I have had issues with police procedurals while this book has been waiting on my virtual shelves. I find some of them too graphic, others coarse, and sometimes the personal issues overshadow the case itself. In this particular first book of the series, I thought the book achieved a delicate balance between the different parts.
We have a person new to the job who has moved from a big city to a smaller town which has its own cliques and secrets. The beginning is a little off-putting with a pretty graphic text exchange between the first victim and an anonymous person. It gets progressively better from there. The murders and the reasons behind them, as well as the characters doing the investigating, are ones that a reader can get behind. There is a certain level of emotional investment that is achieved with the way things unfold. It did not feel like a large story, with the sequence of events happening one after another, including the lead, Clare getting into trouble part way but figuring out a way to win the overall issue.
Clare is in trouble but is the kind of righteous character who works well at the helm of such a book. I liked the way the series has begun and would not mind reading the others in the series that have since been printed.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 