Shot in the Dark by Anna Britton is a police procedural novel where the main character is DS Gabe Martin. When the body of a young woman is found, hidden beneath a tree and possibly savaged by a dog, Gabe takes the lead on what will be her first murder case in charge. She is partnered by DI Juliet Stern who appears initially to be cold and uncooperative.
The body was found on a local estate belonging to a rich family. The investigators have to ascertain how it got there and whether anyone from the family or any of their staff were responsible. Things don’t go easily because everyone seems to be lying to them. Although there seems at first to be no motivation for the killing, Gabe and Juliet uncover a story of trauma and abuse spread over generations.
The story is told in a standard narrative but broken up with transcripts of telephone calls, emails and other messages. Often these snippets reveal more to the reader than the detectives know about the case, but they also reveal what is happening in the personal lives of Gabe and Juliet and the secrets they are keeping from each other. The murder is resolved by the end of the book but there is a cliffhanger – usually I don’t like it when authors do this but by this time I was invested in the characters and I wanted to know what happened.
I enjoyed this story a lot. In fact, I loved it so much that I immediately bought the next one in the series, Close to the Edge which follows up on a lot of the personal story from the first book and the fallout from the investigation – I would read these books in order for clarity. I now have the third book Left in the Ashes ready to read.
