Kate Rokesmith's decision to go to the river changed the lives of many.
Her murder shocked the nation. Her husband, never charged, moved abroad under a cloud of suspicion. Her son, just four years old, grew up in a loveless boarding school. And Detective Inspector Darnell, vowing to leave no stone unturned in the search for her killer, began to lose his only daughter. The young Stella Darnell grew to resent the dead Kate Rokesmith. Her dad had never vowed to leave no stone unturned for her.
Now, thirty years later, Stella is dutifully sorting through her father's attic after his sudden death. The Rokesmith case papers are in a corner, gathering dust: the case was never solved. Stella knows she should destroy them. Instead, she opens the box, and starts to read.
A tense, evocative thriller set on the freezing banks of the Thames. A woman reconnects with her dead father by solving the murder case that obsessed him in life.
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['Jonny'. Kate Rokesmith heard no sound from three floors up where, insisting that his new toy come on their walk and despite her efforts to dissuade him, Jonathon had gone to fetch the steam engine from his bedroom]***
(@HoZ_Books, 14 May 2014, first published 1 May 2013, 480 pages, ebook, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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I'd heard of the author before but never got round to reading any of her books. I'm glad I finally did though, as this is a terrific read. It's the first in a series and I'll probably read them all. This is different than the usual detective-type or police procedural novels. Stella is a cleaner when she stumbles across the closed cold case files while going through her father's things. Her old resentments resurface as she remembers how much time and effort her father went to trying to solve Kate's murder. The story moves from the present with Kate trying to finish what her father started and the past showing Kate's murder and the investigation. This works really well. I really enjoyed this as it offers something a little different.
