The ghost of Robert Brown by P Wish.
I really really enjoyed this book. I loved Detective Myers and Jane. Great story. I do hope there is more to come. 5*.

A rare pass from me. This one had potential but it started slow and then was a bit confusing. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I received this book from Netgalley for an honest review.

I tried to read this book but didn't even make it very far into the second chapter. There were just too many issues of continuity. The dates at the beginning of the chapters didn't mess well with things mentioned in the chapters. Like the first chapter said 2002 but then there was a car described from 2012. And the narration was all over the place. I couldn't keep track of when things were in the present and things were in the past. I hope more editing is completed on this book before it went to publication.

I did not share this review on Amazon or Goodreads since I didn't feel the book was edited enough for that.

Thank you to Net Galley and Amazon for an ARC of this title, in exchange for an honest review. I thought this book was going to be somewhat supernatural, and literally about spirits. It's not. It's about the "ghost" of Robert Brown, who possibly committed suicide years prior, at the lake near a boarding school. Five years later, it has happened again.

http://satalyte.com.au/2017/03/book-review-ghost-robert-brown-p-wish/

If you're expecting Casper the Friendly Ghost or some drooling, snarling, ghost floating down the stairs ... STOP right there. This is not a ghost story, as such.

Five years ago Robert Brown committed suicide (maybe) by drowning himself in the lake that sits next to a boarding school.

Exactly 5 years to the day another body is found floating in the same lake. Jane Grey, a former homicide detective and now a biology teacher, is among the first to find the body. He is a math teacher employed by the school.

When police show up, she is totally unprepared to see Detective Gary Myers show up. They do have a history, but haven't seen or spoken to each other for many years.

There are so many questions involved. What is the connection between the cases? Who's lying and who isn't? There are secrets within secrets. And then there are those who are not exactly who they seem to be.

The mystery part was okay, just not so much suspenseful. I like mysteries that take place in UK, but this one could have happened anywhere. The book is told in present and past .. mostly Jane's past. Some of that was not relevant to the present. The ending was anti-climatic.

I'm still deciding if I like the characters. Jane is okay, just a bit wishy- washy ... not what I would expect from someone who had been in law enforcement for 20 years. Gary comes across as a player ... not even an apology for how he had ended their relationship.

Many thanks to the author / Amazon / Netgalley for the digital copy of this book. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

2 stars

Jane, a former detective, is now teaching biology at St. Anne’s boarding school. She is on her way to the first day of work when she gets slightly lost and comes across a dead body. Although how anyone can get lost on their way to work is beyond me, especially when she was a former detective. The detective responding to the call turns up and it happens to be her ex, Gary Myers.

To get sufficient background for Jane, the book goes back and forth between the past and the present – at least I think it does. The typos are numerous and in some places the book just doesn’t make sense. I have to admit that I got frustrated and gave up about half way through.

I didn’t even know it was a British boarding school until later in the book. There was very little about the surrounding area – no description or useful markers.

There are too many books to read and too little time to spend time on a book like this one.

I do want to however thank Netgalley and Amazon for forwarding to me a copy of this book to read.

There is so much wrong with this book that I hardly know where to start,This needs to be rewritten,it is full of inconsistencies, not to say mistakes....(a grand chandelier, sparkling like diamonds,all that from the glow of 1 bulb,marvelous....,green eyes that mysteriously change into blue eyes ,characters who seem to forget what they said,or asked,4 sentences earlier,strange time-lapses )As for the writing,their is virtually no description of any surrounding (school is supposed to be gothic,well your guess is as good as mine...),the dialogues are static and none of the characters feel real, or are elaborated...The worst read this year.....It is a pity,because there is a good storyline hidden somewhere but unfortunately....

I wanted to like this because it had an interesting premise but it gets lost in areas that seemed to be filled with fluff to pad the page count so you begin to lose interest; not to mention Wish’s incessant need to ensure you know the time constantly of when things occurred. “At 7:00p.m. Jane stepped, At 10:00 a.m. Jane stood, At 9:30 a.m. Jane was in the vicinity” and so forth. This is not an episode of 24, you don’t need to know what time every action is happening in real time.

If the time thing doesn’t begin to get under your skin then the fact you’ll know who the villain is way before the ending. I don’t know if it was intentional and the author and editor didn’t think about how it would impact the reader or if it was missed in editing but the identity of the murderer gets revealed early on before the rest of the characters even seem to catch on. It was just kind of confusing and a huge let down. It wasn’t even like in some of those CSI episodes where they show you the culprit then the show’s story is about how he/she gets caught and why they did it, like I said – confusing.

I read TONS of mysteries based in England and you can very much tell that the authors are either British or have been to England because of the terminology used, descriptions of the area, phraseology and sentence structure, there’s just all kinds of clues that let you feel as if you’re walking through England watching this crime unravel. This book could’ve been set anywhere because there wasn’t enough details to give you a feel for where the story was taking place.

The author went to law school so it was very surprising that the law enforcement characters and procedures didn’t feel more realistic. I think Clare Mackintosh has spoiled me when it comes to this because as a British author who has had a long career in this area her books are incredibly detailed and realistic for this part. It’s not just those in law enforcement but many of the other characters weren’t described as reacting or talking in ways that seemed realistic to who they were supposed to be or the situations they were involved in. The dialogue overall needs work because it didn’t feel very conversationalist throughout, my test for this is to get someone to read passages with me to hear if it sounds ‘normal’ and too often the conversations in the story failed.

The skeleton frame of the story has promise and with better editing good be turned into a decent story.

St Anne’s is a boarding school in Kent famous for it academic excellence, but the body of one of its teachers found floating in a lake brings to mind the death of student who was found drowned in the same body of water five years earlier. Was there a connection between the teacher and Robert Brown? Fellow teacher (and former detective), Jane sets out to uncover the truth about the two deaths. I love academic mysteries, and this one, set in an upper crust British school is well done. I don’t believe I have read anything by Wish before, but I will be looking to see what else she may have published