After the shocking murder of a high-profile celebrity, Gemma Woodstock must pull back the layers of a gilded cage to discover who among the victim’s friends and family can be trusted–and who may be the killer. Troubled and brilliant, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock finds herself lost and alone after a recent move to Melbourne, brokenhearted by the decisions she’s had to make. Her new … make. Her new workplace is a minefield and Detective Sergeant Nick Fleet, the partner she has been assigned, is uncommunicative and often hostile. When a homeless man is murdered and Gemma is put on the case, she can’t help feeling a connection with the victim and his lonely, isolated existence.
Then Sterling Wade, an up-and-coming actor filming his breakout performance in a closed-off city street, is murdered in the middle of an action-packed shot, and Gemma and Nick have to put aside their differences to unravel the mysteries surrounding the actor’s life and death. Who could commit such a brazen crime? Who stands to profit from it? Far too many people, and none of them can be trusted. Gemma can’t imagine a pair of victims with less in common–and yet as Gemma and Fleet soon learn, both men were keeping secrets that may have led to their deaths.
With riveting suspense, razor-sharp writing, and a fascinating cast of characters, Into The Night proves Sarah Bailey is a major new talent to watch in the world of literary crime fiction.
profit from it? Far too many people, and none of them can be trusted. Gemma can’t imagine a pair of victims with less in common–and yet as Gemma and Fleet soon learn, both men were keeping secrets that may have led to their deaths.
With riveting suspense, razor-sharp writing, and a fascinating cast of characters, Into The Night proves Sarah Bailey is a major new talent to watch in the world of literary crime fiction.
profit from it? Far too many people, and none of them can be trusted. Gemma can’t imagine a pair of victims with less in common–and yet as Gemma and Fleet soon learn, both men were keeping secrets that may have led to their deaths.
With riveting suspense, razor-sharp writing, and a fascinating cast of characters, Into The Night proves Sarah Bailey is a major new talent to watch in the world of literary crime fiction.
profit from it? Far too many people, and none of them can be trusted. Gemma can’t imagine a pair of victims with less in common–and yet as Gemma and Fleet soon learn, both men were keeping secrets that may have led to their deaths.
With riveting suspense, razor-sharp writing, and a fascinating cast of characters, Into The Night proves Sarah Bailey is a major new talent to watch in the world of literary crime fiction.
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Clever twists and all-too-human characters.
Beautifully written, compulsively readable, and highly recommended.
Razor-sharp writing. Sarah Bailey needs to clear a shelf for awards.
Gemma Woodstock is a richly flawed and completely authentic character. Sarah Bailey has crafted an exquisite debut — I can’t wait to see what she does next!
Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is working in Melbourne now, trying to negotiate relationships with her new boss, Chief Inspector Toby Isaacs, and her partner, Detective Sergeant Fleet. She has been in Melbourne for three months; this has meant leaving behind her five-year-old son, Ben, and his father, Scott. She’s keeping busy with a series of cases, including that of a homeless man, Walter Miller, who was brutally killed and one with the famous actor, Sterling Wade, who was stabbed while filming a high-profile zombie film. Alone and away from her son, Gemma throws herself into her work, but will these difficult cases prove too much for her and her emotional well-being?
“I was high-functioning but deeply broken and eventually something had to give. When the opportunity to transfer to Melbourne arose, I needed to take it. Living in Smithson was slowly killing me.”
This novel picks up a few years after the first Gemma book. Gemma has been haunted by the Rosalind Rose case featured in Bailey’s superb first novel, The Dark Lake, as well as her affair with her former partner, Felix. We find her lost and floundering. This serves a dual-purpose for us, the reader. We get to read a novel with a complicated, realistic character in Gemma. She’s true to herself. On the other hand, she’s not always the easiest to like or even empathize with. This is a woman who has left her child behind, after all. I have to congratulate Bailey on having Gemma not make the easy/safe choices in life, or the ones you typically see in detective novels. Not only do we get a strong yet vulnerable female character, we get one who is flawed, real, and struggling to find her way in the world. I certainly didn’t always agree with her choices, but I do enjoy reading about them.
Even better, Gemma features in an excellent complicated and captivating mystery, with several cases that keep you guessing. The prominent one is the Sterling Wade case. Bailey brings in various Hollywood elements, and there are a lot of characters to suspect and pieces to put together. I quite liked not knowing who had killed Sterling. Even the detectives were flummoxed at times: how refreshing. Throughout all her cases, Gemma is working out where she fits in her new department and how she relates to her new partner, Fleet. There’s a lot going on, but Bailey handles it all quite deftly. The excellent writing I enjoyed so much in her first novel is on display again here; you’ll be impressed at the way she can pull together her story and bring out her characters.
“‘Or maybe this case is just fucking with my mind,’ I say, ‘and making me think that Agatha Christie plots are coming to life.'”
Overall, I found this book intriguing and refreshing. Gemma is a complicated and complex character who is matched by the intricate cases she attempts to solve. Those who enjoy a character-driven mystery will be drawn to Gemma’s prickly exterior, while those who simply enjoy a hard-to-solve case will find plenty to like here as well. Sarah Bailey is certainly a go-to author for me. 4.5 stars.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley in return for an unbiased review.
Full disclosure – I haven’t read the first Gemma Woodstock novel, so I don’t know if that would’ve made a difference in my opinion, but from what I saw of her here, I can’t imagine that I’d like her any better. That, in a nutshell, sums up my problem with this story. I never warmed up to Gemma. Flawed characters can work really well in this type of story, but there needs to be something, some redeeming quality to make the reader want to know more about them. I didn’t find that with this character. In fact, her continued bad decisions come back on her, which I would expect to happen. The problem is she doesn’t learn from them, and it all just becomes irritating. The mystery is a bit too easy to figure out, but still could’ve made for an okay procedural if not for the repetition and conversations that go nowhere. Other than a few instances where I was left a bit confused by things mentioned – that I assume are from the first book – I was able to follow this one on its own. It just didn’t hold my interest like a mystery should have and I found it a little too easy to set aside. To sum it up, what I found here didn’t encourage me to want to check out that first book or to follow this series any further.
Despite loving “Dark Lake” – the first Detective Gemma Woodstock in the series and being thrown straight into a murder at the start of this book, I found it overall to be slow, and rather repetitive.
When a homeless man – Walter Miller- is found brutally murdered for no apparent reason, Senior Detective Gemma Woodstock is tasked with finding his killer. However a second, similar murder of up and coming actor Sterling Wade, whilst filming for a zombie movie, takes the focus away from Miller’s death and into a world of celebrities, fame and high profile egos.
Set in Melbourne, Australia there is plenty of atmospheric descriptions to set the scene and it is a very character driven story focusing on Gemma’s previous relationship with the father of her little boy Ben and how she copes mentally with being separated from her son. She is basically a walking disaster, going from man to man, unable to maintain a normal relationship. Her working partnership with Detective Fleet was also very fractured but I actually liked him and preferred him in the story to Gemma.
Something just didn’t hit the mark for me in this one as much as it did in the previous book though the last couple of chapters and the ending did redeem it slightly, even if a little predictable.
Sarah Bailey writes exceedingly well and allows for the reader to engage in an easy to follow story, however it was too slow for my overall enjoyment and I’m not sure if I wish to follow Gemma in a further instalment in her troubled life.
3.5 stars