Member Review

This is now the fifteenth adventure for DS Geraldine Steel, and the series remains as interesting and fresh as ever. In the past Geraldine's life has been a bit up and down, finding out she was adopted and helping her newly discovered birth sister escape the clutches of a drug dealer which led to her getting demoted from the rank of Detective Inspector to Sergeant as a result. She moved to York and found herself working for her former sergeant, Ian Petersen, now a DI and a man she has secretly been in love with for a long time. Ian has now moved into her flat but Geraldine is still reluctant to make the relationship public, particularly at work where she has a good DCI in Eileen Duncan and has made friends. The story begins with a gory description of a woman’s murder. It’s very messy and the killer vows to use suffocation next time. And there will be a next time. In a York canal an early morning walker spots a woman’s body. Police initially think she may have fallen in drunk but find no bag or belongings with which to make an identification. Alarmingly the post mortem reveals she died many hours before she entered the water and was suffocated. Meanwhile a woman is watching her husband meeting with other women and knows she must put a stop to his evil compulsions. Finally the detectives identify the woman in the canal and immediately suspect her husband as a teenager goes missing and they fear for her safety. In the middle of all this Geraldine finds herself abducted, hooded and thrown in a van. The men who work for a drugs gang try to blackmail her into working for them, threatening her sister’s life if she does not comply. Stupidly she at first tries to hide the truth from Ian, and even when she does finally admit what happened, she begs him to keep quiet to give her enough time to warn her sister. Ian agrees to give her one week. She’s not thinking rationally and certainly not like a police office. Does she not realize after last time complying in anyway with these criminals will mean she gets sacked and a lengthy prison sentence? Oh Geraldine, how will you get yourself out of this one? Thank goodness she now has Ian on her side. There is plenty of action and a great twisty plot as more suspects emerge and Geraldine tries to help hunt a clever and resourceful killer while dealing with her own personal nightmare. There’s even a happy ending this time for some in this series which never shows any sign of flagging or getting stale. I look forward to many more stories to come! 5*