Published by No Exit Press,
31 August 2023. ISBN:
978-0-85730-475-9 (PB)
Detective
Inspector Ian Peterson has already told Geraldine Steel, his partner and fellow
Detective Inspector in the York Police, about his concern for one of his
teammates at his Five Aside Football team whose girlfriend, Lucy, has
disappeared. This means that when a young woman is discovered unconscious and severely
injured, with no immediate way of identifying her, Geraldine is prepared with a
possible identification. Sadly, the young woman dies in hospital, but Geraldine
is proved correct, the young woman does prove to be Lucy.
Ian’s friend, Jason, is the prime
suspect, especially because Lucy was discovered close to the house they shared.
The only other potential suspect is a former boyfriend of Lucy who she had
recently met for a catch-up before he was due to emigrate to Australia. However,
the police team soon establish that it was the former boyfriend who had dumped
Lucy, which lessens his motive, and they then discover that the boyfriend had
already left the country when Lucy disappeared, which means that Jason is their
only option.
The police assume that Jason was
jealous because Lucy had met with her former boyfriend but Jason denies this.
Nearly everyone that the police interview insist that Jason is a pleasant,
even-tempered young man and that he adored Lucy, and their relationship was
sound. The only person who contradicts this is a neighbour who makes wild
accusations about a violent quarrel, during which Jason had threatened to kill
Lucy, however Geraldine thinks she is an attention-seeking, unreliable witness.
Nobody can be certain why Lucy was found covered in soil, and they can only
assume that her attacker had attempted to bury her but they do not know how
Lucy escaped from this makeshift grave or the location of the original crime
scene.
Geraldine knows she has to follow
procedure and she can understand why her superior officer, Binita, is focused
on trying to get enough evidence to charge Jason and keeps urging Geraldine to persuade
him to confess. However, Geraldine is a detective who relies heavily on her
instinct and this single-minded pursuit of Jason makes her feel uncomfortable, although
she is aware that her attitude may be influenced by her fear that this
investigation threatens to damage her relationship with Ian, who is not
involved in the case but believes that Jason is innocent.
Even though a few young women have
disappeared from York in the last few months nobody has linked these
disappearances together. Soon after Lucy’s death, another young woman vanishes,
and her student friends insist she would not have gone off without a word.
Geraldine is deeply uncomfortable with her fellow detectives’ attempts to
connect Jason with this new disappearance, added to which her intuition, honed
by years of investigative experience, leads her to suspect that other people
she has encountered during the investigation know more about the disappearances
than they are admitting to the police. As the police pursue this investigation,
more innocent people become collateral damage and one of Geraldine’s colleagues
is taken hostage and is in imminent danger of dying at the hands of a
dangerous, desperate man.
Without Trace is the twentieth book in the series featuring Geraldine
Steel, a detective who often finds her finely-honed intuition in conflict with
the official procedure and the attitudes of her superiors and colleagues. One
unique feature of the Geraldine Steel police procedurals is that the author
takes the reader into the minds of other characters, wrongdoers, suspects and
victims, all of whom add different aspects to the narrative, which means that
the reader knows far more than any of the protagonists. Without Trace is
an intriguing, complex novel, which I thoroughly recommend. ------ Reviewer: Carol Westron Leigh
Russell studied at
the University of Kent gaining a Master’s degree in English and American
literature. Formerly a secondary school English teacher, with the success of
her Geraldine Steel series, Leigh now writes full-time. Her debut novel, Cut
Short , was published in 2009 by No Exit Press in the UK, followed by
Road Closed, Dead End, Death Bed, Stop Dead , Fatal Act and Killer Plan, all
featuring detective Geraldine Steel, and Murder Ring will be published
in 2016. Leigh also writes a spinoff series for Geraldine's sergeant, Ian
Peterson. Cold Sacrifice, Race to Death and Blood Axe. Leigh
recently signed a three-book deal with Thomas and Mercer for a new series
featuring Lucy Hall. Leigh Russell is married with two daughters and lives in
Middlesex.
leighrussell.co.uk/
Carol Westron is
a successful author and a Creative Writing teacher. Her crime novels are set both in contemporary
and Victorian times. Her first
book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013. Since then, she
has
since written 6 further mysteries. Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery
People. To read the interview click on the link below.
https://promotingcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/carol-westron.html www.carolwestron.com
http://carolwestron.blogspot.co.uk/
To read a review of Carol latest book click
on the title
Death and the Dancing Snowman
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