Thoroughly compelling…
A cold case becomes interwoven with a recent crime in the eleventh entry in the DI Nikki Galena and DS Joseph Easter series in Ellis’s police procedural novels. A couple living on a local farm are being threatened with eerie pagan artifacts. A dilapidated, centuries-old cottage is found on their land with the body of a teenager who went missing fifteen years ago. But what is more alarming are the photos of another teenager who looks exactly the same as the earlier victim. A man was sent to prison for the teen’s murder, but with the pictures of another girl coming into light, police’s theory about his guilt becomes doubtful. Ellis flawlessly blends setting and characters with investigative details. The prose is assured, the narrative swift, and the characterization topnotch. The book can be read pretty much as a standalone crime novel. The series fans will find it utterly gripping, and new readers will be pulled right in.
