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A review by usbsticky
The Body on the Moor by Nick Louth
3.0
Spoilers ahead. As usual, since the 6th book, another out of the box plot.
Do not read this if you don't want the story spoiled.
The story comes at you from different POVs. One of the POVs is the murder of Adam Heath, a headmaster at a school. He is found decapitated while sitting in his car. Gillard and the Surrey police do their usual police protocol looking for physical clues, interviewing witnesses and digging into Heath's life to see if he has any enemies who might want to do away with him.
The second POV is that of a barrister (Julia McGann). She takes the case of a local criminal kingpin (Bonner) accused of multiple crimes. She tries to advise him to the best of her ability despite his hardheadedness and lack of acumen regarding finer points of the law.
Meanwhile someone has been camping out in Julia's backyard. It turns out to be a homeless street girl (Destiny), who has been through the foster system, ran away and got sold up the river as a child prostitute. She eventually escaped and is hiding out from her captors. Against her better judgement, Julia takes her in.
As the mystery unwinds, we find that Bonner was the head boss of Destiny's prostitute ring and she found Julia in order to persuade her to screw up Bonner's case so he could be incarcerated. Of course Julia refuses to do that.
So we get to the point where we connect Heath with Julia. It turns out that they had an affair while Heath was married and he was just stringing her along whereas he was the love of her life to her. She even had a miscarriage that left her unable to have children. One day in a drunken fugue with Destiny she said that she wishes Heath was dead (or that she could kill him, I can't remember). Destiny records this on her phone and then goes and kill Heath in order to get Julia to do her bidding. She blackmails Julia with the video. This is where I disagree even though I'm not a lawyer. I feel that the Julia should have gone straight to the cops, there is no reason that anyone sane would believe Destiny, video or not. Instead Julia "is forced" to do Destiny's bidding.
Anyway, without spoiling the rest of the story, the believability of the plot gets worse and worse, gets more farfetched. Nothing beyond this point makes sense.
Besides all of the above, I did not like the 2 POVs. I did not want to see anything from the criminal's POV. It spoiled any suspense factor. I get that the author wants to do something different but this isn't it. Not only are we spoiled of the mystery but frankly it's unbelievable. So it's just a 3 star for me.
Spoilers of what followed. Really don't read this unless you want the plot ending.
Julia agrees to kill Bonner. She shoots him. The police and ballistics accept this as a suicide. Destiny avoids getting captured. She naively allows Julia to lead her to her final death.
Do not read this if you don't want the story spoiled.
The story comes at you from different POVs. One of the POVs is the murder of Adam Heath, a headmaster at a school. He is found decapitated while sitting in his car. Gillard and the Surrey police do their usual police protocol looking for physical clues, interviewing witnesses and digging into Heath's life to see if he has any enemies who might want to do away with him.
The second POV is that of a barrister (Julia McGann). She takes the case of a local criminal kingpin (Bonner) accused of multiple crimes. She tries to advise him to the best of her ability despite his hardheadedness and lack of acumen regarding finer points of the law.
Meanwhile someone has been camping out in Julia's backyard. It turns out to be a homeless street girl (Destiny), who has been through the foster system, ran away and got sold up the river as a child prostitute. She eventually escaped and is hiding out from her captors. Against her better judgement, Julia takes her in.
As the mystery unwinds, we find that Bonner was the head boss of Destiny's prostitute ring and she found Julia in order to persuade her to screw up Bonner's case so he could be incarcerated. Of course Julia refuses to do that.
So we get to the point where we connect Heath with Julia. It turns out that they had an affair while Heath was married and he was just stringing her along whereas he was the love of her life to her. She even had a miscarriage that left her unable to have children. One day in a drunken fugue with Destiny she said that she wishes Heath was dead (or that she could kill him, I can't remember). Destiny records this on her phone and then goes and kill Heath in order to get Julia to do her bidding. She blackmails Julia with the video. This is where I disagree even though I'm not a lawyer. I feel that the Julia should have gone straight to the cops, there is no reason that anyone sane would believe Destiny, video or not. Instead Julia "is forced" to do Destiny's bidding.
Anyway, without spoiling the rest of the story, the believability of the plot gets worse and worse, gets more farfetched. Nothing beyond this point makes sense.
Besides all of the above, I did not like the 2 POVs. I did not want to see anything from the criminal's POV. It spoiled any suspense factor. I get that the author wants to do something different but this isn't it. Not only are we spoiled of the mystery but frankly it's unbelievable. So it's just a 3 star for me.
Spoilers of what followed. Really don't read this unless you want the plot ending.
Julia agrees to kill Bonner. She shoots him. The police and ballistics accept this as a suicide. Destiny avoids getting captured. She naively allows Julia to lead her to her final death.