Review: Deadly Wishes

Deadly Wishes by Rachel McLean
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

I have read Rachel MacLean's other police series set in Dorset so when I saw this book on Prime, I decided to give this series a go.

Zoe Finch has just been made up to acting Detective Inspector after some good work on the Canary investigation (which I assume is the subject of the prequel novella which I also have but haven't read). A single mother of a gay teenage son from a relationship with another (married) police officer, she lives in a student area of Birmingham, England.

The night of Assistant Chief Constable Bryn Jackson's surprise retirement party, he returns home with his wife only to be stabbed in the neck in his study with a ceremonial dagger (sounds like Cluedo). Whilst most of the more senior DIs are drunk or sleeping off the night's drinks, Zoe is sober and first on the scene after Mrs Jackson calls 999. Initially it looks like a robbery gone wrong, but soon the evidence points closer to home ... could Mrs Jackson have killed her abusive husband?

Zoe is soon replaced by DCI David Randle, a friend of ACC Jackson and Zoe's boss. But as the investigation progresses Zoe is puzzled by DCI Randle's orders which seem contradictory and ignore key clues. Is there more to ACC Jackson's death than meets the eye, and could he be involved in Canary?

Also, I don't know if it is just my Kindle version, but Chapter One ends with ACC Jackson's murder but Chapter Two jumps back in time to his retirement party, with no indication that this is earlier in the evening. At first, I thought that ACC Jackson had been stabbed in the side with one of those slow death wounds and gone on to the party, not knowing he was fatally injured which really confused me. I've checked and both the Kindle and paperback samples on Amazon have the same issue.

Anyway, there is clearly a series arc relating to police corruption starting out, although annoyingly the arc cliff-hanger (for want of a better description) is very similar to that of another book I read recently, Holy Island.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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