The River Runs Black certainly kept me on my toes. There is a lot going on in this story, with a large cast of characters, numerous locations, several different points of view and multiple strands to the investigation. The prologue immediately caught my attention when a distressed young woman appeared on a street in Clayton wearing only a bikini despite the cold October weather. I wanted to know who she was, where she had come from and why she ran the moment she discovered that the woman offering to help her was a police officer.

After such an intriguing opening, I did find the early part of the book difficult to settle into. There is a great deal of geographical detail and, as someone completely unfamiliar with New York's North Country, I struggled at times to picture where everyone was and how the different towns, waterways and locations related to each other. There were also a lot of names and different threads to keep track of. The story is told from several points of view, with each chapter clearly identifying whose perspective we are following, and I really appreciated this. It gave me something to anchor myself to as the story moved between the different characters and investigations.

The River Runs Black is the second standalone book in the North Country series. I haven't read the first book, but this didn't cause me any real problems with understanding the relationships between the characters or following the investigation.

This wasn't always an easy story to navigate. There were times when I thought I had worked out where one part of the investigation was heading, only for another piece of information to complicate things again. Even my feelings towards some of the characters changed as more was revealed.

There is a lot to take in and this is definitely a book that needed my full attention, but I enjoyed watching the different threads gradually come together. Most importantly, after everything the story had put me through, I reached the end feeling satisfied with how it had all played out.