Somebody's Daughter (DCI Natalie Ward #7) by Carol Wyer
Genre: Crime fiction, Police procedural, Crime thriller
Read: 4th June 2021
Published: 9th July 2020
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
One by one the girls disappeared…
When the frail body of a teenage girl is discovered strangled in a parking lot, shards of ice form in Detective Natalie Ward’s veins. As Natalie looks at the freckles scattered on her cheeks and the pale pink lips tinged with blue, she remembers that this innocent girl is somebody’s daughter…
The girl is identified as missing teenager Amelia Saunders, who has run away from home and her controlling father. Natalie’s heart sinks further when it becomes clear that Amelia has been working on the streets, manipulated by her violent new boyfriend Tommy.
A day later, another vulnerable girl is found strangled on a park bench. Like Amelia, Katie Bray was a runaway with connections to Tommy, and Natalie is determined to find him and track down the monster attacking these scared and lonely girls.
But when a wealthy young woman is found murdered the next morning, the word ‘guilty’ scrawled on her forehead, Natalie realises that the case is more complex than she first thought. Determined to establish a connection between her three victims, Natalie wastes no time in chasing down the evidence, tracing everyone who crossed their paths. Then, a key suspect’s body turns up in the canal, a mole in Natalie’s department leaks vital information and everything seems to be against her. Can Natalie stop this clever and manipulative killer before they strike again?
An unputdownable crime thriller from an Amazon bestselling author that will have you sleeping with the light on. This gripping rollercoaster ride is perfect for fans of Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Rachel Caine. Prepare to be totally hooked!
MY REVIEW:
It's been a long time coming but I finally got around to reading the last in the DI Natalie Ward series by Carol Wyer. Published last July, I still had every intention of getting to it eventually despite venturing into her latest and equally addictive DI Kate Young series. Over the course of the series we have watched Natalie grow as she suffers grief on a whole new level and her personal life began to implode. In SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER, things come full circle for Natalie as she begins a new chapter of her life while tendrils from her past tease readers with what may be awaiting us should Carol revisit Natalie and her team at a later date.
The prologue opens with promise as two sisters fight over a boy they were both interested in. Although the boy in question is actually a man or twenty fours years and 17 year old Sophia is tearing strips of her 15 year old sister Katie for snaffling him from under her nose, knowing how she felt about him. Katie, on the other hand, was sick of copping the blame for everything and of her older sister lording it over her at every turn. She knew her parents would side with Sophia so with one final burst of anger, she pushed Sophia and raced upstairs to pack. With her parents out of town tonight, Katie would leave the shackles of authority and her family behind to start a new life with Tommy.
Natalie Ward has seen a lot of changes both professionally and personally since the previous book "The Secret Admirer", where she had left her husband David after he gambled away most of their life and their savings. Now a year has passed and she has divorced David and a new and elite crime unit has been created in the newly renovated Victorian building of Holborn House for which Natalie has been promoted to DCI to oversee, with newly promoted DI Lucy Carmichael heading up things under Natalie's command.
Meanwhile, after a stop-gap in a poky little flat not far from HQ, she and son Josh have now moved in with Mike Sullivan, who is Head of Forensics at Samford HQ, whilst trying to win over Mike's 7 year old daughter Thea, who thinks that Natalie is keeping her already divorced parents apart. As this is Mike's weekend to have Thea, Natalie has organised a Bonfire Party with loads of food like toffee apples, has decked out the yard with fairy lights and has even bought her an Olaf the talking snowman from "Frozen". Some of Thea's friends have been invited to enjoy the festivities with her while Mike puts on a modest display of fireworks.
And then she gets the call.
The body of a teenage girl has been found in West Gate car park, apparently strangled. She is soon identified as Amelia Saunders, a runaway from Nottinghamshire who left home eighteen months previously after an arguement with her father for which he blamed himself and then took his own life. The team learn that Amelia had been working as a prostitute and that she was last seen in the company of a scruffy young man with frizzy hair in a "man bun" known as Tommy. The investigation is barely underway when the team, whilst looking for another young teenager called Katie Bray who'd also run away, come across the emaciated body of a young teenage girl whom DS Murray Anderson recognises immediately as Katie the following day. After speaking with her older sister Sophia and father Phil, they learnt that Katie left after a fight with Sophia to be with the boyfriend she'd stolen from her whose name was none other than Tommy.
With the bodies of two teenage girls, both emaciated and very obviously soliciting as prostitutes, the team begin looking for Tommy. But with no idea what he looks like or even his surname, they have no idea where to start. Until they come across some CCTV of Katie behind the Hardy's department store in which they see a white van drive away. Freeze frame the picture, zoom in and they have a registration which comes back to one Tommy Field and a local address in some dilapidated flats marked for demolition. But upon visiting the address there is no sign of Tommy, but there are those of a woman having shared the flat with prints coming back to those of Katie. So while she may have believed him to be her boyfriend, he saw her as a meal ticket pimping her out to pay for his obvious habit.
The following day, the investigation is ramped up a notch with the discovery of the body of Rachel Hardy, daughter of affluent businessman, Eugene Hardy, owner of local department store Hardy's. But the MO for this murder is different. While Rachel was indeed strangled, the word "GUILTY" had been written in biro across her forehead. The team are baffled. Why would the murderer suddenly switch MO? And why target an affluent member of Samford society as opposed to prostitutes? What has changed? Questioning her father proves fruitless as he becomes enraged with the direction of enquiries before throwing them out. Then another two bodies are discovered on consecutive days, both with the word "GUILTY" scrawled across their foreheads. What does this mean? And is Tommy or rival pimp Valentine responsible for these murders?
But when Tommy's semi-decomposed body is found in the canal partially eaten by fish, the team are thoroughly stumped. They have lost their prime suspect to all five murders and the top brass is gunning for a clean result. But with the death of Tommy, Superintendent Tasker is happy to conclude that he was responsible for the deaths and then threw himself in the canal. But then the autopsy reveals that Tommy was dead before he went into the water. So who is responsible for the now six murders they are under pressure to solve quickly?
SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER has a slightly different feel to it than the previous books in this series in that I think it would suffice quite sufficiently as a standalone. Although it is always best to read a series from the beginning, the format of this this book is different providing flashbacks to Natalie's life as well as enough backstory to keep readers in the loop. There is also more information regarding her estrangement from her younger sister Frances who she alludes to in previous books but doesn't detail. In this book, she provides the backstory to what lead to the estrangement through flashbacks. It has provided readers with a yearning for more wanting to know how Natalie will handle the new turn of events we are left with by the book's end. I do hope Carol will return at some point to give us some answers.
The pace of this story does begin a little slower than some but soon builds up enough as the bodycount continues to rise and the pieces of the puzzle are unscrambled. As with all of Carol's books, the story is realistic if not shocking as the lives of society's dregs are picked apart in an effort to find out who murdered them. And as is usually the way, the moment more prominent members of the community become victims the focus of the investigation moves to them, leaving the sorry lives of two teenage girls at the bottom of the scrap heap. Although not under this team, if Lucy or Natalie have anything to do with it. All lives matter...even teenage runaways who end up sex workers.
A good solid procedural, SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER is a complex mystery with all the grit of a Natalie Ward crime thriller. There are plenty of twists as the dark truth is slowly uncovered, revealing what is actually a very sad tale. I do, however, hope that this is not Natalie's last hurrah and look forward to Carol bringing life back into her again and revealing some answers we readers would love to see pan out with where things left off. Although, that is to say this book did not actually end on a cliffhanger but there are some unanswered questions about Natalie's past which threatened to come to light...and then didn't.
A definite twisted tale, SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER brings Natalie's professional and personal life full circle in this seventh book that, while should be read alongside the others in the series, can work well enough as a standalone. I certainly enjoyed this book but of the series, I think "The Blossom Twins" was the best. And the most tragic.
Recommended for Carol Wyer fans and lovers of crime fiction.
I would like to thank #CarolWyer, #Netgalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #SomebodysDaughter in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
A move from humour to the 'dark side' in 2017, saw the introduction of popular DI Robyn Carter in Little Girl Lost and demonstrated that stand-up comedian Carol, had found her true niche.
To date, her crime novels have sold over 800,000 copies and been translated for various overseas markets.
The much-anticipated new series, featuring DI Kate Young, was published on 1st February 2021 with the first novel, An Eye For An Eye, and a second, A Cut for a Cut, to be published on 24th June 2021.
Carol has been interviewed on numerous radio shows discussing ''Irritable Male Syndrome' and 'Ageing Disgracefully' and on BBC Breakfast television. She has had articles published in national magazines 'Woman's Weekly', featured in 'Take A Break', 'Choice', 'Yours' and 'Woman's Own' magazines and the Huffington Post.
She currently lives on a windy hill in rural Staffordshire with her husband Mr Grumpy... who is very, very grumpy.
When she is not plotting devious murders, she can be found performing her comedy routine, Smile While You Still Have Teeth.
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