Cornwall is one of my most favorite places on Earth, so I was thrilled to get the chance to read Murder at Land’s End by Sally Rigby.
In this the third book of the series, Detective Inspector Lauren Pengelly and Detective Sergeant Matt Price lead the investigation into the murder of a young woman, whose body was found on the rocks off the coast of Lands End, the western most point in Cornwall and the most southwesterly point on the British mainland.
As I hadn’t read the previous installments of the series, I was amused to read that Price, a young widower relatively new to the Penzance police station, has an aversion to dead bodies. I imagined it presenting itself much the way the blood aversion affects Doc Martin, in the series by the same name, set in Port Wenn (actually Port Isaac), also in Cornwall. However, his voice in my head sounded more like Ralf Little, who portrays DI Neville Parker in Death in Paradise.
The cryptic phrase, “Men must work and women must weep,” was found on a piece of paper in the victim’s mouth. While it took me only seconds with a Google search to learn that the phrase was taken from The Three Fishers, a poem by Charles Kingsley, Pengelly put a member of her team into investigating its meaning, making it seem a little unrealistic to me.
I enjoyed the premise, the setting and the characters but the story, however, didn’t quite hit the mark for me. Even with the discovery of a second body, more suspects, a tricky family crisis for Pengelly, the overdone narration and not enough of a twist at the end, left me feeling like there was something missing. I so wanted to love Murder at Land’s End.
I received this advanced reader copy of Murder at Land’s End from Storm Publishing, courtesy of NetGalley. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.
In this the third book of the series, Detective Inspector Lauren Pengelly and Detective Sergeant Matt Price lead the investigation into the murder of a young woman, whose body was found on the rocks off the coast of Lands End, the western most point in Cornwall and the most southwesterly point on the British mainland.
As I hadn’t read the previous installments of the series, I was amused to read that Price, a young widower relatively new to the Penzance police station, has an aversion to dead bodies. I imagined it presenting itself much the way the blood aversion affects Doc Martin, in the series by the same name, set in Port Wenn (actually Port Isaac), also in Cornwall. However, his voice in my head sounded more like Ralf Little, who portrays DI Neville Parker in Death in Paradise.
The cryptic phrase, “Men must work and women must weep,” was found on a piece of paper in the victim’s mouth. While it took me only seconds with a Google search to learn that the phrase was taken from The Three Fishers, a poem by Charles Kingsley, Pengelly put a member of her team into investigating its meaning, making it seem a little unrealistic to me.
I enjoyed the premise, the setting and the characters but the story, however, didn’t quite hit the mark for me. Even with the discovery of a second body, more suspects, a tricky family crisis for Pengelly, the overdone narration and not enough of a twist at the end, left me feeling like there was something missing. I so wanted to love Murder at Land’s End.
I received this advanced reader copy of Murder at Land’s End from Storm Publishing, courtesy of NetGalley. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.