Hunter by name – Hunter by nature: DI Hunter Wilson will not rest until Edinburgh is safe.Detective Inspector Hunter Wilson knows there is a new supply of cocaine flooding his city, and he needs to find the source, but his attention is transferred to murder when a corpse is discovered in the grounds of a golf course. Shortly after the post-mortem, Hunter witnesses a second murder, but that is not … murder, but that is not the end of the slaughter. With a young woman’s life also hanging in the balance, the last thing Hunter needs is a new man on his team: Detective Constable Tim Myerscough, the son of his nemesis, the former Chief Constable Sir Peter Myerscough.
Hunter’s perseverance and patience are put to the test time after time in this first novel in The Edinburgh Crime Mysteries series.
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I love a well-plotted mystery as much as I love being transported to a different locale and a different culture. Modern-day Scotland comes alive on the first page of this intricate whodunnit, where the bad guys aren’t completely bad, nor are the good guys completely good. There are many layers and nuances in this tale that gets off to a rollicking start with a young criminal who would be quite the entrepreneur if he could just see the advantages of making an honest wage.
Along with young Jamie Thompson comes a quirky extended family that is no stranger to the law. Though a scrappy bunch, hellbent on enjoying the good life without actually having to work, they do have one thing in common: their fear and loathing of law enforcement.
DI Hunter’s lot isn’t much more amiable. There’s as much jealousy and in-fighting amongst the rank and file as there is teamwork. All these well-drawn characters leap off the page, coming to life with pitch-perfect dialects and quirky customs. And at the heart of all the shenanigans is not one murder, but three that DI Hunter and his gaggle of crime stoppers must apprehend before another body turns up.
An excellent Edinburgh-based thriller, the start of what promises to be a terrific series. If you like your crime on the tartan noir side then this is for you!
For me this story read like an episode of CSI. To be honest, it took me a bit to get used to the lingo, but I greatly enjoyed the witty banter between characters. A solid plot with twists revealed through different points of view…a thoroughly enjoyable read. I highly recommend to anyone interested in a crime thriller. Looking forward to other books bu this author!
As you’d expect from the first book in a crime series, there is plenty of character development. I must have met about twenty characters in the first four chapters and my head was spinning. I was tempted to start drawing a character map to keep track. Perhaps that’s exactly what the author did.
The opening scenes describe the discovery of the first body. There will be more! It is found as a young burglar trips over the half-buried corpse as he is pursued through the woods on the edge of an Edinburgh golf course by the victim of his robbery who just happens to be the retired chief of the city’s police force. You can see, already, that this is adding up to be a thriller with plenty of conflicts. And so it proves.
Although this sounds like a contradiction, as more complexity, especially in the relationships between the characters, is introduced, the clearer the various plot lines become.
I must admit that I strongly suspected the murderer about two-thirds of the way through, although I was not entirely certain.
What I liked was that I was cheering on some of the bad people in the story as much as I was the good ones. That’s skilful writing.
It helped that I am familiar with many of the locations in Edinburgh and they brought back fond memories of my youth.
This story, and probably the series, have the makings of a good television series. However, there are so many good crime series on TV these days that it faces some tough competition to be selected.
It certainly made me want to read more of Hunter’s cases, which I believe can be read stand-alone rather than in the order in which they are presented. I would recommend Hunter to any fan of crime thrillers, especially those with any links to the capital city of Scotland.