Kindle British & Irish Mystery Book Club discussion

Taken to the Hills, by S J Richards

"Abductions and murder are not what ex-DCI Luke Sackville expected when he left the police after tragedy struck his family. Luke’s return to the workplace was meant to be a soft landing but when a woman vanishes after being accused of taking bribes, he is assigned a disparate team and tasked with tracking her down. Their search becomes more urgent when her disappearance is linked to the death of a second woman. When a third goes missing the hunt becomes a race against time. Luke’s return to work presents him with the most challenging case of his career as the murder victims mount. "

Discussion Leader: Shell
Link to Book on Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/4dLeSeO

An unexpected approach, with the investigator working for a business, Filchers. The workplace wasn't entirely convincing to me, but I'm not accustomed to family-owned companies where the executives have so few personnel skills. The chosen-by-chance staff members dropped on Luke were better than likely in such circumstances and seemed to be just what was needed in most instances. Pacing was swift, chapters were short, reading held my interest, and I finished in record time. A good first series book with plenty of growth of characters to come. 3 stars.

Our library doesn’t have this one. I’m flying to Ireland + the UK next week so I’ll check for a copy there.

3 stars. I enjoyed this book. An interesting way of avoiding the usual detective investigation, and a good set of characters being used. A slight pity that the primary movers are both male and the poor victims are female - with one heroine. The second book is lined up to see if the author can keep this up.

I guess the author took this route because to many people Bath is MacDonald and Dodds territory. :)

I enjoyed quite a lot about this first book. I wasn't convinced by the youngster, was it Josh? at the beginning. He seemed a bit over the top. But as he got better at the work, I started to like him more. Luke is an interesting character, but I didn't really find that at the end of the book I'm rushing to find out what happens to him next. I liked the angle of having him work for the small firm, rather than being in the police. However, this did throw up problems like not being allowed into the autopsy. I would give it an over all 3 stars. It was okay, but I wasn't wowed.