The Guilty Girl ( DI Lottie Parker #11) by Patricia Gibney
Genre: Crime fiction, Crime thriller, Police procedural
Read: 14th June 2022
Published: 15th June 2022
★★★★★ 4.5 stars (rounded up)
DESCRIPTION:
Something whistling through the door behind her caused her to turn. A shadow spread across the opening. She clasped a hand to her mouth, stilling the fear that was rising. The menacing shadow was followed by a face that sent a cold shiver down her spine…
When the call comes in about Lucy, a seventeen-year-old girl murdered after the secret party she held in her parents’ home, Detective Lottie Parker is first on the scene. As she picks her way through the smashed glasses and the blood spatter on the perfect cream carpet, she is horrified to see Lucy’s angelic face, silvery-blue eyes forever closed.
As Lottie breaks the news to Lucy’s heartbroken parents and the devastated partygoers, she discovers that hours before her death Lucy had revealed a terrible secret about her friend Hannah. And when Lottie finds Lucy’s bloodstained clothing hidden in Hannah’s bedroom, she has no option but to bring the shy, frightened girl into custody.
But Hannah claims to have no memory of the night Lucy died and Lottie begins to question her guilt. Then a fifteen-year-old boy who also attended the party is pulled from the canal. And as Lottie investigates, she discovers something shocking. Her own son Sean was at the party. Why did he lie to her? Is her beloved child a witness or a suspect… or is he now in the killer’s sights?
If you love Karin Slaughter, Robert Dugoni and Rachel Caine, you’ll be hooked by this heart-stopping thriller from Patricia Gibney. The Guilty Girl will have you gripped until the very last page.
MY THOUGHTS:
I am excited to be taking part in the #BooksOnTour #BlogTour for Patricia Gibney's lates crime thriller THE GUILTY GIRL.
With the exception of four of the earlier books, I have followed Detective Lottie Parker since the beginning. Having met Lottie and her team in the very first book "The Missing Ones" and absolutely loving it, I was surprised to have missed the next four before picking the series up in "Final Betrayal". With a title such as that, I feared it was the end of the series before I'd read the others (as Victoria Jenkins ended her King and Lane series around the same time and I had discovered both series together). However, that was six books ago and Lottie and her team are still crime fighting in Ragmullin. While I have enjoyed each book, THE GUILTY GIRL is by far up there with the first one "The Missing Ones" which drew me into Lottie's world from the beginning. And I loved it.
In the past we have seen Lottie's children somehow or other become involved in her cases somewhere along the line and this one is no different. Her youngest and only son, Sean, is a witness to the case Lottie finds herself landed with and she wonders how to keep this from her superiors whilst investigating the case. She knows beyond a reasonable doubt that Sean isn't involved...that he is just a witness...and she can be objective, right?
Seventeen year old Lucy McAllister throws a party at her parent's affluent home, whilst they are holidaying in Spain for three weeks, to celebrate the end of their exams and the school year. Amongst the guests is Lottie's seventeen year old son Sean who was out of his comfort zone and left early, clocking his mother outside in her car who then took him home. The clandestine party ends in the wee hours but when the cleaner arrives the following morning she gets more than she bargained for when she discovers Lucy's lifeless body upstairs.
Lottie is called in to investigate and is shocked to find it is the house from which she picked Sean up the night before and proceeds to question him about what he may have seen. What she doesn't know is that Sean crept back to the McAllisters around 4am because he'd left his very expensive leather jacket behind and feared his mum would go spare if he lost it. What he didn't expect was to walk into a crime scene and make a discovery that would leave him wondering what to do.
The investigation leads Lottie to Hannah Byrne, one of the party guests, who has no recollection of the evening beyond the cruel humiliation Lucy caused her. But when the team find a bloodied towel in Hannah's rucksack and what appears to be bloody beneath her fingernails, Lottie hauls the confused young woman in for questioning. But Hannah shows signs of having been drugged particularly when she has no memory of anything surrounding the event. Despite this, most of the evidence points towards Hannah's guilt - or involvement at the very least - along with another party guest who also appears to be hiding something.
And then another, even younger, victim who had been at Lucy's party turns up floating in the canal. He was only fifteen. The only possible motive is that he knew too much. After all, it was very probably him who spiked Hannah's drink at the party...but why? What did he possibly have to gain from it? And what does it mean for Lottie's son, Sean?
Meanwhile, Boyd is on holiday is Malaga where he is spending some quality time with his newly discovered son, Sergio. Little does he know that his holiday will turn into a working one with possible links to Spain via the McAllisters who had been holidaying there when their daughter was murdered.
Amid everything that is going on, Lottie must also deal with her mother Rose who is showing signs of a heartbreaking decline and moves into Farrensworth House with the rest of the Parker clan. I foresee this becoming an aspect that Lottie must face in the next installment to come.
THE GUILTY GIRL is a chilling, thrilling fast paced read that begins with readers looking at things one way and ends with us seeing it all in a whole other light. What first begins as a cruel joke that may have gotten out of hand soon turns out to be something far darker at play. There wasn't even a hint of what was to come in the beginning until one of Lottie's team, Maria Lynch, uncovered something amiss on social media. The subject matter is at times dark and disturbing but it is handled with sensitivity and care.
A fantastic read by all accounts, THE GUILTY GIRL is one of the best in the series I've read alongside the very first one which I also loved. I love the mix of procedural with thriller as we are privy to the various aspects of those involved. I always like procedurals written this way as it takes the mundaneness and monotony out of it solely being from a police perspective. It adds to the thrill and picks up the pace a whole lot more, making the story a whole lot more exciting.
If you like procedurals that are engaging and a little more than just a procedural, I highly recommend you check out Lottie Parker and her team. And THE GUILTY GIRL is up there as one of the best so far.
I would like to thank #PatriciaGibney, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheGuiltyGirl in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
.jpg)
Patricia is from Mullingar, County Westmeath and has lived there all her life. She spent 30 years working with Westmeath County Council.
When her husband died in 2009, aged 49, three months after a diagnosis of cancer, Patricia turned to art and writing, self-publishing a children's book entitled 'Spring Sprong Sally'. She then started writing crime fiction and created her first novel in that genre featuring DI Lottie Parker with 'The Missing Ones'. She worked with the Irish Writers Centre to improve her writing. Eventually she began a second novel 'The Stolen Girls' and through that acquired an agent and a publishing contract with Bookouture.
Patricia currently has 11 DI Lottie Parker novels to date, with the eleventh 'The Guilty Girl' to be published in June 2021, and is set in the fictional Irish town of Ragmullin, which is an anagram of the real-life town of Mullingar, where Patricia lives.
Social Media Links:
PUBLISHER:
Stay up to date with upcoming releases from Bookouture by following them on these social media accounts.
No comments:
Post a Comment