I received a copy of The Fourth Friend via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
In the third book of Joy Ellis’ DI Rowan Jackman & DS Marie Evans series, Suzanne Holland has disappeared from her home leaving behind a bloody room but no other clues. Almost a year and half later, the case remains unsolved. During this time, her husband, along with his four best friends fly to Amsterdam for a bachelor party but their plane goes down. There is only one survivor, Carter McLean, a police detective. He is left with an enormous amount of survivor’s guilt and work is his coping mechanism. After six months on desk duty, he returns to full duties but some of his colleagues aren’t sure it’s a good idea.
The Suzanne Holland case is still open but, due to her late husband being one of Carter’s best friends who died in the plane crash, Carter is not allowed to work that case. Instead, he is assigned to work on a stalking case. The victim is the niece of their boss (and apparently Carter’s arch-enemy) Superintendent Ruth Crooke. While he works that case, he is “visited” by the “ghosts” of his four friends who each have unfinished business. Carter goes on a mission to complete their last wishes. He eventually confides in Marie but she, understandably, worries about his mental state.
As the disappearance and stalking cases are investigated, I found it more and more difficult to stay interested. At times, the book is slow, especially the investigation into Suzanne Holland’s disappearance. There is a lot of constant worry about Carter from Marie and from Carter’s psychiatrist, Laura Archer. After awhile, it gets repetitive and distracting. If they are that worried about him having a mental breakdown, he probably shouldn’t be on duty, should he?
Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where a book just didn’t work for me. It’s my first book in the series but I don’t think reading the first two would have made me like The Fourth Friend any better. It doesn’t have the pacing I like and the characters are hardly described except for Carter. There is a character list at the end of the book with more details about the characters but I didn’t realize it was there until I finished the book so it doesn’t really help. I think it should be at the beginning of the book. I did not connect with any of the characters and I also constantly found my mind wandering while reading the book. I just couldn’t remain interested. The ending is not predictable but it is certainly awful. I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this series.