Fatal Decision

The Freeman Files #1

by Ted Tayler

He thought he'd left his life as a detective behind. But the past has a deadly way of catching up.

Three years after losing his wife, retired DI Gus Freeman is drawn back into the force to lead a new cold case unit. His first investigation: the brutal murder of Daphne Tolliver, a widow killed during her morning walk through the seemingly peaceful Wiltshire woods.

As Freeman and his team peel back layers of small-town secrets, they discover a web of hidden relationships and festering grudges. But the deeper they dig, the more dangerous their investigation becomes.

With the killer still at large and watching their every move, Freeman must confront not only a cunning adversary but the demons of his own past—before another life is claimed.

In this picturesque town, every silence has a story—and not everyone wants the truth revealed.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Ebooks, Procedural, British Literature, Amazon

219 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 13, 2019

About the author

Ted Tayler is the international best-selling indie author of the Freeman Files and Phoenix series. Ted lives in the English West country, where his stories are based. He was born in 1945 and has been married to Lynne since 1971. They have three children and four grandchildren.

His thought-provoking mysteries appeal to readers of Sally Rigby, Joy Ellis, Pauline Rowson, and Faith Martin. His action-packed thrillers are a must for fans of Mark Dawson and J C Ryan.

Gus Freeman’s cold case investigations are carried out with reasoned deduction rather than bursts of frantic action. In each of the 24 books, unsolved murders are accompanied by romance, humour, and country life. The core message in the 12 Phoenix novels is that criminals should pay for their crimes. Unfortunately, the current system fails to deliver the correct punishment, so Phoenix helps redress the balance.

Reviews

[Linda Strong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gus Freeman has been a retired Detective for 3 years. His old boss wants Gus to head up a new department, essentially investigating cold cases that have never been solved.

He wants him to start with the death of Daphne Tolliver. Ten years ago, while taking her dog for a walk, the elderly widow was murdered. At the time of her death, there were no suspects ever identified.

He and his new team are charged with doing whatever it takes to locate the killer. Gus is an old fashioned detective, and although he might miss his solitary life, he's eager to get back to work.

The book starts with the life and death of Daphne. She was well-liked and respected. No one can say why anyone would want her dead.

It's a mystery, for sure, and Gus and his team will have to work hard to get at the truth.

It's well written with a wide array of quirky residents, close friends, and fair employers. Gus seems to be warm-hearted, a bit humorous, and a little on the shy side when he's ready to get out in the world for the first time since his wife died.

I look forward to the further adventures of Gus and his team.

Many thanks to the author for the digital copy of this first book in a new series. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

[Peta-Dee Rawlinson · Rating 2 out of 5]

An enjoyable and very light read. Quite a basic storyline with me guessing the murderer very early on in the story. I can't imagine anybody not guessing to be honest. However, in the dark times we currently find ourselves in this was just an easy and unchallenging read.

[Joan]

Struggled a little with this. The first 10% wss just one long and somewhat pointless info dump about Daphne’s life and the actual 'cold case' so easily solved I wondered why the initial detectives had not managed to work out who did it!

[Sheridan Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this on Audible and found that the terrible monotone drone of the narrators voice really took from the story itself, leaving it a very tedious experience.
The story itself was good, but the narration very much spoilt it.. it would've been much better with a different narrator.

[John Manchester · Rating 5 out of 5]

The character of the protagonist Gus Freeman is well drawn. Widowed, retired, but called back to service on a cold case, he shows his younger colleagues how it's done. As with come of my favorite TV shows, I enjoyed this glimpse into life in the UK. We Americans share a language with the Brits (more or less), but our cultures are really different. I look forward to more Freeman Files.

[M.R. Cullen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fatal Decision was a fast read. It revolved around a retired police detective, Gus Freeman, who is roped into heading up a Crime Review Team to look into cold case files of local murders. Overall I enjoyed the book, although it seemed to meander along for the first 50-60% of the story and then rush towards the conclusion so fast I almost felt like I got whiplash.

The character of Gus Freeman is a strong lead and I rather like Vera and Kassi. The other characters in the CRT don't have much in the way of development yet, but as this is the first in the series I imagine they'll grow and develop further as the other books are written.

All-in-all Fatal Decision is an enjoyable story with a good murder mystery that is summed up a little too quickly. I'll be back for other books in the Freeman Files Series. This story lays the foundations for what could be a solid police series.

[Kathy Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read. I had a little trouble liking Gus because he came off as so narcissistic.

[Books Shelf · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-rounded noir crime novel.

A retired detective is called back to solve a cold case - a classic plot that never gets old!
All the characters in the book are well fleshed out, but at times the descriptions of all of them, the places they go, and the irrelevant to the story things they do can be a bit ... over the top. I like a well-described scene, but there were parts of Fatal Decision that were a bit too focused on setting the scene than on the actual story.

Anyways, a great first book of the Freeman Files series.

Steven
BooksShelf Reviewer

[Terric853 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in rural England, this book is about a cold case murder that happened 10 years prior to the time frame. Former DI Gus Freeman is contacted by an old friend who wants him to work with a team of young and up-and-coming officers to solve cold case murders. Gus had retired three years ago, but has been at loose ends after his wife died six months into his retirement. He spends most of his time at his allotment, tending his vegetables.

The case is the death of Daphne Tolliver, a widow who was liked by all who knew her. She was bludgeoned to death one evening while out walking her dog near a local forested park. A witness saw her talking with a man prior to her death and someone else claimed they saw someone running from the scene. Gus had a reputation for being "dogged" when he was employed and his superiors are hoping that tenacity and his unique insight to human nature (he is a huge fan of Kierkegaard) will quickly solve the case.

I liked the characters and they police work described. I couldn't see how Gus solved the crime within a week until he explained his thought process to his police manager, Geoff Mercer. Had his thought process not been such a surprise, I would have given this 4 stars, as I really did enjoy the plot and characters.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slightly laborious start but very good once it got going. I’ll look for more by this author.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

actual rating 3.75 ⭐

[Samantha herbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great story.

I loved this book. It was very life like. I enjoyed the characters and the story was very believable. The book kept me glued to it and I found myself wanting more. Great crime thriller. A must read.

[Carol Holder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. Gus and his team I found pulled together as one. I like the humour. It was enjoyable reading

[dianne Snow-Posner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A. Ok A bit slow

I liked the book. Wasn’t the best but I won’t give it away. It was good reading as well. Well written. Hope you enjoy it

[Dan A. Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fatal Decision

Nice, clean procedural. This is Avery fast read. It is a good story and written well enough to keep your interest.

[Linda Rowlett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only finished this book because I am stuck at home with no water. The house is finally starting to warm up because electricity is staying on.

Gus Freeman is returning from retirement to work cold case files. The dialogue is stilted. The grammar is far from perfect. The case is solved with giant leaps of logic. Gus’s team is left going, “What happened? How did he figure it out?”

I won’t be reading any more books in this series.

[Sherri Power · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable book.

The characters are ones you want to know better. You want to know if the team can keep going on their quest for answers on more cold cases. Bring them on!

[Sandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious

Quite boring. Slow and tedious to plod through. Not a cohesive story line. Too much rambling on trying to give unnecessary background.

[Michael Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first volume in a series of twenty-four murder mysteries of the police procedural variety, and it’s . . . , well, let’s be generous and say it has problems. Gus Freeman is sixty, a retired Detective Inspector in the south of England, and he and his wife had all sorts of exciting plans to travel, but then she died sudden less than a year later and he’s been in messy-bachelor seclusion ever since. The only thing that helps hold his moroseness at bay is the hours he spends every day gardening on his allotment. Then his old Assist. Chief Constable calls him in and offers him a spot running their new cold cases unit. They don’t get many homicides in their rural and small-town district district, but they’ve been solving far too few cases even so, and the ACC badly needs to improve their public image. Gus is kind of an oddball, but he had good reputation on the job as a detective. And he won’t get his badge back, he’ll be a “consultant.” but he’ll have a small team of young detectives, so he figures what the hell. Maybe the work will give his life some purpose and meaning again

Now we jump back to four years earlier, when Daphne Tolliver, a 68-year-old widow with only her small dog for company, was murdered only a short distance from a busy public park -- a number of locals heard her screams and came running -- but the killer got away and the investigation went nowhere. The ACC tells Gus that needs to be his first case. Gus leads his up-and-coming young team through the process of investigating a murder years after the fact, which is interesting, but this is also where the problems start.

First, Gus’s investigative style is defined by his reliance on his intuition, his leaps to conclusions that the evidence only hints at (if that), and his sense of the dramatic in spring things on his own team. This is 1950s TV-style police work and has very little to do with how a police investigation actually works.

Second, it’s only been five years since he retired, but apparently things have changed a great deal in that short time when it comes to the place of women offices and detectives on the force, and what used to pass for casual sexist humor in the incident room would now be cause for a formal complaint. Gus has to watch his step, but he’s never been a misogynist. On the other hand, when it appears the killer in the Tolliver case may have been a “rent boy” -- a young gay male selling sex -- the whole team talks about “the typical characteristics of a twink.” Which says something, I think, about the author.

Also, Gus seems to spend a great deal of time re-explaining things in great detail to the the various younger people working under him, and also to the victim's family members, and to every witness they dig up. Over, and over, and over. My fingers kept itching for an editorial blue pencil. One could cut probably a quarter to the text and never lose a thing in the actual story. It's sort of thing one expects from a first novel, but Tayler had several previous series to his credit before he eve started this one. I don’t know that I would have the patience to pick up the next volume.

[Scot · Rating 4 out of 5]

First in a series. A retired British police detective, Gus Freeman, age 61, is called back as a consultant to help try to clear some cold cases as the local constabulary continues to undergo austerity cuts in a changing 21st century British culture, The protagonist had only been retired for six months when he lost his wife Tess to a sudden, unexpected death, and a creature of ritual, he now finds himself adrift and alone, taking solace in working a local community gardening allotment.

This has so many details of daily life and went so slowly that at first I didn't like it. Increasingly as I read along I came to identify with Gus and root for him. His British sense of humor is different from mine, but I am in his age bracket and recently retired, and I appreciate his sense of how a changing workplace can make one nostalgic for earlier practices and accepted procedures, even as one welcomes the inclusiveness of diversity awareness and bonding.

We get the details of what he has for breakfast, what he decides to wear to work, what he plans to do in the gardening today, but we also learn from him, along with the new team he oversees, how to become a better police detective and all the desk work they actually do, too. His team of three underlings includes one son of a corrupt detective, one motorcycle cop dealing with life now in a wheelchair after a chase accident, and a feisty young biracial female intern with a zest for colorful clothing. Other supporting characters include a rich, sexy widow who might be a new love interest for Gus and a cheeky Goth girl with blue hair and tattoos who is the office assistant at police headquarters. This first cold case involves the murder ten years ago of a sweet old lady who was walking her little dog along a community path through a patch of woods. Everyone in town loved her. It starts slow, but by the end of the novel I was looking forward to the next installment, which begins immediately after this one ends.

[Jerry B · Rating 3 out of 5]

We’re new to British author Ted Taylor, who’s apparently been busy cranking out crime stories during presumably his retirement, consisting of some 15 or 20 novels all published in the latest decade. We herein sampled his debut of retired DI Gus Freeman, who has been coaxed back as a police consultant to head a small cold case team. They do well with their first case, the murder of an elder widow unsolved for roughly ten years.

The story is a fairly straightforward police procedural. Like most cold case tales, it mostly features dredging up old witnesses to fetch new clues from sometimes distant memories. While the progress of the investigation was paced well enough to sustain moderate suspense, we felt this relatively short eBook (less than 200 hundred pages) ended rather abruptly with somewhat inadequate justification for the brilliant reveal by our protagonist. We were probably sufficiently entertained to try another – there are now eight of these tales, apparently all produced within about a year.

[Amy Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful new book from Taylor

Taylor pens a magnificent story in Fatal Decision, a book in his new series The Freeman Files. If Taylor writes it, I read it. I read all of his books from his other series, The Phoenix Series. I was very anxious to read this one when requested. Gus is a great character. He's a recent widower, and retired police. Gus is a multi-dimensional character, that is not only called back to help solve a crime, but also dealing with his own personal issues. It is always a joy to read this author's stories. This author is not just a writer but a great storyteller. Magnificent story, kept this reader turning the pages. A definite attention grabber. The thrills and intrigue is written clearly and the characterizations are engrossing. Love this story. It's a great story to follow and try to figure out what will happen next. I look forward to reading more by this author, especially in this series. This book is a definite recommendation by Amy's Bookshelf Reviews.

[Doug Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Six months after Gus Freeman retired from his position as a police detective, his beloved wife died suddenly. At age 61, he has to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. So he welcomes the offer he receives from his old employers in 2018 to come back and lead a team of four that will investigate unsolved murders.

The team's first case is a murder from 2008. Daphne Tolliver, a senior citizen, was struck with a rock while she was walking her dog. Why would someone kill a woman who seemed to be loved by all she knew? The team soon learns important details unavailable to the original investigators and puts them together to solve the cold case in record time. This is an engaging mystery with a fast-moving plot and well-drawn characters.

[Birgit · Rating 4 out of 5]

First in the series about retired Detective Freeman, and I loved it. Freeman, retired, is asked by his old boss to come back in a civilian consultant capacity, to try and solve cold cases, as with new technology, some of them might get solved. Together with a young team of three, Freeman tackles their first case, and meticulously retraces every single step the original crime units have taken, finding and following new avenues.
The book shows step by step how meticulously the team follow and interpret clues; it's not just adventure and car races, it is a lot of footwork and sorting out the red herrings.
Loved it, and glad I have the 2nd one in this series already lined up.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This widowed and retired detective, spends his days puttering around his "allotment" (British for garden plot) when he is asked to come back and head a unit meant only to try and solve cold murder cases. His team is picked for him and he's given a 10 year old case which had no suspects.
My only complaint is that there are lots of British phrases and I could only guess at their meaning. Sometimes I thought they were mistakes, but...I couldn't be sure.
It was a good read and nicely paced story.

[Antigone Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gus, a retired detective, is tapped to head a cold case unit as a civilian consultant. The first case is the shocking murder of a much loved elderly widow. With a small team to assist, Gus is determined to unmask the killer. But The clues are old and the killer savvy. Recently widowed, Gus is contemplating re-entering the dating scene.

This was an entertaining book. It started a bit slow and read almost like a cozy mystery initially. But it picked up as Gus got down to business. I did identify the killer early on but it was fun watching it unravel. Good read.

[Ellie Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

It might sound strange to call a cold case police procedural charming, but I really was charmed by this book. The West Country rural setting was nicely observed along with everyday village life.
Former DI Gus Freeman's initial reluctance to leave his beloved allotment and return to work was written with pathos and humour. The characters for the ongoing series were nicely set up, especially Gus' small team, and the investigation into the murder of the blameless Daphne was thorough and decisive. This was a very nice change of pace!

[Michelle Wilson]

A retired policeman, with time on his hands is recruited to solve cold cases. I know there are lots of them around. But Gus is an old fashion man but really of this time. He can ask the female recruit to see to the coffee with a twinkle in his eye. With the help of modern methods and devices and old fashioned police work he solves his first case that was a 10years old murder. Will there be more?

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something about this book is is very comfortable.
The location, settings and basic characters were all likable.
Would like to see fuller characters in next books.
The plot was a good one and the story line followed a nice course.
Once again the reader knows almost nothing of the team that Gus directs.
After reading a few pages in the next of the series I was glad to see the plot line and links to the first book continue .

[Jim Bean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great concept

The story identifies a wonderful approach to solve some cold cases. The cases have sat awhile so when they are reopened some of the earlier conceived thoughts have been put aside. After a period a better analysis can be started with no preconceived ideas. Plus, using a retired officier of the lawis certainly a great resource. The story was great as well. I look forward to reading other cases for Freeman