The Bone Jar was right up my street - creepy, chilling and atmospheric. Set in the middle of winter, snow all around an elderly woman is found in an abandoned asylum Blackwater on the banks of the river Thames. How she got there without being seen on the security cameras is a mystery that Detective Lew Kirby and his partner have to solve. As their investigation goes on secrets from the Blackwater asylum begin to rear their ugly truth as connects to dead woman come to light.

There are many characters in this story and a lot of interconnecting story lines that will keep you on your toes, though I did find myself getting confused at some of the red herrings thrown in. That being said, I really did enjoy this book and I hope that there will be more coming for  Kirby in the future

5 star

'The Bone Jar' by S.W. Kane is the first book in the Detective Lew Kirby series, a story that circles around the discovery of an elderly woman's body in an abandoned asylum on the banks of the Thames. As DI Kirby and his partner start digging into the details of the woman's death, a second body turns up in the river nearby.

Secrets begin to unfold regarding hidden rooms, secret experimentation, and the legends that places like Blackwater Asylum so often develop.. that there's a force about them. Ghosts of the past. Or at least, an inescapable vortex that seems to draw others to their doom.

When Kirby meets with Connie Darke, an urban explorer whose sister died in an unexplained accident on the asylum grounds, his queries spur her own obsessions with the truth and she grows determined to help him find answers.

There are several questionable characters that pop up throughout the investigation, some of them tight-lipped and severe.. others wild and brash. Each one is richly portrayed, their distinctive quirks making them easy to keep track of even with a wide suspect pool.

To start with.. there's Raymond Sweet, the former resident of the asylum who ends up living on the property for decades after it closes. He's an unusual man, but he seems almost sweet in his strange way. There's the hot shot developer who ends up losing Sweets plot of land to him via squatters rights litigation, the missing urban explorer whose cell phone is found at the scene of the crime, the heir to Marsh House just in from Perth, the daughter of the deceased who is more than a little rough around the edges, and plenty of others.

Nearly everyone has secrets they're keeping, some of which are devastating and not all of them even relate to the case. In fact, while Kirby is trying to track down the killer, he's fielding calls from his parents about something his mom has been hiding. Admittedly, I found her reveal a little odd, but the story was still great.

I loved the dark, gritty setting. The description of the property throughout the book is so vividly stark. The asylum has stood on the grounds for years and it feels as if its affected almost everything within its reach.

Kane did a fantastic job of balancing character and story development with well-paced scenes filled with action or suspense. It's definitely worth the read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish - after all, with two murders, a derelict asylum on the banks of the River Thames containing all kinds of dark and grisly secrets and a former patient who cannot let go of the past, what's not to like?
Right at the start we read about a death but have to wait until much later in the book to find out its relevance. The story really begins with the discovery of the body of a badly beaten eighty-four year old woman lying on an old hospital bed in a ward of the long abandoned Blackwater Asylum in Battersea, South London. The old psychiatric hospital has a chequered past, including rumours of strange experiments, deaths and improper behaviour from the staff. Even after it was closed in 1993, there were several more incidents there such as arson and suicide. The whole site, including a listed chapel, water tower and a lake, has now been acquired by a developer by the name of Patrick Calder for redevelopment into luxury accommodation. There is one blot on Calder's landscape though. A former patient who should have moved into a B&B never actually left and Raymond Sweet stayed living for so long in the Old Lodge that he now has squatters' rights over a piece of the land. Raymond was first admitted to Blackwater at the age of seventeen, lived there twenty seven years till it closed and now at the age of sixty seven cannot imagine life anywhere else. A harmless soul with a less than perfect memory, he keeps himself to himself and tries to keep out of sight of the Creeper, the ghost he believes haunts the old building. The case falls to DI Lew Kirby and partner DI Pete Anderson of Mount Pleasant's Murder Investigation Team, and as their enquiries proceed, the victim is identified as local woman Ena Massey, a veritable saint of a former nurse who spent her retirement making home visits for a local hospice. No one seems to have a bad word to say about her but the placing of her body somewhere with a murky past can hardly be a coincidence. A mobile phone was also found at the crime scene and this leads the detectives to a search for the owner, a teaching assistant called Edward Blake. His fellow urbex (urban explorer) Connie Darke has also been looking for Ed without success. They were supposed to meet at Blackwater to honour the death of her sister Sarah, also Ed's girlfriend, who died there five years ago in a freak fall. Connie was delayed by the bad weather and Ed hasn't been seen since. Since the accident Connie has remained friends with Ed and has discovered the hobby of urbexing for herself. Her job as archivist at the Repository for Architectural Drawings and Ephemera has given her even more of an interest as she has access to the plans of many old buildings. The plans to Blackwater would be a major find but no one seems to know where they went, like a lot of the records from the hospital that also vanished. Connie is first interviewed by the police about Ed's disappearance, but as the case moves along and another body is found, she finds herself drawn into Kirby and Anderson's investigations. Very dark and disturbing secrets about what really went on at Blackwater start to emerge as family histories are thrown open and the past comes back with a vengeance in one of the coldest winters on record in London. The pace really shoots up at the end, and there are some great twists after an explosive finale where the truth finally comes to light. The book contained great well drawn characters that were easy to get to know. I really liked the pair of detectives and the humour in the story, such as the car Kirby loathes and Anderson's faith in his lucky rabbit's paw. They have a good rapport which in turn inspires the other detectives in their team. The plot is clever and has lots going on but I found it was always well written, and it was easy to keep up with the story which drew me in and kept me glued to it all the way through. I don't know what the plans are but I would certainly love to see this becoming a series featuring Kirby and Anderson. 5*

The Bone Jar is both police procedural and psychological thriller. When the body of an 85 year old turns up dead at the abandoned Blackwater Asylum, there's more questions than there are answers. This book was definitely a wild ride that keep me guessing at every step. I applaud the author for all the twists and turns because I was not ready for the ultimate reveal in the end. I will definitely be reading more books by this author in the future.

The Bone Jar begins with the discovery of the body of an elderly woman in the derelict Blackwater Asylum….she had been murdered.

DI Lew Kirby begins the investigation. He speaks to an urban explorer, Connie Darke who has reported her friend, Ed, missing. Her sister, Sarah had died in an accident some time before…..at the asylum.

Are these events linked? Does Raymond and his creepy bone jar know more than anyone realises?

I really enjoyed this creepy thriller. It has great characters in Kirby and Connie (and a 3 legged stuffed fox). I really felt for poor Raymond too, such a troubled soul. With its clever plot, this dark and twisted tale keeps you guessing. Gripping from start to finish.

Thank you to The author, the publishers and NetGalley for an eARC of the book. This is my honest, unbiased review.

This book is an Amazon First Reads choice this month and I almost picked it until I realised I already had the book as I was taking part in a #BlogTour. This is an excellent book and the kind of thriller I love to indulge in. I was hooked from the start when the body of Ena, an old woman is found in a derelict asylum. Why? How did she end up at the Asylum? Why did someone choose to kill her there, where she was a nurse when the Asylum was still in use? The most likely suspect is Raymond Sweet, a former patient who lives on a cottage on the grounds after winning the lease in court after squatting in the cottage for decades. But is he a little too obvious? This book raises so many questions and the author takes plenty of time to answer them. I thoroughly enjoyed this.

This review will go live at the link below on 6 July:

Hi and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Bone Jar! Many thanks to Anne Cater for the invite and to Thomas & Mercer for the eARC via NetGalley and the paperback copy.

The Bone Jar, what a title! I was fully intrigued and I hadn’t even read the blurb yet! And then I did read the blurb, and then I read it again, and in the end I virtually tripped over my own feet in my haste to sign up. You see, I have some trigger words, in a good way: words that are guaranteed to pique my interest and trigger me into wanting to read the novel if they’re in the blurb. One of those words is “secret”. Did you read the blurb? Check! Another, and one I hadn’t even realised until now, is “asylum”. Oh my giddy aunt, an asylum! An ABANDONED DERELICT asylum! With underground bunkers and secret rooms and *whispers* unspeakable psychological experimentation, ooooooh!

Kids, I was so enthusiastic about this one that I read it right after I got it, namely May. I regret nothing. Except maybe that I can’t read it again for the first time, but then again, I will definitely read it a second time, not in the least to try and spot any clues Ms Kane left and I missed the first time around. Yeah, it’s one of those novels where you reach the end and think: was the truth really staring me in the face this whole bloody time and did I still miss it?! I think it was! I need to go back and check!

So, what do we have here? An elderly woman found murdered in an abandoned asylum. Few pages in, and we already have our first mystery to solve. Because who is she? And why the hell would anyone want to murder an eighty-something woman? At the same time, a man has gone missing in the vicinity of Blackwater Asylum. Did he have anything to do with the murder? Did he just go on a bender? Or might he have witnessed something he shouldn’t have? Bam, second mystery! And they only pile on from there. The more the police discover about Blackwater, the more questions pop up.

Of course I gobbled up the mysteries, the questions whose answers kept eluding me, the slowly unravelling secrets, but there is more to The Bone Jar. While it’s excellent fiction, it also sheds a light on a treatment used in psychiatric hospitals in the 60s and 70s: Deep Sleep Therapy. I found that fascinating and most definitely an enrichment of the story, knowing that the practice and malpractice of said technique is based on real facts.

The Bone Jar has such an atmospheric setting, not just because of the asylum but also because it’s set in the dead of winter, with the cold and the snow creating a gloomy sort of mood. It has a whole array of interesting characters, notably DCI Lew Kirby, whom I adored, Connie, an urban explorer, and Raymond, a former Blackwater patient. I do hope to see more of Kirby, The Bone Jar would be an excellent start of a new police procedural series, and if that’s the case then hopefully Connie will be back too. I also feel there are a few details left to clear up or expand upon, and I’d be first in line for a sequel!

The Bone Jar is so intricately woven that at one point I wondered if I should start drawing up family trees to keep all the facts straight. My brain must have short-circuited at least once, but you know what? This is 100% worth straining your grey cells for! I loved how it all came together in the end and how Blackwater’s dark history was finally laid to rest.

For me, The Bone Jar more than lived up to the expectations the blurb had created, I thoroughly enjoyed it and if you, like me, can’t resist a brooding thriller set in an asylum, then I’d happily recommend you add this one to your TBR!

What a great book this was. So full of twists and turns. keeps you second guessing yourself. The premise is basically, the body of 85 year old woman turns up in the abandoned Blackwater Asylum. What is her connection, if any, to the asylum? Though it could be called a police procedural, I think it's more a psychological thriller, as it focuses on secrets and connections to the asylum. Thanks to the author , publishers and NetGalley for the ARC. which I've reviewed honestly.

I confess that I was fully intrigued as soon as I took my first glimpse at the blurb of The Bone Jar. I always love a good detective thriller, and the promise of an abandoned asylum setting combined with hints at its past and secrets as well as a former patient involved in a present day murder investigation sounded simply irresistible. Talk about the perfect hair-raising backdrop for this first book of a new detective series! I had a hunch that I would enjoy this story, and my instincts definitely turned out to be right. The Bone Jar is a dark, eerie and atmospheric detective thriller that will chill you to the bone, and not just because of the winter wonderland descriptions. Without a doubt recommended if you enjoy the detective thriller genre!

There is no doubt that the Blackwater Asylum steals the show here. Not only does the majority of the story take place in or around the abandoned asylum, but its descriptions also give the story that spine-chilling feel as well as a hint of forboding. The descriptions are thorough and beautifully done, and really made the setting come alive for me. The fact that The Bone Jar takes place during the cold winter months only adds to the eerie atmosphere... The snow and cold weather used to add obstacles to the investigation as well as influencing how the plot as a whole develops. Especially the focus on the Blackwater Asylum was a huge bonus for me, as I have a weak spot for stories with that angle and its incorporation in the plot was handled splendidly.

The Bone Jar has quite a few characters in play, and I confess that initially I struggled a little to remember how they all connected. This feeling was only temporary though and as soon as I was able to fit them all into their place in the plot puzzle, I was fully hooked. I wish we could have seen more of new main character detective Lew Kirby, but we did get a few hints at his private life and I'm definitely intrigued. We mainly see the story and investigation through his eyes, but both Raymond and Connie are also key to the plot of this first book. Both will soon find themselves in the middle of everything and I quite liked getting to learn more about them. Especially Raymond is a fascinating character with his past and possible knowledge of present events as well as secrets about Blackwater Asylum.

I also really liked the mention of urban exploration and the connection more than one character had with this activity in the plot. It was interesting to learn a little about the urban exploration terms and I would have loved to see it even more present! The Bone Jar mainly focused on the asylum and its hidden secrets as well as the present murder case though. It was interesting to see Lew Kirby and the others investigating the crime and both the building up of suspense and the introduction of plot twists is more than solid. You keep wondering how everything and everyone connects and fits in, and the story will definitely have some surprises for you in store as well.

With its eerie and atmospheric derelict asylum setting, The Bone Jar sets the tone for what is an excellent start of a new detective series. Any fan of the genre will have a brilliant time meeting Lew Kirby as well as exploring Blackwater Asylum!

The Bone Jar is a complex, chilling and an atmospheric police procedural by S W Kane. London is in the grips of one of the worst snowstorms for decades. When the body of an elderly woman is discovered in an abandoned asylum, scheduled for demolition, the police soon realise that this case isn’t going to be easy to solve. But who could have murdered someone so vulnerable? As they speak to people who knew the murdered woman, including her family, they uncover conflicting accounts about her. Was she a saint, or was she evil? Who held such a bad grudge against her that they wanted to see her dead?

The old asylum, Blackwater, which becomes the scene of the crime, gave the book a very haunting feeling. With the discovery of the body, it seemed to me that there were many undiscovered secrets about the place. Although the setting is near enough abandoned, there is one man who still lives there, who managed to claim squatter’s rights. Raymond Sweet is a former patient, but he isn’t willing to leave the area, even though he has been offered a handsome sum of money by the developers to do so. I wanted to know what he knew about the place, and it’s past. What went on when Raymond was a patient there? Did he know anything about the murdered woman? Raymond also has a secret which he is keen to protect at all costs.

As the plot developed, I became more and more intrigued about the woman, especially when dark secrets about her past were revealed. I was never able to guess how the plot was going to unfold and S W Kane built up the tension really well as the book came to a close.

I also really liked the two main characters. DI Lew Kirby is the detective working on the case, and I thought his character was well developed. He has a love for old cars but hates the police-issue Corsa he drives. Even his mother calls it a ‘student car.’ S W Kane also introduces us to Connie, an urban explorer who has a keen interest in the asylum. Both Connie and Lew are two really engaging characters who I would like to see explored further.

I have heard that The Bone Jar is the first book in a new trilogy and I’m excited to read what S W Kane has in store for us next. I highly recommend this book.

The Bone Jar is the debut from new author S.W. Kane and is an intriguing start to hopefully a new series.

Starring 2 protagonists, rather than focusing on the Detective, this book introduces the kinda cool detective Lew Kirby and urban explorer (new to me) Connie Darke.

When an elderly woman is found dead in an abandoned asylum, Kirby and likeable partner Pete Anderson investigate and find Connie Darke is inexplicably linked to the derelict site.

With a property developer waiting to build on the site and a old patient still inhabiting an old building there are no lack of suspects..

The creepy atmospheric setting is done very well by Kane and almost gets under your skin in an unassuming quietly disturbing way.

There are some great characters in this book, Raymond Sweet is a great creation, but none of the characters seem to take over which is quite a change and something I quite liked.

Paced perfectly, this book holds your attention and the suspense builds well and the twists come at you as the book races toward its satisfying finale,

A very good debut, a quality police procedural and an interesting thriller in a darkly creepy setting with some cool new protagonists on the crime scene.

Recommended

4🔥🔥🔥🔥