This story is a harsh read that deals with neglect and abuse and a killer that leaves you feeling sorry for them. The detective assigned to the case is Dan Riley, a man consumed by the death of his pregnant girlfriend Rachel two years ago.

As I sit in her dimly lit bedroom, surrounded by flickering candles, I feel the crushing weight of my daughter’s absence. I see his face up close for the first time and am surprised to notice that his eyebrows are carefully tweezed into perfect arches. I was impressed towards the end with the scenes focusing on the psychopathy of the Goldilocks killer and what had made her into the woman she had become when the story began. Yet, contrary to this, it is now ensconced on my list of cherished literary-crime treasures for 2023 - perhaps a testament to its escapist prowess. I’ve never encountered this in any other crime book that I’ve read and even the motivations behind her crimes are quite different from what I usually read.Dan Riley is struggling to deal with the loss of his true love and he sees Rachel in everyone he meets. She is able to provide the identity of Morehouse and Strike and Robin decide to interview him, but Morehouse is murdered before they reach him. But when Detective Inspector Daniel Riley is assigned to the case, he soon realises all isn't as it first appears to be.

What she is doing is very wrong yet as a reader it thrilled me as well as chilling me to the very core. I’ve loved every book in the Strike/Ellicot series, so I hope everyone will understand that I am not jumping on a band wagon, or trolling with this blog. For the serial killer, those killings are a kind of liberation from a past that still haunts and taunts and torment. When frantic, dishevelled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn’t know quite what to make of the situation. The story is narrated by Dan and the killer, in alternating sections - so we see deep into the psyche of these two individuals.Detective Dan has still not come to terms with the death of his girlfriend and their unborn baby Two years have passed since they died, and even though he is still deeply in love with his deceased girlfriend, he is feeling quite lonely and decides to get back into the dating world. I kept hoping that I’d be naturally great at locks, since I was pretty sure I wasn’t a worker back then, and since I already felt like an outsider in my family. To those who found delight in the former, this latter tome is an imperative, a literary imperative indeed.

This human frailty and his genuine, honest approach to detective work make him a very likeable character. The only evidence of what happened to 10-year-old Jeremiah Sloan is a bicycle left behind on a lonely road. The pain he suffers in his hamstring ultimately forces him to substitute his prosthetic leg with a pair of crutches, hindering his movement in the denouement and forcing Robin to handle things on her own. You try not to stare too hard at the back of his head, keep your distance, and act like you’re just another person freezing your ass off in late October on the streets of Queens. The plot, in which a woman is killed after being accused of various prejudices, particularly transphobia, [13] drew comparisons to Rowling's real-life previous controversial comments surrounding transgender people, leading to allegations of self-insertion.

Chapters switch from Dan's perspective to that of the killer (readers learn the identity of the woman, who's known by multiple names including - surprise!