Book info

• Title Thicker Than Water
• Author Kerry Wilkinson
• Year 2013
• Genre Thriller

When Cameron and Eleanor Sexton arrive home to find their teenage babysitter missing, their immediate concern is for their young daughter. Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel is dispatched to find out what's going on, but with all apparently well, she thinks she's been sent on a fool's errand. Soon, the teenager's body is discovered in an apparently random house on the other side of Manchester. The puzzle deepens when a journalist points out that someone placed an obituary for him just days before his disappearance. A string of clues point to a club whose owner has an unhealthy interest in Jessica, but then something happens which makes her question the very core of her beliefs.

Thoughts

What’s great about being a couple of books behind in a series is that you don’t have to wait so long to read up on the cliffhanger ending of the previous book. In that one, we were waiting to learn if our heroine tied the knot or not, and although you’d think the answer would be easy - as always with Jess, it’s more complicated than it looks.

There was a lot of angst in this book, I thought. A lot of relationship complications - between Jess and her significant other, between Jess and her friends, even with Jess’ boss and his own family. The crime story was almost incidental, and if I’m honest, it didn’t quite make sense to me. After the first couple of murders, things just got more and more tangled and then the rush to reveal all happened so quickly, it almost wasn’t satisfying enough. It was an intensely clever plot, but maybe needed just a bit more work.

It’s fun hanging out with these characters, and I’m going to have to read the next one because of another darned cliffhanger, but I hope there’s a brilliant whodunit underneath as well as that’s what Jess is particularly good at.

Rating: 3 / 5