After refusing to arrest a known criminal for a murder she believes he didn’t commit, Robin is sacked from her position as head of homicide at the Met (pending an appeal). Broke, she agrees to go to work for an old family friend, Maggie, who runs a private investigation company specialising in insurance fraud in Birmingham. Robin, and her 13 year old daughter, also moves back in with her parents for the duration.

Robin is also hitting some low points when it comes to her personal life. She and her mother have always had a prickly relationship and the thing Robin finds to be cheery about is that she’ll get to see her best friend, Corrina, more often now she’s returned home. However, at the same time as Robin and Maggie are investigating the disappearance of a young girl, Corrina is murdered.

Robin, of course, investigates both cases throughout the book. I thought both ended up being quite clever mystery plots. For the majority of the book the cases seemed completely unrelated and quite unsolvable. I really had no idea about who might have carried out the crimes, or even if there was a crime when it came to the missing girl, at any time whilst reading. I always think I guess something in these types of books but this time -- zero. As it turned out, I guessed not even the smallest thing regarding either case nor their resolution. The twists and the couple of bombshells that are revealed towards the end of the book (after being hinted at throughout) were quite unexpected.

I love the English feel to this book. Its setting makes it that very gritty Jane Tennison type book rather than the usual flashy American police thriller. Robin and the mess she makes of everything seems very real.

The English also have a knack of adding racial diversity to their books (and movies etc) effortlessly. Even though Whitehouse has added these characters without a song and dance, she still manages to highlight racism as well as women’s rights (rape culture and forced prostitution especially) -- again, with a subtle hand.

I must admit I agree with some other reviewers that there are a few too many characters. Occasionally I felt like I needed a spreadsheet to keep them all straight. I also didn’t see the point to a couple of them until I read that the book is the first in a series. (I had thought it was standalone.)

The ending is not a huge cliffhanger but it did make me wonder enough for me to say I’ll probably be reading number two when it’s released.

One thing that did annoy me about the book, and probably added to the general difficulty of keeping all the characters straight, was Whitehouse’s style when it came to naming Robin’s parents. Instead of Robin just calling them mum and dad in her mind, she calls them Christine and Dennis. If they were simply ‘mum’ ‘dad’ or ‘her parents’ even, I’d have taken less time trying to think just who Christine and Dennis were again.

I was thinking that maybe the book should have been written in Robin’s first person point of view to ease some of the problems with the characters.

Out of this plethora of supporting characters, I probably enjoyed Robin’s ex-boyfriend who is now head of the Birmingham police the most. I look forward to Whitehouse continuing to explore his and Robin’s relationship in future books.

If I had to mark the book down on anything else it would be its length. I just felt it went on for a touch too long. Some parts of it could have been wrapped up a bit quicker.

Overall though, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it for those who enjoy English police procedurals. 4 out of 5