I enjoyed the first two books in this series, and yes I am going to suggest you read them first, so I was quite excited to get my mitts on this, CSI Ally Dymond's third outing. And I am happy to say that I enjoyed this one just as much.
So, we start with the death of a young man, Kieran Deveney, whose body was found on Devil's Rock, a remote, isolated island, off the coast of Devon. Long story short, eventually two people confess to the murder, both insisting they acted alone. This throws up a bit of a dilemma as if both confess, neither can be charged or eventually convicted. The only thing left for the police to do is to try harder to get physical, irrefutable, evidence to prove which one was responsible. To do this, Ally, along with fellow CSI Jake, will need to visit the island. A place she has avoided since the death of her father. An event which is even more prevalent in her thoughts these days as her father's partner has recently returned along with the boat they shared and which is named for her. This reunion also kicks up more stuff for her and her mother.
Anyway, along with her colleague, she travels to the island determined to put her ghosts aside and do the job she loves, even though it doesn't always love her back. But, as you can probably guess, remote island, well it's bound to get cut off by the weather, and you'd be right! Stranding Ally and Jake, and making their job almost impossible. But it soon becomes apparent that the weather is not all they should fear...
I did enjoy this series. It's nice to have a book of this genre but from the perspective of the CSI, rather than the Police. Puts a different spin on things. One thing I am not so keen on is main characters' lives having such an impact on the stories being told and I think in this case it went a bit above and beyond what I would have preferred. But it was an interesting story nonetheless and did old my attention nicely all the way through despite the occasional eye-roll along the way!
We had all the usual twists and turns you'd expect, the most of them I didn't see coming. The plot was interesting and intriguing, as well as being original, what with the two confessions and the way it all panned out in the end.
The characters were good, Ally has been given a rum deal in the past so it would be nice if she could manage to pout it all in the past and move on with her life. She does deserve that, at least. There is also a good partnership developing with Jake and I am quite excited to see how that develops in the next book.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.