Blog Tour Review - The Body in the Marsh by Nick Louth

Hello everyone and thanks for stopping by for my stop on The Body in the Marsh blog tour. I'd like to say a massive thank you to Canelo for giving me the opportunity to read and review this great book so lets jump straight into my review. 

 

The Body in the Marsh by Nick Louth

Published September 25th 2017 by Canelo

Genre - Crime, Police Procedural  

Previous Books - Bite, Heartbreaker, Mirror Mirror 

Star Rating - ****

Goodreads Challenge - 65/50

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis

When a woman goes missing, it gets personal for DCI Craig Gillard. But he could never imagine what happens next. 

Criminologist Martin Knight lives a gilded life and is a thorn in the side of the police. But then his wife Liz goes missing. There is no good explanation and no sign of Martin… 

To make things worse, Liz is the ex-girlfriend of DCI Craig Gillard who is drawn into the investigation. Is it just a missing person or something worse? And what relevance do the events around the shocking Girl F case, so taken up by Knight, have to do with the present? 

The truth is darker than you could ever have imagined. 

Utterly gripping and full of twists, this is a compulsive thriller from master Nick Louth for fans of Robert Bryndza, Patricia Gibney and Carole Wyer.

My Thoughts

I love a good police procedural and I haven't read one for a while so I was really looking forward to this and I wasn't disappointed. This is the story of DCI Craig Gillard as he works to solve the case of a missing woman. On top of this the missing woman is someone from his past and her husband is a top notch criminologist. DCI Craig Gillard and his team work hard as they try and solve the case and come up against several obstacles along the way. I found this story to be engaging and interesting and I wanted to keep reading. I had to know what happened next and, in the manner of a good crime novel the ending was a surprise. 

I really enjoyed the depth of this novel. It was obvious the author had done his research on the different aspects of a police investigation and the detailed nature of the story was great. It really made it feel like we were part of the investigation. When things came to a dead end you felt the characters frustration and when they had a breakthrough you again felt excited. The one thing I will say is that as much as I loved the depth of the story this did sometimes make it a bit heavy going and I found myself having to take regular breaks but I was definitely invested enough in the story to want to keep picking it back up. 

I enjoyed the overall premise of the book. I found the investigation interesting and I wanted to know what was going to happen. I couldn't work out where the ending was going to go until we neared the conclusion. I had several theories but I wasn't able to tell which was correct and this is something that makes a good crime novel for me. There were aspects of the story however that I didn't think were quite relevant. I found the relationship between Sam and Craig a bit strange. Initially I thought Sam would be much more involved in the investigation however, it went off in a different direction and I found her parts in the story didn't really add much for me. I also found the aspects of the Girl F investigation a bit confusing and I would of liked a bit more information about this. I'm hoping that both of these aspects were setting up some plot points for future stories and I would love to see some more explanation of these in future books. 

I thought the characters in this story were interesting as well and I particularly liked Claire Craig's work partner. It was nice to see a strong female character in a role that is often depicted in stories like these as male. I also enjoyed Craig as a character and how down to earth he was. You could see he cared about his job and appreciated his team. The one thing I will say about the characters is that one of the male detectives is quite misogynistic and thrives on the sexual objectification of woman. This didn't really bother me as I felt it was handled well and the character received his just desserts in the end.

Overall I really enjoyed this story I loved the depth to it and the plot was really interesting. I would definitely recommend it to people who like a good police procedural. 

Overall Rating 

This book is available from the following links. 

Amazon UK               Goodreads                 Google Books UK                 Kobo UK 

Author Bio

 

Nick Louth is a best-selling thriller writer, award-winning financial journalist and an investment commentator. A 1979 graduate of the London School of Economics, he went on to become a Reuters foreign correspondent in 1987. It was an experience at a medical conference in Amsterdam in 1992, while working for Reuters, that gave him the inspiration for Bite, which was self-published in 2007 and went on to become the UK No. 1 Kindle best-seller for several weeks in 2014 before being snapped up by Sphere. It has sold a third of a million copies, and been translated into six languages. The terrorism thriller Heartbreaker was published in June 2014 and received critical acclaim from Amazon readers, with a 4.6 out of 5 stars on over 100 reviews. Mirror Mirror, subtitled ‘When evil and beauty collide’ was published in June 2016. The Body in the Marsh, a crime thriller, is being published by Canelo in September 2017. Freelance since 1998, he has been a regular contributor to the Financial Times, Investors Chronicle and Money Observer, and has published seven other books. Nick Louth is married and lives in Lincolnshire.

Website: Nick Louth Twitter: @NickLouthAuthor Facebook: Nick Louth Books  

Thank you everyone for stopping by and checking out my review of The Body in the Marsh by Nick Louth. The blog tour is running until the 8th October so if you fancy checking out the rest of the stops for more reviews as well as giveaways, author interviews and excerpts please check out the stops below.