This is a gripping Scottish crime book. It is very dark in places. The main charcater is well developed. The characters are all believable. There are plenty of twists. The description of the setting was beautiful.

This is a new author to me, and I liked the sound of this book so I thought I would give it a go. Initially, I found the story complicated, and it took me a while to get into. There was a huge amount of detail to take in which required quite a bit of concentration and I did start to wonder where it was going and how much of this was completely necessary. However, as the story went on, I could see that it was very much required in order to give the story background and explanation. The author has very expertly constructed a complex plot which becomes more and more intriguing as it goes along, with lots of characters who at first seem immaterial, but who eventually turn out to be not quite who they seem and are very much integral to the whole story. This is certainly a challenging read but one which is very much worth it. Each thread of the story takes on its own identity and as they all come together the reader starts to think that they know exactly what is going on, only to discover that, once more, they have been lead down the wrong path. DI Lola Harris is determined to get to the bottom of this case and simply won’t give up. She has another problem on her hands, with DS Aidan Pierce who holds a grievance against her and is determined to make her job that much harder. Fortunately, she has DC Kirstie Campbell by her side to give her all the help she requires, and we gradually see their friendship grow. Once the case is closed, things suddenly take a turn in Lola’s professional life, one which she initially welcomes, but once again things are not as they seem, and the ending has left me wanting more. So onward to the next in the series.

A bit of a mystery faces Detective Lola Harris when she returns from holiday. A crime scene but no body! Dragged a bit sometimes but kept me guessing.

The first installment in the Detective Lola Harris Mystery Series, Murder in the Gallowgate, by English author, Daniel Sellers, is a perfect introduction to a new series featuring protagonist DI Lola Harris. Lola is called to a crime scene in an abandoned warehouse basement where there is a chair covered in blood, strange candleholders, and a smashed mobile phone. Unfortunately, there is no body, but a well-known politician, is missing, and DNA from the blood says it’s his. This is a highly-visible investigation, and Lola doesn’t want to be in charge. This is partly due to one member of Lola’s team who is a narcissistic detective, Aiden Pierce, who happens to be the nephew of one of the higher-ups and feels that Lola got the promotion he was entitled to. Lola is determined to get rid of him, nepotism or not. Personally, Lola has just returned from holiday which was supposed to help her get over a painful breakup. Meanwhile, the missing politician had close ties to an art gallery and had financed an exhibit by a photographer who had drowned on an island almost 30 years prior. The PR man at the art gallery had been on the island as a child and had witnessed the drowning. For some reason, Lola thinks the murder and long-ago drowning are connected.

While there are a lot of different scenarios going on in this novel, there is plenty of building suspense. It is well-written, and easy to follow. The characters are well-developed, and the protagonist is one that readers will love because she is tough and doesn’t give up. The supporting characters are a mix – both good and bad, and make the story come alive. The characters seem like real people most of us are familiar with, and seem real.

The setting of the novel is in Glasgow which adds charm to the novel. Most readers will want to read more from Daniel Sellers, and will anticipate the next installment.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

This is sharp, beautifully written and incredibly powerful. I have been completely pulled in from very early on in this one. It has definitely been a book that is bound to be a success.

This is my first book from this author Daniel Sellers.
I was looking forward to reading this new series introducing a 46-year-old DI Lola Harris set in Glasgow.
Unfortunately, I did not like the heroine... The synopsis introduces Lola returning from a miserable solo holiday, an effort to get over her useless ex..... The ex in question might be useless in many ways but he is also a married man with a pregnant wife and decided (quite rightly) to come back to her! I know the author is free to write what he likes, at the end of the day, that is his upmost prerogative but I really didn't choose to read about a cheating main heroine. I simply can't enjoy a book around that particular trait and wished it was made more obvious from the start. The rest of the main characters are also off for me, sorry....
The mystery is decent though so if cheating is not a read flag for you as it is for me, enjoy the book.

Excellent story …very twisty, and some unexpected twists. I enjoyed the twists, found it slightly long. Error made on page 139 which was confusing me when I was reading…comparing the timeline that was listed, to the description after…am and pm were confused…it was written as 510 pm Friday morning and all the Friday references were pm instead of as listed on the timeline as am. Otherwise a great story.

Thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Councillor Sandy McAteer has been murdered in what appears to be a ritualistic killing. He had been involved in organising an exhibition of late photographer Malcolm Gemmell's work. Is there a connection between Mcateers death and the death of Gemmell thirty years earlier? Can DI Lola Harris get to the bottom of the case while dealing with issues in her personal and professional life?

This is the first book by Daniel Sellers that I have read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to others. If you enjoy a crime novel then this book is for you.

This is the first book by this author, and I'm impressed by his writing talent. This was an engrossing police procedural with many twists and turns. It had an ending that came as a complete surprise with a villain I never even considered. I highly recommend this book to other police procedural readers. I received an ARC of this book from Net Galley, and the opinion expressed is strictly my own.

Excellent mystery! I liked it. Lola is all business and that doesn't please Pierce. He feels a bit entitled to jump up the ladder without taking time to learn anything. He is thorn in the investigation and not a team player. So there is workplace angst. People are dying and they seem to be related to an art gallery and the employees. While the gallery is prepping for the first opening the story doesn't just name them. We learn about the main players. David is one we get to know in detail. He is key to some of the twists and turns that make this a good story. The ending was a surprise...it was an excellent ending.

Thanks Netgalley and the Publisher.. A nice easy mystery / thriller which had a great storyline, great characters. I enjoyed it.

"Aye," Lola murmured darkly. "And in the Gallowgate, no one can hear you scream."

Wow, I do believe that "Murder in the Gallowgate" is a debut novel, by @danielsellersauthor (@DJSellersAuthor), and man, it's excellent!! SOO many twists and turns, and Lola and her crew are such great, REAL characters. I appreciated the end wrap up, that ties all the threads together, and really look forward to more of Lola's adventures.

P.S. Thanks to @netgalley and @joffebooks for the ARC. LOVE the books I've been reading from Joffe.

To be honest, I’m rather underwhelmed by this book. A new series, with a female inspector, set in Glasgow and full of interesting characters? I was rather looking forward to it. Unfortunately, by the time I read about 25% of the book, I already lost track of the story, because of the large amount of people that kept popping up here, there and everywhere. There are so many names mentioned in passing for characters that do not play any role of importance. People who open doors, supply a bit of information, do a small job… the list goes on and on. I’ve always had a problem with that. Furthermore, a series about a slightly older but not yet middle-aged detective who’s good in her job despite everything she has to endure just because she’s a woman is not really very original. It’s set in Glasgow, but other than a few small descriptions of the city there is not much that gives the reader (at least no me) a sense of really being in Glasgow. There are some Scottish words and phrases thrown in for good measure but again, just not enough. In fact, it felt like ordering a blueberry muffin and getting a plain muffin. Likable but missing the essentials.
What was there to like? Well, I liked Lola because she’s good in her job but not infallible. I liked the way some of the other characters are outlined, like Aidan Pierce and Edith, the artist who paints words. I would love to have one of her paintings! And Aidan, yes, he is a horrible man and apparently a psychopath, but we’ve seen characters like him often before.
All in all, I liked the book enough to give it three stars and I hope to read another of Daniel Sellers’ books to see how this series evolves.
Thanks to Netgalley and Joffe Books for this review copy.

Murder in the Gallowgate introduces DI Lorraine Harris, known as Lola for some reason. A former hairdresser, she finds herself as senior investigating officer on a murder case for the first time. Harris is a difficult lead character to warm to, making this a hard read at times. Her motivations in both her personal and professional life seem unclear.

The murder case links to a new Glasgow art gallery and from there to a small remote island where the earlier death of a famous but controversial photographer had occurred. Various characters are found to have links to this past episode - and then more bodies turn up.

The pace of the novel is slow - the links to the past case are repeatedly hinted at but not taken seriously for much too long. Several sub-plots seem to go nowhere. Lola's married ex repeatedly texts her. She resolves to block him but doesn't. Another text, more angst. And so on. And the sense of place is very weak throughout the novel - the repeated vague references to districts of Glasgow seen cursory, dropped into the text while not giving a flavour of the backdrop to the story.

Lola's relationship with a sergeant on her team is difficult - he is the posh nephew of the Assistant Chief Constable and she is a working class girl. All rather one dimensional. The various HR processes involved are explained in far too much detail, taking the reader away from the main narrative. And we only really have Lola's side of the story, with hints at past incidents that are never fully explained.

Overall, there is a core story arc here that is decent, but the execution of the novel has flaws. The conclusion isn't terribly surprising, although there is one nice twist in the final reveal.

Daniel Sellers writes a gripping Glasgow Scottish crime debut featuring 46-year-old DI Lola Harris who has just returned from a miserable solo holiday, she had lost the future she had envisaged with Joe, a married man who returned to his pregnant wife. She finds herself plunged into a complex, high profile, politically sensitive investigation she feels ill prepared for, her boss, the spineless Acting Superintendent Graeme Izatt, who lands her with the hostile and sociopathic DS Aidan Pearce, with whom she has history, on her team. Pearce wastes no time in taking every opportunity to undermine her right from the start.

At the historic Gallowgate district, in a basement, the police find a horrifying scene of what looks like a ritual murder with the ominous presence of grave candles, the ground is saturated with so much blood that its hard to believe the victim survived the apparent torture and butchery, for there is no body. As the police urgently hunt for the body, it soon emerges the victim is likely to be local councillor, Sandy MacAteer, who serves on the board of the Number Nine art gallery, and is responsible for organising the upcoming exhibition of the lost photographs of the controversial Malcolm Gemmell, who died on the small remote Hebridean island of Erray in 1994, officially ruled an accidental death. As Lola delves into the life of MacAteer, aided by her troubled, but trusted DC Kirstie Campbell, she discovers there are threatening notes, and a journalist writing a book on Gemmell, Tristan MacLeod, who appears to believe there were anomalies in the photographer's death that do not tally with the official verdict.

Lola begins to believe that the answers may lie with the art gallery's marketing manager, David 'Davey' Sinclair, haunted by what he saw as a young child, he was at the scene of Gemmell's accident, with his sister, Marianne, and his mother, Edith. She finds herself under severe pressure, personally as Joe gets back in touch, and professionally, with Pearse a constant thorn in her side, and a Kirstie taking her time in revealing what is bothering her. This is a dark, intense and fascinating crime read, with a strong central protagonist in Lola, and an investigation that has to go back to the 1994 death of Gemmell to identify a killer obsessed with revenge. Readers who love gritty Scottish crime are likely to enjoy this debut. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Detective Lola Harris returns from a miserable solo holiday — an effort to get over her useless ex — only to find herself in charge of a high-stakes investigation.

She rushes to a crime scene in the historic Gallowgate neighbourhood. The smell in the basement is thick and sweet, even through Lola’s forensic mask.

The old wooden chair and the rope hanging from its arms are stained red. The earth below is saturated with blood. Six candleholders, their lights burned out, lend the scene an air of a completed ritual.

And yet there is no sign of a body.

A smashed-up phone in the corner puts the investigators on the trail of a local politician who has vanished without trace and a controversial artist who died thirty years ago on a remote Hebridean island.

Lola will have to work with the most obnoxious detective in Glasgow if she’s going to stop the killer from striking again.

A really good read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Great story. I'm looking forward to reading more from this author. 5*.

Overall a good police procedure story of searching for a serial killer. I liked the story-line overall, and the characters, but at times felt like a lot of information all at once. Sometimes first books in a series are like that, but does make me want to skim a bit more, sadly. Would still recommend.

This book didn't work for me for a lot of different reasons. To begin with, even though this is the first in the series, I felt like we were missing huge chunks of backstory where the main characters were concerned, and therefore I felt no connection to any of them.

In addition, there was nothing (in my opinion) at all likable about our main character Detective Lola Harris. For starters, the synopsis doesn't mention that her "useless ex" is a married man with whom she has been carrying on an affair for years, and only ended things because he finally made it clear that he wasn't going to leave his wife for her. Even with this, whenever he is mentioned during this story, he tells her he loves her, and she knows she loves him too. And please don't get me started when he showed up at her house (you know, the one she bought when she was convinced she would leave his wife for her).

Then there is the conflict between her and one of her subordinates. Honestly, other than being told that he "cheated" on a test of some sort and that he had "messed up" an investigation - things we as a reader didn't see firsthand. We were also told that he was insubordinate because he only responded in one-word answers and looked at his commanding officer in a way that she didn't like.

Honestly? It was hard to see him as the bad guy, and I'm sad to admit that Detective Harris DID come across as an antagonistic bully. Yes, there were times the reader got to witness Pierce neglecting to mention things to her, but on the whole, it was a lot of Harris TELLING people that Pierce wasn't fit to be a cop. A lot of her griping to herself (and anyone who would listen) that she "wanted rid of him," even going so far as to threaten to file a complaint against HR for not taking her seriously when the only person who had filed a complaint was Pierce.

When I look only at the story itself, it also had problems. For the most part, I found the pace to be very slow, to the point where I became bored. I didn't feel a sense of urgency, and I felt the points of view bounced around too much, and the shock factor that I'm certain the author was going for just never happened for me.

At this point, it is very unlikely that I will continue on with this series, but if the synopsis appeals to you, I encourage you to give it a shot anyway. What didn't work for me may work for you.

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

At first I thought that this was yet another story of historic child abuse and revenge but it was a lot more. The detecting was good, showing the tedium of investigation as well as light-bulb moments. Lola is a driven detective thrown into leadership because of staffing issues, doubting herself but being resolute. Her private life is a mess having been abandoned by her long-tern, think years and years, married lover who returned to his pregnant wife - so much for his investment in a relationship with Lola - now he wants to re-engage with Lola. Her boss is not that strong a character and wants a quiet life, her two sergeants are as different as apples and oranges. Kirsty has her own doubts and problems but is a thorough detective, Pierce has no such doubts - he is the bee's knees, brilliant, hates Lola, sociopathic and has an uncle as Deputy Chief Constable. The murders are interesting and the cold case works well. The unsure, worried Davey is a key part of the story but I felt it odd that he had so much influence on Lola in terms of actively working with her. The endings were clear, at least for the detecting but there are equally clear hints for follow-up stories. I look forward to these. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy.

A really good read that is well paced and gripping all the way through. I loved the storyline, the charcaters and the mystery.