"Are we on top of it?... I'm foxed by this one. I don't mind telling you. I don't know what we can bring to it. Three kids killing themselves? Is this really one for the police? If you ask me we should be handing it over to the psychologists".
Death in the Woods by Jo Allen is the 6th book in the DCI Sattherthwaite series. It explores what happens if the past holds on too tight onto our present.
The thriller reads as a standalone, but it would help if you know the main protagonists already, and the dynamics of their relationships.
We meet again Jude Satterthwaite and his partner Detective Sergeant Ashleigh O'Halloran, as they investigate a series of copycat suicides among the young people in the area.
"He'd been dealing with death, whether violent, accidental or self-inflicted, for the better part of two decades, so long he'd become inured to it in a way that shamed him, but he wasn't as hard as he'd thought. These days the death of a youth always struck him a little more close to the heart than it used to".
Worries about his troublesome younger brother Mikey keep him awake at night.
"Mikey was just twenty-one and yet to mature, still seething with resentment at the break-up of his family and blaming everyone else for the pain of it. If there was one person who he wouldn't listen to it was his father and if there was a second it was surely Jude, whose determination to look after him he deeply resented".
Mikey is the same age as those who'd found modern life too hard to live and might have been prodded towards ending it. While Jude is trying to do the job of a father, Mikey feels bitter about it and begrudges his older brother's "interference" in his life.
It is Raven, one of the hippies living in the Eden Valley, who fins two bodies (not at the same time).
"Raven and her husband Storm attracted the wrong sort of attention for their alternative lifestyle, and a previous association with a series of gruesome murders several months earlier and elsewhere in the county hadn't helped, but the situation had been neither of their making nor their fault."
It's not just Mikey Jude is anxious about. His relationship with Ashleigh is very complicated. Neither of them want to commit, being on the rebound from the previous relationships. Ashleigh is still besotted with her cheating ex, and Jude's romantic feelings for his ex, Becca, are still strong too.
Ashleigh is a good listener, and a valuable member of the police unit. She is full of contradictions, on one hand, she is independent and self-assured, on the other, her attachment for the useless ex make her unreasonable and inconsistent. She uses Tarot cards to gain insight and clarity in the current situations (hence my use of Tarot cards as photo props in this post), and perhaps she's dependent on them a bit too much.
The local community is alarmed at what they see as an epidemic of teenage suicides in the area, but the police treat it as unexplained deaths. That is the official line.
Jude's superior, Faye, judges it to be not a priority. Jude discusses the recent cases with her, "There was nothing to suggest a single crime had been committed, let alone three of them. If it was nothing more than a tragic series of coincidences... then an overt investigation would do nothing except heighten the tension, generate hysteria and increase the risk of further deaths".
Vanessa Wood, the local psychiatrist who works with teenagers in the area calls the police with her concerns. She thinks "there's something about this cluster of suicides we should all be very concerned about".
She also mentions a blog called Eden Whispers. It's written by a malicious troll, who enjoys manipulating the young people into committing suicides.
Wood says, "Do you know the worst thing about Eden whispers? It's that a lot of what it says is so very seductive for people who have problems, even confident individuals who don't think they do. Me. You. It offers us that temptation. It whispers in our ears that it's in our power to make everything all right by leaving this world behind. In that one moment when everything seems so overwhelming - a moment that comes to us all - it's so very easy to take that message on board".
Jude and his team struggle with finding the identity of the blog author.
While the toll of deaths is growing, Jude and team manage to undig (literally) some old buried secrets.
What is the connection with Raven and Storm, who are camped near the Long Meg stone circle?
Are the recent suicides connected to the cold cases, decades old?
Is Jude's brother Mikey the next target of the gaslighting troll?
Death in the Woods is the third book by Jo Allen that I've read in the last couple of years. Jo Allen writes twisty thrillers that make you stop and think. The characters are real, flawed and nuanced.
Even the main villain of the story is multi-faceted, compartmentalising their way of thinking - helping some vulnerable people and taking revenge on the others. They just cannot let the past go. It's all about obsession and control.
Death in the Woods is menacing and eerie from the very start. It's a psychological thriller with believable characters and a well-crafted crime plot.
This post is part of the blog tour for Death in the Woods. Many thanks to Jo Allen and Rachel's Random Resources for my copy of the book!
Purchase Links
Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09BG9BY1N
Amazon US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BG9BY1N
Author Bio –
Jo Allen was born in Wolverhampton and is a graduate of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and the Open University, with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in geography and Earth science. She's been writing for pleasure and publication for as long as she can remember. After a career in economic consultancy she took up writing and was first published under the name Jennifer Young, in genres of short stories, romance and romantic suspense. She wrote online articles on travel and on her favourite academic subject, Earth science. In 2017 she took the plunge and began writing the genre she most likes to read -- crime.
Jo lives in the English Lakes, where the DCI Satterthwaite series is set. In common with all her favourite characters, she loves football (she's a season ticket holder with her beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers) and cats.
Social Media Links –
https://www.facebook.com/JoAllenAuthor
https://twitter.com/JoAllenAuthor
https://www.instagram.com/joallenauthor/
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