Review: The Shell House Detectives

The Shell House Detectives by Emylia Hall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ally Bright is a widow living alone in the small town of Porthpella in Cornwall. Following her husband Bill's death a year ago she has retreated into her shell and is contemplating moving to Australia to be closer to her daughter and her family. One night she is disturbed by a young man banging on her door, looking for Bill. He has just been released from prison and is disorientated, whilst he was in prison his only remaining relative, grandmother, sold her bungalow and newcomers have built a glass mansion in its place. In addition, his grandmother has recently died and no-one informed him. Too scared to help him, Ally turns him away.

The next morning, former PC Jayden Weston, who left the police and moved from Leeds to Cornwall after his partner was stabbed and killed in a street brawl, is attempting to surf when he hears a commotion and rushes over to find that a fellow surfer has discovered the body of a young man at the bottom of the cliff. When Ally walks her dog early that morning she comes across the scene and realises that the young man is none other than her visitor the previous night. The local police are sure it is an attempted suicide, especially since the young man's father committed suicide at the same spot over twenty years ago. But Ally and Jayden aren't convinced. Then when the wife of the man who built the mansion on the site of the boy's grandmother's house goes missing the plot thickens.

This was an interesting detective story, things didn't turn out the way I thought they were going and there was enough personal interest to find the characters interesting. I've already downloaded the next book in the series.

Read on my Kindle Unlimited subscription.


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