The Coffinmaker's Garden - Stuart MacBride

Description

A village on the edge…
As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the North Sea. But the crumbling headland has revealed what he’s got buried in his garden: human remains.

A house full of secrets…
With the storm still raging, it’s too dangerous to retrieve the bodies and waves are devouring the evidence. Which means no one knows how many people Smith’s already killed and how many more he’ll kill if he can’t be found and stopped.

An investigator with nothing to lose…
The media are baying for blood, the top brass are after a scapegoat, and ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson is done playing nice. He’s got a killer to catch, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

Review

I'm going to start with a bit of a disclaimer as this is not something I would normally read, but I thought as it was on Pigeonhole I would give it a go. It really wasn't to my personal taste.

I found it hard going as there were references to events from previous books I had not read. Luckily other readers were able to shed light on this for me. Ash Henderson is an ex-DI and now works for a consultancy firm supporting Police Scotland. This obviously gives him a little more room to "do his own thing" than if he worked for the Police, but towards the end of the book it became a little too far fetched for me.

There were some wonderful Scottish words which I had to look up, but they certainly brought a colour to the story. I also liked the humour Ash brought to the book. It was that which balanced out the gruesome violence and kept me going through the book. It wasn't as bad as some books with violence which I have attempted to read had to stop before finishing. I did make it to the end of this book.

It was certainly a unique plot with the house where the murderer had buried his victims falling into the sea and so his crimes were revealed after a 56 year stretch. At the same time Ash and his colleague are investigating a child murder who is on the loose. I rather liked the actual police work, it was the descriptions of the crimes that I wasn't comfortable with reading about.

I'm giving this book 3 out of 5 stars. My thanks to Pigeonhole for the staves to read.

Comments

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