The Detective's Daughter

Lesley Thomson was a new author for me but I'm hooked and I'm ready to read book 2 in Detective's Daughter series. This was a fast-paced, suspenseful mystery, packed with emotion. Stella as well as Jack Harmon have definitely got some issues from their pasts to resolve. I found myself hoping that if they could just solve the mystery of Kate Rokesmith's murder, they might actually feel peace at last. I love to try to figure out "who done it" in mysteries and this one left me puzzled. This also kept me anxiously rushing back to my kindle to keep reading. I often felt sadness for the characters as well. Their lives had so much pain and I just wanted it to end for them. Readers will thrill at trying to discover the answer to who killed Kate Rokesmith. I did find myself a little ignorant of some of the slang of the characters as they were British and I did not know what the words meant. I kept on reading though, just had to shake my head in confusion a few times. I rated this book 5 stars and highly recommend it to mystery lovers.
I received an ebook of this novel from netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Stella Darnell resented her dad, Terry, for leaving the family when she was young and for the time he devoted to his job as a detective both on the police force and after retirement as he tried to solve a 30 year old cold case, that of Kate Rokesmith. Her husband had been the main suspect but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. In an attempt to protect him, he had sent their son, Justin, just four years old at the time of the murder to a boarding school where he was bullied.

Now Terry has died suddenly and Stella, who owns her own cleaning company, is determined to prove that even she is a better detective than he ever was. She decides to solve the case with the aid of Jack who she has just hired. However, Jack may not be as innocent as he seems and may have ulterior motives for keeping track of her progress in the Rokesmith case.

The Detective’s Daughter is the third book in the series by author Lesley Thomson but the second I read. This meant that it wasn’t quite as suspenseful as it might have been for me. But, even knowing some of the facts about the people involved ahead of time, I was completely taken in by the mystery. And, admittedly, it is more than a little implausible but somehow this didn’t interfere with my enjoyment. This is a fun mystery with some very quirky characters. Thomson does an excellent job of laying out suspects and red herrings only to knock them down one by one and it kept me guessing right until the big reveal at the end.