The Whitby Murders is the 6th book in the Yorkshire murder mystery series by J. R. Ellis. Released 20th Aug 2020 on Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint, it's 301 pages and available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's
worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of
contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of
ebooks with interactive formats lately. For
Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book and the rest of the series are
currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for
free.
These books are well written engaging procedurals which are tightly
plotted, set against the Yorkshire countryside: hills, moors, and fells.
Although it's part of a series, it works quite well as a standalone.
There are references to occurrences from previous books in the series,
but they don't play a central role in the action and readers new to the
series won't have any troubles keeping up. Although most of them are straight procedurals out of the local police department, this one sees Oldroyd and a colleague on loan to Whitby to help clear up a murder in which his own adult daughter is a primary witness. There are lots of interesting local historical tie ins and the author does a good job of conjuring local creepy atmosphere with the Bram Stoker Dracula tie-ins.
I enjoyed the writing and I really liked Oldroyd's
relationship with his family and colleagues. He's an honest and
compassionate officer and the development of the plot and denouement
were satisfying and well written. Looking forward to more in this
series which compares quite favourably with P.D. James' wonderful Adam
Dalgleish books. This would be a fine selection for public library acquisition, and for fans of English procedurals.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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