The Woman In Black is the third in the DS Jessica Daniel series by Kerry Wilkinson. Jessica is a hardworking Manchester cop, good at deciphering disparate clues with her team.
When a severed hand is found in a public square, the CCTV footage shows a woman in heels and a dark hooded cloak placing it down in the middle of the night. Where is the body it belongs to? A public appeal yields only panic from families missing loved ones when Jessica is selected by the killer to receive a missing finger from the hand in the mail, neatly severed off. Combing through missing persons files yeilds a DNA match, as a second hand is left in public in the same manner, and another finger is sent to Jessica. The victims have a tenuous link going back to their youth as rugby lads. As Jessica tracks down the others in that group, another hand is discovered, but still no handless bodies are to be found. While this investigation goes on, Jessica and her team are involved with a town career day, she's giving her friend away at a wedding, and it's her birthday - several distractions that round out her character - she's even trying dating again. Fifteen months have passed since the last novel and there have been staff changes at the station bringing in two new members to help solve the high profile sudden disappearance of an MP's wife.
Soon, the finger arrives before the hand has been discovered...maybe a dog ate it. The leads increase to a point where, naturally, Jessica decides to confront the killer on her own. Never a good idea.
This is a solid police procedural, the best of the series so far. It's a good idea to have read the previous novels. There is good balance between development of all characters, several cases overlapping, and the culprit reveal left very close to the end - affording the killer about 380 pages to mock the police, give a sardonic thumbs up to the security cameras, and literally, keep giving Jessica the finger. Unless you were paying very close attention, you'll miss the buried clues to the solution, as it should be. With no wasted space, this is packed with sub stories and diversions, buried family secrets, and interoffice politics.
Recommended for fans of Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, and Stephen Booth, with many online reviewers stating this is an underrated series. I agree and look forward to the next novel.
My other reviews in the Jessica Daniel series:
1997 / Tradeback / 409 pages
Comentarios