Thank you Netgalley, #partner, for the advanced copy of The Lost Victim in exchange for my honest review. I purchased the audiobook for my own collection.
Publisher: Raven Street Publishing / Raven Street Publishing
Published: July 11, 2024
Summary:
When school girl Janey Macklin disappeared from the seedy side of London in 1988, her case went cold, with no body and no witnesses. Now, thirty years later, private detective Kate Marshall has been approached by a true crime podcast producer with an intriguing question they need her help answering: What if Janey was killed by Peter Conway, the notorious Nine Elms Cannibal?
The contract would be the most lucrative of Kate’s career, but it comes with a price of its own, dredging up a sordid, complicated past that she would sooner forget . . . one that the paparazzi are determined to keep in the headlines.
As Kate and her partner, Tristan, scour King’s Cross for clues, no two leads seem to point in the same direction. The last person to see Janey alive has already been tried, convicted, and then acquitted of her murder, Peter Conway is in poor health and fading fast, and the line between their clients and their suspects is blurring with each new revelation about the case.
With little to work from, can Tristan and Kate wade through clandestine phone calls, decades-old secrets, and deteriorating DNA evidence to solve Janey’s murder, or will she remain one of London’s countless missing persons, forever lost to time?
My thoughts:
This is the fifth book in Robert Bryndza’s Kate Marshall series and I just love this series. I have been a fan of this author ever since discovering his other crime fiction series, The Erika Foster series, which I also really like, and I have to say, it’s a really close tie as to which series I love more!
As I typically say when reviewing books in a series, this latest book of course can be read without reading the earlier books, but I HIGHLY recommending reading the series in order. Yes, the author does give some bare-bones highlights of what has come before, but of course I always think it is best to have read the earlier books in order to have a richer reading experience. And while each book is a self-contained case, this one does have some threads to tie to plotlines that potentially could spoil what happened in earlier books.
I loved the direction this book took. I loved that Kate and Tristan’s case led them back to the beginning – Peter Conway and the Nine Elms Cannibal. But more importantly that this installment saw Kate and her son together in a most vulnerable way. This book had so many twists and turns and I could not get through it fast enough to see how it would all play out! As fast-paced and adrenaline-fueled as the book was, it also hit that emotional level once again that Bryndza seems to write so well.
I can’t wait to see what is next for Kate and Tristan…especially with them in London this time – maybe they will cross paths with Detective Erika Foster sometime? Oh how I’d love that and apparently that is something the author is already considering! Oh, please so…I am already loving the idea!!!
Audio thoughts:
I was thrilled to see that Jan Cramer was narrating this one, as she did the last one. She has narrated all of the books in Robert Bryndza’s Erika Foster series and I just love her narration in those books. She really does a great job bringing the story to life, giving the characters their own voices. Her pacing and intonation are spot on and she infuses just the right amount of tension and suspense into her voice as needed. Her consistency with voices is superb!
Books in this series:
- Nine Elms
- Shadow Sands
- Darkness Falls
- Devil’s Way
- The Lost Victim
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