BLOOD ON THE ROCKS

A heavily pregnant police detective is targeted for revenge (Crooked Street, 2017, etc.).

DI Joanna Piercy’s husband, Matthew, is over the moon about the impending birth of their child, who he insists will be a son. Joanna’s considerably more ambivalent herself. Uncomfortable with her pregnancy and unsure of her abilities as a mother, she’s devoted to her job and unhappy when she’s given the case of an old man who vanished from a residential home. The local police have had no luck in finding Zachary Foster a 96-year-old man with dementia who’s been restive over the disappearance of his precious teddy bear. Although Joanna widens the search area, it seems impossible that Zach could have gone far, and she keeps expecting his body to turn up. Her interviews with staff leave her wondering whether Zach was capable of leaving on his own, but there seems no reason why anyone would take him. DS Mike Korpanski always has Joanna’s back, but he enjoys teasing her about her awkward state, and Matt wants to keep her wrapped in cotton wool. In fact, Joanna finds herself increasingly at odds with Matt, who’s furious when she has a bike accident. Neither of them has any inkling of a plan hatched by Kath Whalley, who’s never forgiven Joanna for putting her in prison. Now that she’s free again, she plans to kill Joanna and the baby with some help from her sidekicks Fifi, Debs, and Chi, all of them deathly afraid of Kath’s violent, uncontrollable temper, which can leave the object of her dislike crippled or dead. A chance meeting between Chi and a worker at the residential home sets Kath’s plot and Joanna’s case on a collision course.

An absorbing, character-driven police procedural with some provocative twists.