Shared Remains - Rachel Lynch

 

New thriller in DI Kelly Porter series out now from Canelo

Following on from last year's bestseller Silent Bones, Lynch returns to her ongoing series of DI Kelly Porter who surveys and polices the Cumbrian landscape with her team while balancing a new relationship when not on duty.

This story revolves around the discovery of a body in a quarry one morning and from there a can of worms very much gets opened involving a nearby elderly home. At the home, mysterious deaths are mounting up, and then the paper trail leads to the discovery that the funeral directors are the main beneficiaries of the recently deceased. The only snag is that the quarry body is the funeral director, Vince, and there-in lies a problem.

Falsifying death certificates, grave digging and fraud all come to head for Porter and her team. This macabre set of narrative junctions lead to a less than breezy feel to the reading of the story that stops and starts on occasion with some emphasis put upon the domestic situation for Kelly at home which at times is a bit distracting.

As ever with Canelo Crime reads, the final quarter of the book - when the evidence comes to the fore and exhumations begin - is when the book kicks into gear with a gratifying conclusion for this reader.

The atmosphere of the book with the greys and dismal weather of late summer becoming that unimpeachable autumn is evoked effectively by Lynch, with the old adage grim up north ringing true.

And yet through the gloom, there is a ray of sunshine coming to the surface for Kelly with the hopes of a new relationship ready to bloom as snow falls on the ground

SHARED REMAINS is out now from Canelo

My thanks to them for the pre-approval on NetGalley for my review