Out of the Dark

Out Of The Dark is the third in the DCI Caplan series, and probably the best yet. Caplan investigates a missing young woman with family links to a former senior officer. A dying former colleague asks her to visit and alludes to a number of unsolved cases that were not takes seriously. Caplan takes up the challenge ...

The DCI and her team find themselves embroiled in something much bigger than they could have thought. The case takes them across rural Scotland, seeking some very devious and twisted criminals. With elements of police politics, psychological control and a cunning cover up, this is a complex plot.

Out Of The Dark has a relatively slow pace, the case developing from small clues and deductions. It is gripping and intriguing in equal measures as Caplan and co near the solution. Overall, an excellent read.

Thank you NetGalley and Severn House for the eARC.
DCI Christine Caplan is working the case of the home death and hanging of two partners; the disappearance of two young women; and bodies found in outlying areas in Scotland. Plus, a former police officer friend of hers wants her to look into the old cases of some missing and murdered men and girls. She's dying of cancer and it's her last wish. There aren't enough hours in the day for Caplan!
This is a taut, well written and compelling book with some incredibly evil people in it.
But Caplan, Craigo and the others on her team are all terrific. I love Craigo, he's such an undervalued
and fun character. Can't wait for the 4th in this fabulous series! Highly recommended!

A dying cop asks DCI Christine Caplan to fulfill her last wish: to investigate a cold case that’s still preying on her mind. The naked body of a young man that was found in a lonely wood, dismissed as a down and out by her superiors. Caplan connects the case to other victims left to die in the bleak Scottish forests, injured and unable to escape. As the scent grows stronger, the cold cases suddenly seem dangerously hot.

Out of the Dark by Caro Ramsay is a combination police procedural and psychological thriller book. It was suspenseful and atmospheric. This is a good addition to the DCI Christine Caplan thriller series.

I will read more by this author and in this series. I would recommend this book. It had solid characters, a good plot, well-planned suspense, and good twists to hold my interest.

#OutoftheDark #NetGalley @severnhouse

DCI Christine Caplan #3

Caplan’s evening starts with two dead bodies, apparent suicides, in a quiet cul-de-sac and no one hears a thing. DS Craigo is placed in charge of that though both officers know something is off with the crime scene, whilst she is sent to Glen Douglas. After a tortuous and mysterious journey in the dark, close to Ministry of Defence land, there’s another body and it’s a strange one. It’s certainly suspicious and definitely unexplained. As if that’s not enough, Caplan’s dying friend Rachel asks her to investigate a missing person cold case that’s been troubling her final days. Does this have any links to a current missing person enquiry, that Bethany Robertson? As ever, Caplan’s life is a busy one but she has a good small team to back her up. Further dogged investigation reveals the presence of something much bigger and darker than they could ever have envisioned and several cold cases merge into one large distressing one .

I really like the character of Caplan and feel that Caro Ramsay has created someone that you can relate to, who feels authentic and who you can like. Not only are the cases gripping but you got a good blend of the demands of a ranking officer with just the right balance of the personal in order to add to the realism. They are good supporting characters in the police team, Craigo is a fascinating one and Mackie is entertaining! The higher ranking officers stonewall as per usual, worrying about budgets. I’m sure that’s true! Christine‘s husband Aklan features too and he inadvertently provides some pertinent information for the enquiry.

The story is told at a steady pace, it’s never especially fast except towards the end, but I like the reflective way in which it’s told and that aids the readers thinking too. The case is a real puzzle, as the scale reveals itself it becomes increasingly shocking and horrifying. Who is behind what’s been happening and continues to evade capture? Clearly they are clever, obstructive and seem in control as it becomes apparent that a dangerous and deadly cat and mouse game is underway.

The author has chosen some great settings throughout rural Scotland that gives the right of atmosphere to a suspenseful and tense read.

The suspicions Caplan has are proving accurate and the hunt is on. The ending is a good one and my heart is in my mouth in one terrifying scenario.

Overall, this is another entertaining read from this author and if you like Tartan Noir check the series out, it’s a good one.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Severn House for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

I have never read this author and was unaware that Our of the Dark is actually Book #3 in a series featuring DCI Christine Capley. Had I known this, I would not have read this book. Well, that would most likely be a mistake, as this seems to be a pretty good series based on this book. DCI Capley is investigating a missing persons case in Scotland. I am American so I enjoyed the Scottish setting and some of their terms. Google is my friend! The supporting characters, such as some of the other officers are interesting and I do love me a police procedural! Now this is a slower book, but I do not mean that in a bad way. It just means there a lot of slow reveals and that is a good thing. This can definitely be read as a standalone, but I would have loved to know some of the backstories and that could only add to this one! I would like to go back and read the first two in this series.

Thank you to #NetGalley. Caro Ramsay and Severn House for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

I will post my review to Amazon, Facebook and other retail and social media sites upon the publication day of August 6.

This is the third in a new series by long established Scots writer Ramsay.
DCI Christine Caplan was censured after her last big case and she knows her career, not just reputation is on the line. She is literally trying to rebuild her home life at the same time. An old colleague gets in touch out of the blue, asking her and a couple of others to look into a disappearance. The woman is cryptic, possibly confused - is this the fantasy of a dying woman or a link to a series of unsolved cases that have never been linked?
Of course, it's twisty and dark, and Caplan puts herself in more than reputational peril. A terrific read, and better than the opener in this series (I seem to have missed the second, which I've now gone on to add to the TBR pile). More please!

This is an excellent police procedural. There are no criminal masterminds at work, no autistic super sleuth pulling stuff out of his backside, just ordinary police officers often caught out of their depth by exhaustion, fiscal restraints and just poor judgment. These are real people on the page doing a thankless job. The writing is sharp and the characters believable. Recommended.

A good thriller, though the crimes do not make for easy reading and the plot is twisty . Set in Scotland, the descriptions give a good impression of people and places. The main detective, Christine, is no nonsense and has her own problems. I enjoyed the book.
Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC

Thanks to Caro and NetGalley for allowing me to read Out of the Dark before the publication date.
I won’t try to precis the book as that would involve spoilers.

This is the 3rd book in the series and definitely the best to date.
Although DCI Caplan’s family are involved in the story, it is in a smaller way. In the previous books, I found her husband Arklen to be an irritating distraction. Caplan’s character has a huge amount of patience.

The characters in the small team are now much better developed, possibly because Caplan has had time to get to know them and they are given more scope to work on their own instincts.

In the 2nd book, In Her Blood, DS Craigo demonstrated that his knowledge of the community and the vast area which they cover was invaluable. Now we get a bit more insight to the man who takes everything literally and has no filter, saying exactly what he thinks.
While Caplan and ACC Linden have been friends since their training days, there is no doubt that Linden would shop her granny for a promotion.

The politics of policing comes very much to the fore in this book with the bean counters unable to see beyond the spreadsheets to the service which Police Scotland should be providing. (Prove the case and then we will think about releasing the funding to investigate the crime).
Overall, it is a well spun story with a devious plot.

This is book 3 in the series featuring Christine Caplan and I think it is the best yet! I would recommend reading the series for background information but it can be read as a stand alone. I really like the solid plotting, interesting characterisation and the insight into Caplan's personal life, for once it is pretty settled without too much turmoil. Although the pace is steady, I found it worked really well as there are quite a few revelations along the way in the investigation of a young woman who has gone missing. The Scottish setting is beautifully described, as always, which takes the reader right to the heart of the action. I highly recommend the author, one who never disappoints. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

In this latest from Caro Ramsay, we return to the life and work of DCI Christine Caplan with the third book of the series. This is an intense police procedural involving multiple layers of police personnel, in a missing person case with ever increasing ramifications. What begins with the dying wish of a former police academy classmate to come to her hospice bedside leads to a confusing hunt for potential victims of a sadistic killer or group. And then another person goes missing.

This is a complex procedural which portrays police as individuals with personalities and characteristics that make them part of this successful, though eccentric, team. Caplan herself has an interesting backstory which continues to develop in each book.

I recommend this series and Caro Ramsay’s books in general as all I have read have been well written and engaging. This book could be read as a standalone but I would recommend starting with the first two in the series, The Devil Stone and In Her Blood, in order to follow the development of the personal and professional relationships.

Thanks to Severn House and NetGalley for an eARC of this book.

A young woman doesn't return home when she should. Her over-protective father reports her missing. But she's not the only one who's gone...

A terminally ill office asks DCI Christine Caplan to take on a cold case she's never been able to shake, because senior officers dismissed it.

Caplan soon links this death to other similar deaths, all of which have gone under-investigated. Why?

An excellent addition to this series

I want to thank Netgalley, Caro Ramsay, and Severn House for letting me read Out of the dark in advance. Caro Ramsay is a brand new Author for me. I found that the way you found out what was happening and how one of the characters is doing really made a difference in the book. The main character Christine Caplan was extremely thorough in how she was in her job. Her supporting characters really helped making the story. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like for one of the characters. If you want to be deceived and left wondering how some one you thought was one way but turned out to be a totally different person. Then this is the book for you. It is a must read. I am looking forward to reading the other books in this series.

If you want a book where you wonder what you would do in the situation of one of the supporting characters then this is the book for you. It made me think what I would do and I decided I would do exactly the same thing that was done. The ending to this book was a totally different ending than what I thought it would be. I was left in shocked by how it ended and what the people do in certain situations.

DCI Christine Caplan has a lot on her plate and multiple crimes to solve in this taut and complex procedural. Those who have read the earlier books will enjoy this visit with Caplan and her team while new readers should be fine with this as a standalone because Ramsay provides background on Caplan and her family. It's twisty and atmospheric with a lot packed into a slim volume. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read,

OUT OF THE DARK is Book #3 of the DCI Christine Caplan thriller series and it moves at a fast pace. I have not read the first two books in the series, and so I wasn’t sure whether I was missing important background by starting with #3. Information about Caplan’s family situation was explained early in the story, so I felt I had a good grasp of that. There was less information provided about her investigation team, and I floundered when trying to unravel their strengths and weaknesses. Many team members were named but their backgrounds left blank. To me, they were like pieces moving on a chessboard, just names with no personality.

However, the main thrust of the novel is a series of cases being investigated by Caplan and her team.

(1) It begins with a case that appears to be either a double suicide or one suicide and one naturally caused death. Peter Todd had committed suicide while his long-term partner Roderick Taylor laid dead in his upstairs bed. Taylor was dying, according to the neighbour. It seems straightforward but Caplan leaves DS Craigo to ensure that it was.

(2) Then Caplan is sent to Glen Douglas and another crime scene—this one the dead body of a man with horrendous injuries and his face smashed to a pulp. The first challenge will be to identify the dead man.

(3) Then Caplan visits a former colleague (Rachel) who is dying of cancer in a hospice and has asked her friends (Caplan and Fergusson) to carry on with a cold case investigation she had been surreptitiously carrying out. Rachel is barely conscious and can’t explain clearly what she was investigating.

<i>Caplan said: ‘Rachel Ghillies wasn’t a stupid woman, and it’s bothered her enough that it’s still on her mind as she’s dying. People don’t use the last piece of energy they have for something that doesn’t bother them.’</i>

(4) Finally, the POV is briefly changed and we are witnesses to the kidnapping of Bethany Robertson. Soon afterwards, Caplan is asked to look into why she has disappeared, even though she hasn’t been missing long enough for it to become an official case. Bethany’s father is worried and has links to a former senior officer (Rachel’s husband who is now retired).

The middle part of the novel involves chasing all the clues and connections.

<i>It was the small things that would solve the case. The devil was in the details.</i>

By the 65% mark, Caplan is quite sure that she knows who the villains are, but the challenge is proving it, and finding the missing Bethany.

This is a fast paced thriller with an emphasis on unraveling the interconnections among several different cases. The only problems I had with it were: (1) keeping track of all the members of Caplan’s team, and (2) understanding how the Rod-Todd case fit into the overall picture.

“Out of the Dark” Will be released in North America on August 6, 2024.

Thanks to Severn House for providing an electronic copy of this book via NetGallry. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinions.

In this third book of the series, DCI Christine Caplan is now content with her move to Conchie in Scotland and her small team of three are working well. She and her husband Aklan are restoring an old cottage, while living on a caravan onsite. Aklan’s mental health is improving as he gets involved in the project and her two kids are busy leading their own lives.

Caplan is involved in two cases – one investigating the apparent suicide of a man after the death at home of his partner, supposedly from a terminal illness and the other a series of cold case murders she was alerted to by a dying colleague. When the body of a badly beaten, naked body in the woods is found bearing similarities to the cold cases, Caplan realises someone has been killing people for a long time. The disappearance of a young woman makes her fear that she has been abducted by the same killer or killers.

The plot builds steadily as Caplan and her small team try to investigate multiple cases on their own without additional funding from above. The darkness of the plot and the sense of pure evil is served well by the settings in the remote, deep, dark woods as the plot boils to its horrifying climax. I like Caplan’s character as a practical and capable detective who gets things done very much, although felt there was less development of her three team mates in this novel. While I mostly enjoyed this one, especially the development and twists in the plot, I felt the motives behind the killings weren’t strongly elucidated and there were some elements that I felt needed more explanation, such as why the victims had to have their left canine tooth removed and their left leg broken.

This is the latest from Caro Ramsay in a favourite Scottish crime series, featuring DCI Christine Caplan, her life more settled as she lives in a caravan with husband, former architect Aklen, who seems to be recovering in the beauty of the more rural surroundings, whilst the building works continue on their dilapidated cottage. Caplan is surprised when a former police colleague she had not kept in touch with, Rachel Ghillies, a dying cancer patient in a hospice, married to former senior officer, Rory, asks her and Lizzie Fergusson to visit her on her deathbed. A barely coherent Rachel, clearly in a lot of pain, asks them to look into a cold case she had been investigating below the radar, the names are not familiar and barely make sense, but what is clear, Rachel does not want them to let Rory know.

Caplan finds herself at a murder-suicide, Roderick Taylor and Peter Todd at their home, but something about the scene does not feel quite right. This is followed with her making her way to Glen Douglas and MOD territory, where there is the nightmare sight of a horrifyingly badly beaten body of a young male, unrecognisable, with a missing tooth. It is going to take some work to identify him as no such person has been reported missing. Why? An anxious and fearful father, photographs his daughter, Bethany, on her way to volunteer, but she never returns home, abducted it would seem from a park. Rory, using his influence, contacts Caplan, persuading her to mount a hunt for her. Could there possibly be any connection between what happens to Bethany, and the missing cold case victims, identified by Rachel?

Caplan is supported by her small, determined, and hardworking police team, but the workload generated by the cases is overwhelming, and despite what help Sarah Linden gives, she is being starved of resources, are there powers keen to see her not succeed? However, nothing is going to put her off, in what is the most complex and gruesomely horrendous of cold cases with numerous victims, and the urgent need to locate a Bethany who is thought to be in grave danger. This is a brilliant addition to Ramsay's moreish crime series. I cannot wait for the next book! Highly recommended to fans of Scottish crime and other readers new to the author. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

A gritty Scottish police procedure story. DCI Christine Caplan has many investigations to juggle but seems to be hindered at every turn with no money for extra hands.
A dying friend also a police officer puts her on track of a series of murders that might be connected.
The story is a through attention to detail investigation that occurs to get the single break that can bring the big results.
Book 3 of this series will have you searching for more of DCI Caplan.
Thank you NetGalley and (publisher) for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.