“Accused of grassing up a fellow police officer and driven out of her home and her job, Grace fisher is thankful to ma
ke a new start with the Major Investigation Team in Essex.
A female student is missing, last seen at a popular bar in Colchester. When a second student, also out drinking, is murdered and left grotesquely posed, the case becomes headline news.
Someone is leaking disturbing details to a tabloid reporter. Is it the killer? Or has Grace revealed too much to her friend, a local journalist? Under siege by the media, the enquiry stalls. Grace’s instincts tell her they are following the wrong suspect, but the review team brought in to shake things up is headed by Grace’s old DCI. Who will listen to her now?”
Isabelle Grey’s credentials as a television writer shine through in this crime novel, which kept me on the edge of my seat right to the end. Her characters are gritty and real, and it would be hard not to feel sympathetic towards Detective Sergeant Grace Fisher. She left her old force under a cloud and started a new job in Essex, but she can’t quite shake off the cloud of suspicion that follows her there, and the inner workings of the Major Investigation Team are just as enthralling to read about as the serial killer they are hunting.
For me, the star of Good Girls Don’t Die was Ivo, the cynical hack in search of a story. I found his chapters addictive, and enjoyed the insight into a world we normally see – in crime novels, at least – from the outside. Ivo’s relationships with the officers involved in the investigation added a superb dimension to the structure of this novel, and despite his occasionally underhand techniques, I couldn’t help but like him.
Good Girls Don’t Die is the first in a new crime series featuring DS Grace Fisher. Isabelle Grey has created a fantastic cast of characters, with plenty of intrigue in their back-stories, and I’m already looking forward to meeting them again.
Good Girls Don’t Die, by Isabelle Grey, is published by Quercus on 9th October 2014.