The One Who Fell (Whitecliff Bay Mysteries #1) by Kerry Wilkinson
Genre: Cosy mystery
Read: 8th April 2023
Audio Links
Published: 17th April 2023
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
In the seaside town of Whitecliff, everyone looks out for each other. Everyone knows your name. And everyone knows your secrets…
Moonlight falls on the figure of the girl standing on the red-tiled roof. Her white dress and blonde hair flutter in the freezing night wind. And suddenly – she is gone.
Volunteering at the local nursing home is Millie Westlake’s one escape from the rumours that swirl around Whitecliff about her past. But speaking with elderly resident, Ingrid, as they play board games, Millie gets chills at her strange story about a young girl being pushed from a roof, somewhere across the valley…
Everybody thinks Ingrid is confused: but Millie knows how it feels to not be believed. Her parents died a year ago, and the residents of Whitecliff – such a quiet place, other than crashing waves and cawing seagulls – are convinced Millie killed them.
Desperately searching for evidence to find the girl Ingrid saw, a broken roof tile could prove Ingrid was telling the truth. But when strange footprints appear in Millie’s garden, she’s certain someone out there is watching.
Have Ingrid and Millie stumbled across something terribly dangerous? And with the town against her, will Millie have to face up to her own secrets to solve the mystery before it becomes deadly?
An utterly compelling, character-driven mystery by bestselling author Kerry Wilkinson, perfect for fans of Faith Martin, Mary Burton and LJ Ross.
MY THOUGHTS:
In the seaside town of Whitecliff, everyone looks out for each other. Everyone knows your name. And everyone knows your secrets...
Kerry Wilkinson has long been a favourite author of mine who I auto-request without even reading the description. When I learnt he was publishing a new series, with the first three books on the same day, I didn't think twice. But the Whitecliff mystery series is far removed from his usual psychological thrillers that I have come to know and love...but it still didn't disappoint. Despite its slow start I was pleasantly surprised at how adept Kerry is at trying his hand at a slightly different genre. Last year it was a rom-com; this year its a cosy mystery series. While the rom-com wasn't my thing it did highlight his skillful storytelling. And now THE ONE WHO FELL deftly moves into the cosy niche with its main character, Millie Westlake, at the forefront of the story.
Millie is a woman with a past and not an altogether happy one, if slightly colourful. A year ago she was outed as having an affair with a high profile Member of Parliament which thus was the end of her marriage and seeing her back in her childhood home with her parents, who did not hide their disappointment in her from her. But Millie had no time to make amends with her parents for she'd barely been back home when they were found dead and she was taken in for questioning. And Whitecliff being the small town (with small minds) that it is, gossip was rife. And despite her not being charged or even being a suspect, there are some folk in town who still think she murdered her parents.
And now, she lives in the house that was her childhood home which now belongs to her alone. Some people still think she killed her parents; others don't even care. But there are always those who are quick to frown and judge and point their fingers with a quick word to say. But Millie no longer cares what people think of her. All she cares about is moving on with her life, such as it is, and to spend as much time as she can with her seven year old son Eric...or rather when ex-husband Alex allows. When Millie had her affair, Alex was humiliated he says. But it seems what's good for the goose is not always what's also good for the gander. And that really stuck in my craw. The man is a two-faced lying hypocrite and I wanted to smack his condescension off his smirking face. Why Millie didn't is a mystery.
Anyway, I digress...
Millie works as a dog groomer and obedience trainer (which Alex continually sneers at not being "a real job") and volunteers at the local nursing home. There she spends time with the old folk, talking with them, playing games and basically keeping them company. One day, one of the residents Ingrid tells her she saw a girl being pushed from a roof of a house outside her window a short distance away. Millie doesn't know whether to believe Ingrid or not because one day she's lucid and the next she's foggy. Though Ingrid was adamant in her assertion of what she saw. When someone else says they saw a woman fall from a roof on the same night, Millie knows that this is not a coincidence. Ingrid HAD seen something that night. And Millie set out to find out exactly what that was.
Her investigations lead her to Dean Parris, the owner of the house from which the girl was seen falling from. But he is not forthcoming. If anything he is intimidating and when Millie sees him outside her house, she begins to wonder if he is a threat. But why is he following her? What does he want from her?
Along the way, Millie teams up with retired reporter Guy Rushden who had been a long-friend of her father's. He has the contacts and the resources, not to mention the four decades of archives nestled about in his house that can help Millie get to the bottom of this mystery. Did a girl really fall from the rooftop? Or was she pushed? There was no sign of someone having fallen, no emergency services, ambulance or police...so was there even a girl at all? And what of Millie's parents? Did she kill them? Or did they really commit suicide? What is Alex's deep dark secret that, if made known, could ruin him? And what secrets is Millie hiding?
THE ONE WHO FELL is a compelling tale that, while it is did start of a little slow, it did pick up around 40% and I found myself swiping the pages to find out what really happened. I did figure it out as the pieces slowly came together...a lot quicker than Millie did, but maybe she'll be quicker on the uptake in the following books with Guy at her side. They make a great team and I hope to see more of Guy. I like his wit and his fatherly nature. I think they are the perfect crime fighting duo for this series.
I love that the chapters are fairly short and snappy. They kept the pace moving once it picked up. There aren't a whole lot of characters but the handful there are are a mixed bag of either loving or hating them. I look forward to the reading the next two subsequent installments and the fourth one publishing next month.
A compelling start to a new series, it is perfect for fans of cosy mysteries.
I would like to thank #KerryWilkinson, #Netgalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheOneWhoFell in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Kerry Wilkinson has had No.1 crime bestsellers in the UK, Australia, Canada, South Africa and Singapore. He has also written two top-20 thrillers in the United States. His book, Ten Birthdays, won the RNA award for Young Adult Novel of the Year in 2018 and Close To You won the International Thriller Award for best ebook in 2020.
As well as his million-selling Jessica Daniel series, Kerry has written the Silver Blackthorn trilogy - a fantasy-adventure serial for young adults - a second crime series featuring private investigator Andrew Hunter, plus numerous standalone novels. He has been published around the world in more than a dozen languages.
Originally from the county of Somerset, Kerry spent way too long living in the north of England, picking up words like 'barm' and 'ginnel'.
When he's short of ideas, he rides his bike, hikes up something, or bakes cakes. When he's not, he writes it all down.
Social Media links:
No comments:
Post a Comment