Das einsame Mädchen

Hidden Norfolk #1

by J.M. Dalgliesh, Anna-Christina Mainhart (Translator)

The darkest secrets often hide in plain sight…

When a body is found on a lonely cliff top path, the angelic face of a murdered teenager lies facing the rising sun. Strangled by the hands of an unknown killer, it falls to DI Tom Janssen and his fledgling team to find out how she came to be there. Destined for a career in medicine, one to rival that of her parents, Holly Bettany’s future was as bright as it had been privileged. Seemingly, all that could threaten this promising teenager’s life was Holly herself.

In an idyllic coastal setting, Janssen must unpick the layers of deceit within a close-knit community that threaten to reveal scandal at every turn. Holly had a secret… and she knew the secrets of others…

Who was prepared to kill in order to keep them hidden? What happens if another comes to know what she did? One thing is certain… a brutal killer has no boundaries…

Set within the mysterious beauty of coastal Norfolk, this fast-paced British detective novel is a dark murder mystery with a little humour, one that will keep you guessing until the very end when the final shocking twist is revealed.

One Lost Soul is the explosive debut in a new series of crime thrillers from the million selling British author, JM Dalgliesh, the author of the Dark Yorkshire books, perfect for fans of LJ Ross, JD Kirk, Angela Marsons, Joy Ellis and Damien Boyd.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Ebooks, Suspense, Mystery Thriller

302 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 5, 2019

About the author

Jason Dalgliesh was born on the south coast of England and grew up in Hampshire, UK. He has worked in the power transmission industry, the retail sector, call centres and as a night-owl in a bakery. His greatest challenge of all is ongoing, as a stay at home parent.

He is presently writing the Dark Yorkshire crime-series, featuring DI Nathaniel Caslin.

The novels are set in Yorkshire, England. The medieval City of York is Caslin's home town and the plot lines take in some of the UK's most rugged and beautiful landscapes, from the windswept North Sea coastline and across the stunning North York Moors.

Penned in the style of the Crime Noir genre, Caslin is a deep character, as flawed as he is brilliant, battling his own demons as much as those he is pitted against. Readers who enjoy gritty, atmospheric thrillers will find the series a must read.

Having spent time abroad, Jason has lived and worked in various parts of England as well as the Scottish Highlands. He currently resides in the East Riding, with his wife and two young children.

You can reach him via his website at www.jmdalgliesh.com

You can also follow him on social media;
facebook.com/jmdalglieshauthor
twitter.com/darkyorkshire

Reviews

[Debbye · Rating 2 out of 5]

It pains me to give this just 2 stars because the story and the characters were OK. The writing, however -- grammar, punctuation, sentence structure -- was atrocious. I'm actually surprised I was able to get to the end. If people are going to self-publish or whatever this author did, they really REALLY need to get themselves a copy editor and learn the difference between "whose" and "who's". Among about a thousand other things. I'm not a total stickler, but this was so bad I had to read some sentences more than once to figure out what the author was saying. He has published several books, so this will likely fall on deaf ears, but I won't be reading another one.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The body of the pretty young girl overlooking the ocean on a cliff path was shocking – it almost looked like she was sleeping. When DI Tom Janssen was called to the site on a rare day off, he knew he’d need to call in another Inspector. When Tamara Greeve arrived, Tom was a little surprised to see a woman but the two of them, plus Eric from the station immediately started their investigation into Holly’s death.

As they searched for answers, they discovered that much was not as it seemed. There were plenty of people in the small town who were hiding secrets, including Holly herself. Tom and Tamara played the game, all the while getting a little bit further ahead. But would they find the killer before someone else lost their life?

One Lost Soul by J.M. Dalgliesh is the 1st in the Hidden Norfolk Murder Mystery series and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Fast paced, with plenty of twists (I picked the wrong person for the killer!) lots of beautiful scenery and a great team in Janssen and Greeve. An excellent police procedural which I highly recommend.

[Serge · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Thinking back to his own childhood, perhaps that wasn’t so odd. As much as your thoughts and feelings towards the world could be shaped by your peers, more often than not it was your family who nurtured your world view."

When teenage Holly Bettany is found dead after a night-time beach party, detective Tom Janssen is tasked with finding out who was behind this crime which snuffed out the life of this promising young girl. Aided by detective Tamara, the ambitious and outspoken woman in charge of the case, we delve into the dark secrets hiding in the town of Norfolk.

I am quite sad to say that this book actually threw me into a reading slump, because despite having an interesting premise, its flaws outweighed the good potential it had. This book felt like an amateur first draft, and the writing was too weak, almost felt too mechanical and monotonous. We do know that detective/crime stories are meant to get our brains working, and there should definitely be some form of analytical component to the story when it belongs to this genre, but the entire writing style lacked life. The characters felt too one-dimensional and flat, all of them giving off the similar impression of "looking polished on the outside while having deep dark secrets tucked within", but they all read the same to me, with nothing truly distinguishing them from one another. They lacked soul and realism, and it felt like this story wasn't even a fully fleshed out one, but an idea created by the author, not pumped with the necessary life a story needs to feel real. The author seems to do a lot of telling instead of showing, and due to this lack of life, it was hard for me to feel angry or sad or happy for anyone.

In short, this book was just a collection of endless rambling that ended with a sudden chain of convenient events that led us to the eventual murderer. Even that section of the book felt overdone and even comical, with the entire weather shifting from a clear sunny day into a stormy and foggy mess just when the final conflict is taking place, only for it to immediately revert back to being sunny once it was all over.

We don't even get closure on the rest of the hanging story lines, including very severe situations including sexual assault and various cover-ups for horrible deeds. Everything seems to be left hanging in the air once the main culprit of Holly's murder is discovered, and even that was poorly executed, since we don't even get to see the culprit actually speak or say anything, taking away their perspective, not fully being able to delve into their motives from a subjective lens, and instead, we are just mechanically told what they were through the thought processes of the detectives. If I'm reading a crime story, I want to deep-dive into the murderer's thoughts and intentions, so this definitely wasn't enough for me.

I would have also liked to feel more sorry for Holly, because what happened to her was tragic, but her single point of view was so blandly written, and the rest of the book did a lousy job making Holly feel like a human being and instead, it made her an idea people are trying to solve a puzzle around, so I found myself struggling to feel any emotional impact.

Like I said earlier, this book which was supposed to take me not more than 3 days to read, ended up dragging on for around 9 days, because I just didn't feel like reading it. This is a 1.75 star book for me but I'm rounding it up to 2 because the potential was great, and the actual idea is very gripping, but the execution was terrible in my opinion. I don't know if I can bring myself to read the remaining works in this series, but this just wasn't the book for me.

[Ellie Spencer (catching up from hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded down from 3.5 stars ⭐️
Thrillers are my favourite genre of books. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be one that stays with me.

It follows detectives Tom and Tamara as they try to uncover who murdered Holly.

The book was enjoyable enough, but for me, it wasn’t one to write home about. I often found my attention wandering when I was trying to read it. That being said, there was a small twist at the end that I didn’t see coming and which improved my rating. But the rest of the book just felt like an average thriller, there didn’t seem to be anything different from an other crime novel. I also felt the killer was predictable (for me personally).

I got this for free with prime reading, so for anyone who enjoys thrillers and has prime I would recommend giving it a go as you may love it!

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent detective story ... 3 interesting detectives working together ... multiple criminals only one of whom is the murderer

[Beth Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am also surprised by the high ratings. I thought the plot was okay, but the writing and copy editing were terrible. Words (even a character's name) are misspelled and there are grammatical errors all over the place. I was excited to try a new English mystery writer, but this one really disappointed.

[Ann Roam · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book read like a first draft with absolutely no editing: poor sentence structure, confusing noun pronoun agreement and a short, staccato sentence style that drove me nuts by the end. Tom Jansson is a dull, milksop detective with zero personality. He’s always mulling over the case, but we are not privy to his thoughts, so who cares? Eric, his sidekick, has a lot of deep thoughts that go nowhere. Tamara, the head detective, has a crap attitude and an obsession with thinking about her fiancé, Richard, who she doesn’t really like and will not end up marrying. The plot is, well, tedious. The resolution is confusing. The motive for the original murder is left hanging, because all Tom, Eric and Tamara have is a bunch of speculative mumbo jumbo. Unless they can get a confession, the murderer will only be charged with attempted murder. Just weird.

[Lisa Kusel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kindle.

This was a bare-bones, rather dryly-written police investigation into the murder of a young woman.

I was immediately taken by DI Tom Janssen, the lead investigator. The author set me up to believe that we would get to know Tom, but little was shared beyond other characters remarking that Tom kept things close to the vest, or the way Tom raised his eyebrows was so telling. Who is Tom?

This non-character development played out with the other officers working the case as well--Eric and Tamara. We are given tiny glimpses into their lives, but they remained unformed.

The suspects in the case were a mixed lot. I appreciate how young Mark, who is on the spectrum, was so gently depicted. The rest of the cast were barely fleshed out. And when the killer (and their motive) were finally revealed, I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it.

Unfortunately, I won't be continuing on with this series.

[Mandi Greenwood · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book had wonderful potential ... until I started reading it. And then I could barely see the plot, obscured as it was behind the excruciating grammar, poor character growth, and lack of decent editing. I had to give it up a third of the way through because it was almost impossible to read. A shame, because some quality editing would have made all the difference.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Rounded Down. It’s a well written short DCI novel that flowed well. The story was predictable, huge foreshadowing, however enough happens that you may forget about it. As for a mystery it’s pretty forgettable. There’s very little character development about DC Tom or DCI Tamara. It’s almost as is this is a Prequel?

I’ve heard great things about this author so I’d love to read some of his other books.

[Frances · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm astonished by the four and five star ratings. The plot is okay but the writing is poor by any measure. Surely an author should at least have a command of basic grammar? Dalgleish seems bamboozled by sentence structure and too much of the prose is ugly, repetitive or confusing. He also has a train spotter-ish habit of pedantically stating the obvious and fixating on the dullest of mundane and, invariably, irrelevant details in a way that smothers any spark of tension. For example: "They passed over a large roundabout where multiple routes appeared to intersect with each other..." (Not one of those roundabouts!) "A small lorry rumbled by, the branding denoting it as one making deliveries to small food shops." Add boring police officers, unconvincing locals, stilted dialogue, the incorrect assertion that Holkham has cliffs and bizarre allusions to Norwich as a hotspot for the constabulary's finest brains and the end-result is as atmospheric as a paint by numbers landscape. I stuck with things to find out who did it... then discovered that the clues had been laid too early and I'd already guessed. Good luck to Dalgleish but I won't be coming back for more.

[miss a j howard · Rating 1 out of 5]

Banal drivel

I have never read or left reviews before. Thank you to the other one star reviewers for reassuring me I have not lost my grasp of the English language and the shocking grammar, syntax and construct sits with a poor editor. The woeful writing, vocabulary and plot sits with the author. I half expected Holly to have killed herself to get out of the farce early.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not worth finishing

This is a book with no believable characters. The responses of each character to the events of the story are odd. There is an attempt at providing an internal dialogue but it is just bizarre. The story is not interesting and the language used to tell the story is strained. The author appears to be trying to impress in his use of language but it reads as if it has been written by a teenager trying to impress his English teacher.

[Kerie Mooney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite enjoyed that it kept you gripped till the end to find out ' who dunnit ' but was disappointed by the result !!!! This didn't seem the right ending to me .....

[Tracy Crawford · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea for this story held promise, but the writing and the police characters really held it back. I read two-thirds and skimmed the rest. There was so much description of the police characters’ thoughts about each other and themselves. None of these thoughts developed their characters or the investigation. It was just a lot of weak introspection. The murderer was no surprise either. Bleh.

[Kim Russell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Needs a good editor

I was excited at another crime thriller set in Norfolk, but disappointed at the poor grammar and punctuation, the stilted use of language, and that the writing was mostly tell not show.

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

An easy to read crime novel. Rather predictable but an enjoyable read. Set in North Norfolk, which is what attracted me to it. Will probably read another in the series if I need some light crime relief.

[Scott Lyons · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. A solid detective story about a 17 year old found murdered in a small coastal town. Detective Tom Janssen is navigating the clues to find her killer.

For me it lacked a little flashiness I guess. No big surprises. The characters were all a little blah. In the end I pretty much saw it coming. My other issue was the main character, Tom, comes across as mysterious… but for me… he was too mysterious and I wasn’t as invested in his story as I’d like.

With that being said… I’d like to read the next book in the series. I liked the short chapters and I liked the pace of the book. I’m hoping to get some character development in the next book.

[Chad James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bookish Books Reading Challenge

[Sam “My Cosy Book Nook” · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I need to stop entering book giveaways.

Don't get me wrong, I think they're a wonderful thing. I really appreciate that authors, who have put a great deal of effort into writing their works, getting them published and want to be able to make a living from the sales, go to the trouble of signing a copy of their book and sending them to the likes of me, for nothing. It's thanks to giveaways that I read my first novels by Rona Halsall, Sally Rigby and Simon McCleave.

The problem I have is that none of the books in question really did it for me. And now I have to review my signed copy of One Lost Soul, which didn't either.

Let's start with what I did like. The setting. The North Norfolk coast isn't an area that I know well at all, but I want to pay it a visit now. I loved the descriptions of the beaches, the villages, the close-knit communities.

I also rather liked the relatively gentle pace of the book. At the beginning, a pretty and seemingly popular sixth-form student is found strangled in some sand dunes, and it's down to the local police to find out who by, and why. The number of potential suspects is small, but everyone seems to have something to hide. It's much more of a whodunnit than a thriller. Which is fine. A crime novel doesn't have to be about a serial killer, with new bodies appearing every few pages. The only problem is that without the sense that someone else's life is in danger if the investigators don't get a move on, a key ingredient is missing. There's no suspense.

That's ok if it can be compensated for by something else. I'm thinking here about Susie Steiner's Manon Bradshaw novels, in which the psychology and character study elements are done so well that I devoured them without even noticing the relative simplicity of the storylines until later. But One Lost Soul doesn't really have that aspect either. The main character is a detective inspector called Tom Janssen, who in Chapter One is at the beach with a lady called Alice and a little girl called Sapphire. Who are they? How do they fit into his life? We really don't find out. For the rest of the book, they don't feature at all. It's only in one of the closing chapters that we're told that he lives on a boat. Is that supposed to intrigue me enough to want to immediately buy the next book in the series? If so, it isn't enough. Sorry.

It doesn't have to be this way. Look at just about any Angela Marsons book, in which the pace is frantic and the body count high. Yet she still manages to squeeze in some short chapters about the main characters' home lives, and some lightweight humour and banter about something entirely unrelated before returning to the main plot.

And I'm afraid I got quite angry at the author's description of Asberger's Syndrome as an "illness". I suppose it's a better word than "disability", but not much. For the record, it's a condition of the brain that, because the human brain is so incredibly complicated, affects different people in different ways and at different levels of severity. But these can include difficulties in interpreting body language or other forms of non-verbal communication, an intolerance of too much noise or too many different sounds and perhaps a tendency to be affected by anxiety. But none of these points mean that the person affected needs to be a social outcast, as the character in this and far too many other fictional books is portrayed. Look at the naturalist Chris Packham and Anne Hegarty from the TV show 'The Chase', both of whom had achieved huge success in their careers and whose conditions would have remained publicly unknown had they not chosen to reveal them for their own reasons.

Sorry about the rant, but I just think that if an author is going to introduce a condition like this into one of his or her books, it needs to be much better researched and described.

Had this book been by an author that was known to me, I'm not sure I could give it more than two stars. As it is, because it's by a new author and the first in the series, I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and award a third one.

The trouble is though that with my 'to read' list already stretching well into next year, the most likely way that I'd read the next in the series is if someone gave it to me. And I really don't want the author to do that again. I hope that if he does give away any more of his books, they're to people who enjoy them more than I did.

[Brian Deegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

1st Book of J. M. Dalgliesh's I have read. Good Start

[Anthony Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jansen and His New DCI catch a mysterious case.

Young Holly is at a party at the beach, where she should be getting tutoring away. She is with classmates, and a friend that she has somewhat become close to.

And then, her body is found on a piece of beach, no shoes, no bag, just her body.

As the Police pair search all the players that could be involved, you never know that a killer could be standing right in front of you.

First book in the series and it has its moments of slogging along. Hopefully, book 2 picks up a decent pace, and more thrills, mystery and character development.

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

One Lost Soul Is another enthralling book from JM Dalgliesh

While avidly and hopefully waiting for a Yorkshire Murders Book 7, I decided to read Book 1 of the Norfolk Murders. I can assure you I was not disappointed. Two distinctly different detectives working together to solve the saddest of crimes. As expected of the author nothing is straightforward and there are many twists along the way. A truly great book that kept me gripped from the beginning. The only problem is, I finished it so quickly I now have to wait for book 2.

[Susan Rotroff · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the most badly written book I have ever read -- so much so that it's often difficult to follow actions and conversations. I am amazed that something of this standard could be published. Someone needs to explain to this author and his editor about dangling participles and how they can create truly hilarious scenarios. Several per page, in this case. Not recommended!

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a free borrow on kindle. It was good enough that I finished it, but at times lacked good editing. There are so many better books in this genre, I am not inclined to continue reading the series.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suspenseful

[Dlmrose · Rating 3 out of 5]

3+

[Julia Buckley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good setting and premise, with a likeable main character. I found the plot slow-moving, though, and I was distracted by dangling modifiers throughout.

[Ruhani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it me or was this a bit slow moving? I'm returning to new British Police Procedurals and started with M W Craven's Puppet Show which was outstanding. This seemed slightly tame in comparison. I guess it is unfair to compare them because obviously this was very much a local murder rather than a hunt for a serial killer. Anyway, I have a list of 35 new authors to try so I am not sure whether I will revisit other books of this series.

[Granny Swithins · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crime generally isn't my cup of tea, but occasionally it's the best-looking option on my Amazon Prime freebie list. This one wasn't really worth the effort. It was dull, plodding along with characters who didn't jump off the page, tedious dialogue and leaden sentences. The detectives weren't interesting in the least, I think we were supposed to sense an attraction between them (even though they're both in relationships with other people) but there wasn't enough of a spark and I didn't really care about them. Not enough of their private lives peeked through to make us care, particularly as Janssen's girlfriend worked alongside the murdered girl's parents- surely we should have seen them questioning each other about what was going on? To top it off, the crime-solving itself felt pretty basic, there were no real surprises, and the killer was easy to guess.
Given that the author seems to have a lot of experience, I'd expect better. This really wasn't worth it.