When you pick up a crime thriller and see it’s written by Carol Wyer, you know you’re in safe hands and this book just reinforces that knowledge.

At the heart of the DI Kate Young series is a conspiracy, senior police officials are involved in a sex trafficking ring and are responsible for the deaths and disappearances of people who get too close to uncovering the truth, Kate knows this as her journalist husband was killed last year while he was secretly investigating these people. This narrative thread is continued in this story, though it takes something of a backburner to the active case that Kate and her team are working on.

Women are being targeted by an incredibly violent serial rapist and it’s a race against time to stop him. Rather than the reader knowing who is responsible, we are forced to feel the frustrations of the investigation as it moves at a maddeningly slow pace – these things take time and leads have to be followed up, even if they come to nothing. But when DI Young’s memory is sparked by something the perpetrator says, she realises that this isn’t the first time she’s come across this guy.

The characters in this book are all incredibly complex and well written, they’re all becoming better acquainted and the dynamic is an interesting one – the team don’t all like each other (which colleagues often don’t!) and Kate, as their supervisor, has to try to keep them all in line.

Her character is particularly interesting, she’s starting to come out of the haze of grief after the loss of her husband and see things around her more clearly. The realistic part here is that the grief keeps washing over her in waves, even though it’s not as bad as it was before – then the guilt about not feeling the grief starts to kick in.

I love this series and its characters, the complexity of plot and personalities always come to mind when I think about this author.