Lesa's Book Critiques: KEVIN’S CORNER ANNEX – A NICE PLACE TO DIE BY J. WOOLLCOTT

 Lesa's Book Critiques: KEVIN’S CORNER ANNEX – A NICE PLACE TO DIE BY J. WOOLLCOTT

Review: Blood Relations: A DS Ryan McBride Novel by J. Woollcott

 

It is several months after events in A Nice Place to Die as Blood Relations: A DS Ryan McBride Novel by J. Woollcott begins and the scene is bad. Detective Sergeant Ryan McBride and others have come this April day to Hungry Hall, a rundown country house near Antrium. It was the home of Patrick Mullen. Now he has been found very much dead in his bedroom in a scene that has shaken a number of officers.

 

Mullen was a retired Chief Inspector and a legend- for good and bad reasons. Ryan’s new boss, Inspector Whelan, believes that the killing has to be the work of somebody connected to one of Mullen’s old cases. McBride isn’t so sure as the intensity of the crime scene means he thinks it is personal and wants to focus on family and friends. Whelan says no and tells him to look at past cases. This will become an ongoing issue as Whelan does everything to micromanage his case, including putting him on the clock.  Of course, some of her need to control is being the new boss and trying to get credit to move up the ladder, but some of it no doubt goes back to when both first joined the police and became rivals to a certain extent. As his old boss discovered, it is best to let McBride do his thing and get out of the way as he closes cases.

 

What follows is a complicated read. Several secondary storylines introduced in the first book continue as characters continue to evolve and relationships change. The case also generates additional new and very interesting subplots. Those situations play a comfortable background medley to a complicated murder case and other crimes.

 

Much is going on in Blood Relations: A DS Ryan McBride Novel and the result is a complicated multi-dimensional read that works in all aspects. A book and a series that I never would have heard about if not for Aubrey’s recent review.

 

This is a series that builds on the previous book, A Nice Place To Die. Highly recommended.

 

 

My reading copy came by way of the publisher, Level Best Books, and NetGalley.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023

Review: A Nice Place To Die: A DS Ryan McBride Novel by J. Woollcott

A Nice Place To Die: A DS Ryan McBride Novel by J. Woollcott begins with a body in late October. Detective Sergeant Ryan McBride, his partner, DS Billy Lamont, and others are at the river scene where a woman has been found dead. A body is always tough. In this case, even more so far DS Ryan as he knows the victim and had recently been intimate with her.

 

If he tells his boss, or anyone, he will be pulled from the case. The dead woman’s name is Kathleen McGuire. They connected in a local bar one evening and spent what he thought was a memorable night together. He definitely was interested and never heard back from her. Now he never will as the beautiful woman is dead. He is barely holding it together when her identical twin sister, Rose McGuire, shows up at Antrim Road Station looking to file a missing person’s report.

 

What follows is a complicated police procedural with a cast of interesting and complex characters. At the heart is DS Ryan McBride, a man who has seen a lot, prefers the quiet of his off-duty life at his farm, and seeks justice for the dead and the wronged. While the McGuire case takes the majority of his time, that isn’t the only case he and his team work in this complicated police procedural set in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

 

Book one of a series, this read sets the ground floor and does it very well. Several complicated cases, interactions between various members of the team with their own backstories and lives outside the job, and rich details of setting make A Nice Place To Die: A DS Ryan McBride Novel by J. Woollcott quite the read. 

Strongly recommended.

 

Make sure to read Aubrey’s recent review of the second book in the series, Blood Relations. It was because of her review I went looking for this first book and bought it on Amazon using funds in my Amazon Associate account.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023