Today I’m delighted to be reviewing Val Penny‘s latest Edinburgh crime mystery as part of her blog tour. Hunter’s Blood is published by Spellbound Books.
I met and chatted with Val at a writers conference at The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, and found her an ebullient character. Her Edinburgh crimes give me a new concept of that lovely city. Certainly a different idea to the gentile, socially conscious one we receive from reading Alexander McCall Smith‘s Scotland Street series!
Here in Hunter’s Blood I found again the characters whose personal situations had so engaged me before – DI Hunter Wilson himself, and the petite pathologist Meera Sharma. Will their relationship blossom or not? Can Hunter overcome his personal demons? (every fictional detective absolutely needs his or her legion of inner demons!) Then there’s Jamie and Frankie, and Jamie’s twin daughters, born in tragic circumstances – I was so caught up before in Jamie’s heart-breaking situation. And Tim Myerscough and his friends – I find Tim intriguing and I want to know how thing work out for him too. Along the way we find violent and unsettling deaths, shady business people, gangsters, drug dealers, flawed police constables, troubled relationships among apparent law-abiders, and new seamy alliances and vigilante acts of revenge behind bars.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Val Penny has an Llb degree from the University of Edinburgh and her MSc from Napier University. She has had many jobs including hairdresser, waitress, banker, azalea farmer and lecturer but has not yet achieved either of her childhood dreams of being a ballerina or owning a candy store.
Until those dreams come true, she has turned her hand to writing poetry, short stories, nonfiction books, and novels. Her novels are published by Spellbound Books.
Val is an American author living in South West Scotland. She has two adult daughters of whom she is justly proud and lives with her husband and their cat.
BLURB
DI Hunter Wilson never has just one problem to solve.
Three elderly women he knows have died in mysterious circumstances. Hunter appears to be the only link.
A little girl goes missing on a cold winter’s night. When his team discovers cocaine hidden at the farm where she was living, the search becomes even more urgent.
Why did the women die? And what did the child witness?
Hunter must find the answers to these questions to ensure his family and his city are safe.
MY REVIEW
Val Penny is very good at intriguing the reader and opens the novel with three separate subplots, involving three different groups of people who are all going to be drawn together by a single tragedy: Hunter and Meera; Tim, Bear, Gillian and Mel; and Jamie and Frankie. All see the same van race past them dangerously fast, and roll into a ditch. Who reports the incident, and when, and how their reports are responded to or not, becomes a central focus of horror, death and fatal human error.
Later, two vulnerable, frightened people flee from a threatening situation, and come to the attention of Police Scotland: a little girl, and an old lady. But what lies behind their fear? Is it real or imagined? Three highly suspicious deaths follow and a complex plot for the police to untangle.
The story is pacy, cleverly structured and full of characters whose relationships with each other intrigue and captivate the reader. My only slight caveat would be that I never find it quite convincing that the person finally unmasked as the killer would be capable of such an evil act. But I find this with some Agatha Christie stories too, and that may be because I personally am looking for deeper psychological insight than is usually offered by this genre.
Nevertheless, for lovers of crime mystery this comes highly recommended.
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Author Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/valerie.penny.739
Author Twitter Page @valeriepenny
Author Instagram Page https://www.instagram.com/valerieepenny/
WEBSITE LINKS
Website – https://www.valpenny.com
Amazon Author Page – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Val-Penny/e/B07C4725TK
Sign up here to join me on my journey, and to receive my monthly newsletter in which I share gems and snippets from my research discoveries, and news and insights from the world of writing and publishing.
For those regular readers who enjoy my posts, reviews and articles here and would like to support me on my journey you can do so at Buy Me a Coffee and I’d be very grateful.
scskillman.com 