Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Excellent read. The book was thrilling. Creepy and I couldn’t put it down. It was very well written. You could feel the tension and atmosphere. The author captured it very well

You would be forgiven for thinking the series name The Burrowhead Mysteries is set in a quaint little village with amateur sleuths like Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris solving the case of the missing apple pie, or the mystery of the disappearing milk bottles. You would be badly mistaken. Something much darker is happening here, including a horse sacrifice! I’m mindful of giving away details of this series that may ruin your enjoyment of these brilliant books, so I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers.

You can get away with reading this book as a standalone, but for better backstory, character development, and context, you would be much better served by reading its predecessor When The Dead Come Calling first. What I found here is a beautifully described landscape which at one moment feels majestically free, but the next feels ominously claustrophobic, and able to convey its own sense of disquiet and tension.

I liked Georgie more in this book than the last as you see more of what makes her tick. I should point out I liked Georgie a lot more than her husband Fergus. I find him disagreeable at best.
Other characters are very well written and credible and always add to the story.

Overall, I found this book to be compelling, spooky, thrilling, and the sort of book I would happily send a friend as a gift. So it goes without saying that I would of course recommend it to any readers of police procedural, crime thrillers, and supernatural mysteries. I ha Ave Where The Missing Gather, by Helen Sedgwick, five stars.

It took me some time to get into this complex thriller and there were moments when I thought I might not finish it. However It is worth persevering with. The crime investigated is the slaughter of a horse. There are also remains found at an archaeological dig. These throw up old prejudices and superstitions in the local population. The characters are what makes it though. They are flawed (as human beings tend to be) and complex and this makes for a satisfying read. It is the second in a series of books and unfortunately I haven't read the first which I think would be a benefit as there are so many references to what happened in that. I'm now keen to read that and will read this current book again once I have done so. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I found When the Dead Come Calling a bit too slow even if fascinating. This one is disturbing, creepy and enthralling.
A very close community, ancient stories and modern issues like racism. There's a mystery but it's also the depiction of a community and the relationship with current times.
It's the second in a series and there are some references to the first instalment, I look forward to the third.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Thoroughly evocative, the author paints a clear picture of the somewhat creepy town in which this tale is set. If you like your mysteries a bit dark with a sense of ambiguity about good and evil, this is a great choice. One of three, this is the first book in the series which I have read and I will definitely be reading the others.

Sequel to last year's When the Dead Come Calling, Where the Missing Gather returns to Burrowhead, the inward-looking, coastal English village where we met beleaguered DI Georgie Strachan and her slightly annoying husband Fergus. Like its predecessor, Where the Missing Gather is one part crime, three parts folk horror (it's VERY creepy) and two parts dissection of an insular England. And like its predecessor, these parts are blended very skilfully, topping the whole thing off with relatable - though, as I've hinted above, sometimes annoying - characters, real people who make plausible decisions - and plausible mistakes.

The crime...

Burrowhead has secrets, both modern and historical, so it's not surprising that three investigations should arise at the same moment. First, a horse is brutally killed in the woods (there are vibes of blood sacrifice in the horrific way that she died). Secondly, a body is found buried in a field. Thirdly, information is received about an assault decades before. The information comes from Betty Marshall, an elderly resident of a care home in "the City" - far from Burrowhead, and requiring DS Daniel Frazer to travel back out to "the villages" to investigate ('Please God, he thinks, don't let this be about Burrowhead.')

The folk horror...

When the Dead Come Calling made it clear that Burrowhead has its own traditions, primitive and perhaps abhorrent to the wider world, and that those traditions have self-appointed guardians, folk who see it as their role to "defend" the village. (One of them may have been kind old Uncle Walt, although in a neat symmetry with Frazer's informant, he's now unable to shed much light on things - his niece Trish (one of Georgie's PCs) has had to find him, too, a place in a care home). The nature and extent of these traditions was left vague in the earlier book, but now Sedgwick is more forthcoming, showing us both how ancient they are, how effective they may be, how they underlie repeating patterns of violence and hatred over the centuries - and how often appalling things are justified as 'what must be done'.

The matter of England...

Sedgwick situates her story in a very contemporary context of barely suppressed (at time, not suppressed at all) nativism, accentuated in Burrowhead by the village's distaste for anyone not born and bred locally. It's a thing that almost reaches religious levels of fervour. ('he is not from here and what more do they need to know?') Pamani's shop is still graffiti'd nightly, and both Georgie and Frazer, as people of colour, partricularly feel the hostility. The B-word isn't mentioned anywhere, but it's impossible not to read recent events into this story of a small community blaming outsiders for everything that has gone wrong - the lack of jobs, the closure of services, the buying up of farmland by wealthy incomers (albeit incomers who have been three generations in the place!) That graffiti does, after all, say (among other things) 'Take back ConTrol'.

This atmosphere of menace, of a grinding, persistent hostility built into the fabric of the place, is one of the things that challenges Georgie, alongside the persistent threat that her outpost of a police station will be closed to save costs, and alongside the wall of silence over the crimes she's trying to solve. But she faces problems at home, too. Fergus - perhaps from a desire to see the best in people - continually downplays the hostility ('So much easier to forgive racism if you know it'll never be directed against you.') He's - somewhat desperately, I'd say - also still attempting to ferret out the historic secrets of Burrowhead (whether from a genuine interest in history or because he somehow things that telling the story will be healing, I'm less sure). So Where the Missing Gather features an archaeological dig, which made me smile for a couple of reasons: first, because poor Fergus thinks he will be able to spend the day digging and then do a nightshift on the tills at the supermarket without even cleaning up (no, Fergus. No you won't, and my knees and back will explain why...) and secondly, because the hoped for results fall spectacularly into the "contested history" bit of our busy culture wars (as mapped onto the particular concerns of Burrowhead). Sedgwick gives us a little vignette of the past, so we know before Fergus just what it is he's excavating, and why it's not good news, but there are plenty of other mysteries associated with the dig, not least why self appointed community leader Natalie Prowle is so interested.

It's an, at times, dense story, taking its time to let the consequences of the first book, and the new perspectives on them provided here, percolate through the little community - and through Georgie and Fergus's marriage, which seems shakier than ever. Burrowhead is a place of silences, but not of forgetting, and a lot of the information conveyed here is done obliquely and through establishing atmosphere as much as through activity. Sedgwick does this so well, nailing the effect of people on landscape and places ('what is it that people bring to a place? ...It's the sound of them, the heat and the colour and the way that when he catches someone's eye, even if they don't say a word, he can feel some kind of connection that he feels only the lack of...')

Burrowhead is also a place with its own loyalties, as Georgie already knows, and there seems to be a decreasing number of people whom she might trust - so the arrival of another outsider, Frazer, is a bit of a lift for her, although he doesn't really feature as much in this book as in the previous one (and so far, the sense of dread he experiences at returning to the coast is matched in events - although a lot is left unresolved and I'm sure his moment will come!)

I loved returning to Burrowhead (though you wouldn't want to live here) and hope to go back soon, as there's clearly unfinished business in that dark place.

Dark, Domestic Noir...
Dark, domestic noir. A twisting suspense to keep the reader on their toes. With a well developed cast of characters, this is a slow burn and a gradual mounting of tension leading to some, perhaps, surprising revelations. A thoroughly engaging read.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I enjoyed this though I wish I had read the previous book in the series first for context and background! I enjoyed the writing and the build up of suspense as the truth was gradually revealed. A good one but read the first book in the series is my advice.

I always find it difficult to review a book in a series, as I don’t want to give away events from earlier novels in case it spoils it for new readers. Where the Missing Gather is the second book in Sedgwick’s Burrowhead Mysteries series, and it’s one I’ve been desperately waiting for, the sequel to When the Dead Come Calling (GO. READ THAT BOOK.)


Calling the series “the Burrowhead Mysteries” makes it sound like a friendly, cosy little set of books, which is completely opposite of what awaits you when you first open the cover. Set in a northern coastal town, Burrowhead is a tight knit village that on the surface seems friendly enough, but is hiding secrets. The smallness of the community creates a claustrophobic tension that you can’t escape. Even living in the area for over two decades does not make you a local.

As well as the villagers, the village and the surrounding landscape become characters in themselves, beautifully written to evoke a sense of mystery and tension. Even the landand sea provoke a sense of immense disquiet. While the villagers have their secrets, the land holds mysteries too.

Superstitions are strong among the villagers. Throughout the book, there is a sense of the supernatural just within touching distance but never quite makes itself clear. And while Sedgwick creates this spooky atmosphere, it is made clear that the horrors are definitely human.

A horse is slaughtered in the woods, in what appears to be a ritual sacrifice. As if the area wasn’t unsettling enough. An ancient motte becomes the scene of an archaeological dig, revealing mysteries from previous millennia, and more recent bones are discovered in an unpopular farmer’s land. A care home resident outside of the town reports seeing a murder back in the 70s. The sequel to When the Dead Come Calling is affected by ripples from the events of the first novel while raising new questions for our protagonists, both professional and personal.

Information is hard to come by, making DI Georgie Strachan’s job even tougher than it should be. Seen as an “outsider”, she finds it hard to know who to trust, and is putting up her own walls around herself, to the detriment of her relationships, working and personal. She’s seen the racist abuse perpetrated by locals, been the target of it herself, and as a woman of colour, finds it hard to process the forgiveness being shown. If you don’t stand against it, you’re complicit. And this applies equally to her own husband,, Fergus. Fergus is fascinated by Burrowhead and it’s surroundings, the ancient standing stone, the mythology around the area. He wants to believe there’s good in everyone, making him a polar opposite to his wife, who has to dig around and uncover the dark secrets buried for years, decades.

Like an archaelogical dig, this exquisitely plotted novel carefully brushes away layers and layers of storylines and secrets, revealing fractions of detail, and it’s not until deep into the novel that you start to see events as a whole, how they weave together, to uncover the shocking truth.

This book is available now on Kindle – BUY NOW

The Paperback will be published on July 8th 2021.

I received an advance copy of this book for review from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Oneworld Publications for an advance copy of Where the Missing Gather, the second novel of a proposed trilogy set in the fictional northern English coastal village of Burrowhead.

DI Georgie Strachan has her hands full. Her husband is obsessed with an ancient archaeological site, a horse has been ritually murdered in the woods and old human remains have been found. And the villagers are saying nothing.

I knew what to expect from Where the Missing Gather as I have read it’s predecessor, When the Dead Come Calling, but it’s still a shock to the system. It is a compulsive, creepy read with a kind of stream of consciousness narrative style, where the various narrators tend to concentrate on their reactions and emotional response to events, rather than offering any objective comment. It’s all very nebulous and amorphous for the reader and takes serious effort to understand what exactly is going on.

So, add to this lack of clarity a preoccupation with old pagan rites, a clannishness that excludes incomers and foments racism and an almost unrecognisable insularity in these modern times and the reader gets an uncomfortable atmosphere where anything could happen. It’s claustrophobic and unsettling.

Despite all this the novel is strangely compulsive. A murdered horse isn’t the crime of the century, nor are 40 year old remains that might not even be a crime at all, but it’s what lies behind them that provides the mystery and the need to keep reading.

I know I said that I’d read the previous novel but it was so many books ago I’ve forgotten much of it and I felt it put me at a disadvantage in this one as there are so many references to it and it’s events. I would recommend reading them in order and fairly close together.

Where the Missing Gather will not be for every reader, in fact I think it will be love it or hate it with no middle ground. I enjoyed it so I have no hesitation in recommending it as a good read.

What an incredibly sinister book this is.
From the first page,all the way to the last ,it had me trusting nobody.
I've not read the book before,and this time around,I think it added to the tension of not quite being sure who were the good guys.
I'm definitely going to read it now.
For a book that's current crime involves killing a horse (and is that even considered a crime?),it's full of death,superstition and creepiness.
A nice team of central characters,that I hope show up again.
Very enjoyable.