Book Review: Buried for Good, PI Hanlon Series, Alex Coombs
Mystery: Buried for Good, PI Hanlon Series, Alex Coombs
Blog Tour May 3, 2021
Former DCI Hanlon has retired from Scotland Yard and relocated to Scotland itself. There, she has begun a private investigation service, hoping to avoid some of the violence that brought out her worst tendencies as an officer in London.
When a woman hires her to protect an online yoga trainer/influencer during a retreat on a windswept Scottish isle, it’s hard to imagine what could go wrong. Sure, the influencer had been receiving some concerning threats both via email and hand-delivered to her home. Most likely these were the work of a deranged fan, one who could hardly be deemed a legitimate threat. Hanlon can keep her employer safe, enjoy the tranquility of an island retreat, and collect a much needed paycheck.
It’s all peace and yoga until people start dying.
Alex Coombs has created a terrific protagonist in PI Hanlon. A woman with anger issues, she is willing and even eager to beat the tar out of a threatening punk who tries to assault her. She is not so willing to confront her feelings for the Glasgow cop who is equally unsure of how to approach her. Retreating to Scotland in order to avoid stress, she still finds solace in online sessions with her London therapist. Not that Scotland is a land of tranquility, when financial schemes defraud the unwary of thousands, when several people die violently without any obvious connection to each other apart from knowing the yoga instructor, and when a mysterious swami with a shady past seems to know more about Hanlon than she has revealed to anyone.
This book has a rapidly paced plot that leads from one twist to another. I can usually guess the killer well before the end of a mystery. Coombs kept me in the dark in the most satisfying way possible. At the end, when the killer is revealed, all the clues made sense and I had the “aha” moment–only to experience another twist, then yet another one. Moments in the book are quite funny, including an accidental injury that could only happen to someone associated with Hanlon. Still, by the end, several storylines are neatly tied up and we get to see a much different and more humanizing side to Hanlon. I don’t want to say “softer” or any other patronizingly sexist adjective. She might jump out of the book and punch me! But she does reveal a kinder side, one that likely was suborned to the anger issues but found some release as she dealt with some of those feelings. I look forward to seeing how some of these new aspects of her character become fleshed out in this compelling series.
Our thanks to Rachel Gilbey of Rachel’s Random Resources for our copy of Buried for Good solely in exchange for our honest review as part of the blog tour for the book. The opinions here are those of Scintilla. For other perspectives, check out the other bloggers on this tour.
Also see:
Book Review: Silenced for Good, Alex Coombs
Book Review: Buried for Good, Alex Coombs