Christmas has arrived in Cumbria, and wedding bells are ringing.
But an ice-cold killer is waiting in the fells…

Book blurb

As the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, DI James Walker receives a phone call that puts paid to his Christmas break. During the wedding of the year at a lakeside hotel, the bride’s sister has vanished.

When Rachel left the wedding breakfast before her speech, newly-wed Libby was furious. But as the night went on with no sign of her maid-of-honour, Libby started to realise something was very, very wrong…

Before the wedding night is out, the lake is being searched for a body.

Something old, something new. One guest is a killer. The question is: who?

My thoughts

This is the 3rd in the series and I’ve read them all. It’s become an annual tradition for a wintery read around Christmas.

Set over New Years Eve and several days after. The maid of honour and sister of the bride goes missing from the reception only to turn up dead after a search.

Is it murder?

Well DI James Walker and the team have their work cut out for them in this new story in the series with around 80 staff and guests at the wedding almost anyone of them could be the killer with the exception of DC Jessica Abbott and her partner, Neil, who were amongst the guests.

With a surfeit of suspects and lots of potential witnesses there’s a lot to deal with and information to sort but when it becomes clear that nobody has seen what happened James and his team have to chase down every possible lead, suspect and piece of evidence and information it becomes a mammoth task and time is not on their side.

A really good police procedural it is well constructed, well paced it has been a really enjoyable read over the festive period.

Book: Purchased

Information

Published by: Avon (13 Oct. 2022) Avon Books (HarperCollins U.K. Ltd)

Buy: AmazonSmileUK (currently 99p for eBook)

Author: Alex Pine was born and raised on a council estate in South London and left school at sixteen. Before long, he embarked on a career in journalism, which took him all over the world – many of the stories he covered were crime-related. Among his favourite hobbies are hiking and water-based activities, so he and his family have spent lots of holidays in the Lake District. He now lives with his wife on a marina close to the New Forest on the South Coast – providing him with the best of both worlds! This is his third novel.

Alex Pine/James Raven website

Books

The Christmas Killer

The Killer in the Snow