DEAD & BURIED a gripping crime thriller

by HELEN H. DURRANT

Joffe Books

Mystery & Thrillers

Pub Date 04 Jul 2016

Review

Helen H Durrant’s police procedurals show the dark side of rural Britain.  Both gritty and captivating, these novels are not cozy.  Rather, they showcase crime that often has an organized aspect to it - professional villains play a major role.

Dead & Buried starts with the death of a young woman 40 years ago.  Readers, unlike the police know to expect a link to the newly discovered murder of a woman found not far from Clough Cottage.  As the deaths escalate, readers are kept glued to the page, seeking to unravel the connections along with Calladine.   

Don’t expect easy endings from Helen Durrant.  As in reality, justice is not always served, even when the truth is uncovered.  Although the novel is dark, it is lightened by the very human nature of her team of detectives.  Her characters are real, their motivations understandable.

While I liked some of her other novels more, Dead and Buried is an expertly written tale, certain to satisfy fans - a solid entry in the Calladine and Bayliss series. 

4/5

I received a copy of Dead and Buried from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

— Crittermom

Description

A CRIME MYSTERY FULL OF TWISTS AND TURNS 

Annie Naden and her husband buy a remote country cottage at auction. It’s the home of their own that they always wanted, but as they begin renovations, Annie discovers a satchel in a dusty old hidden cupboard. Inside are the usual schoolbooks, now over 40 years old, and a girl’s diary. Among the record of day-to-day crushes and pop concerts, is a secret that may have had terrible consequences which are still resonating in the present day. 

Detective Tom Calladine has problems of his own. A notorious villain, Vinny Costello, seems to be back in town, and the bodies soon stack up. With Calladine’s loyal DS Ruth Bayliss on maternity leave, he gets in hot water with one of Costello’s assistants, and must also cope with an abrasive new member of the team as they seek to untangle a complex series of murders. 

What happened to that girl forty years ago? And what’s it got to do with the current crime wave? 

Full of twists and turns, this is a gripping detective mystery that will keep you turning the pages until the stunning conclusion 

If you like Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott, Mel Sherratt, Ruth Rendell, or Mark Billingham you will enjoy this exciting new crime fiction writer. 

DEAD & BURIED is book five of a new series of detective thrillers featuring D.S. Ruth Bayliss and D.I. Tom Calladine. 

Tom Calladine is a single, fifty-one-year-old detective inspector who is devoted to his job. His personal life, however, is not so successful. Having been married and divorced before the age of twenty-one has set a pattern that he finds difficult to escape. 

Ruth Bayliss is in her mid-thirties, plain-speaking but loyal. Her personal life finally seems to have settled down. 

The series is set in the fictional village of Leesdon on the outskirts of an industrial northern English city. There is little work and a lot of crime. The bane of Calladine’s life is the Hobfield housing estate, breeding ground to all that is wrong with the area that he calls home.