Blood Stained by Rebecca Bradley – Review.

About The Book

Can’t find her.

Can’t catch him.

Can’t trust anyone.

The first in a gripping new Sheffield-set crime series starring Detective Claudia Nunn.

Detective Claudia Nunn’s colleague DS Dominic Harrison has been leading the case against a dangerous serial killer, who hunts his victims using a dating app. But now his own wife has gone missing.

Then a large pool of blood is discovered in their garage. And Dominic is the prime suspect.

Is Dominic being framed by a serial killer or will Claudia expose an even uglier truth?

Can’t tell a soul how it ends.

My Review

With thanks to the author for the copy received. I have enjoyed all of this author’s earlier books and was looking forward to this new series. It is an unusual one, I’ve never read a book where a member of the team has to investigate a colleague. That colleague is Dominic and it concerns the disappearance of his wife, Ruth. He claims it is the work of a serial killer he has been investigating.

As the novel progresses you see both investigations, Dominic attempts to find the serial killer and Claudia trying to find out who, if any of them, is responsible for Ruth’s disappearance. And as usual there were times I was aching to find out what happened next with both.

With the author’s background I was prepared for the level of detail concerning a murder investigation. This made the book more real and at times more upsetting. Not with the forensics but the emotions and not just concerning families.You could see the effect the crimes had  on both of teams involved and the way they had to learn to cope. I also had a lot of appreciation for the way they worked together, in particular Claudia and Ross Kane. 

I read plenty of books and I’m not often taken by surprise but there were a few times in this book when I read something unexpected. One of them I had to reread, flicking back to see what I had missed. And it worked perfectly. 

A great start to a promising new series.