination.
Jacqui has always been a writer but it wasn’t until 1997 that she started publishing her work with articles in English in Wales and then in the TES. A book for teachers, Exciting Writing, won the UKLA author award. As a former teacher and academic, she published and gave presentations on the value of story for children’s development.
After retiring from academia, Jacqui concentrated on more creative writing, attending classes and developing the craft. She had stories published in anthologies (Honno, MTP) and flash fiction online, and hidden in the depths of her computer are many other stories, a novel, novella and books for children. Like reading, writing is an obsession.
With her friend and colleague, Janet Laugharne, she has written a novel, What Lies Between Them, to be published in February 2022 under the pseudonym J. L. Harland.
Jacqui’s debut, The Nesting Place, was started in lockdown and the culmination of several different elements. It started with Katherine Stansfield’s excellent Crime Writing courses at Cardiff University, pre-pandemic. Then, during lockdown, a further course with Writing Magazine’s James McCreet, when the ideas began to take shape and the feedback from James helped with the process of producing the novel.
(from harret.co.uk)
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