#book #review Her Secret Past by Kerry Watts
Jean Angus pours the last of the lukewarm tea into her chipped cup, shivering as she looks outside into the dark night. Her eyes are drawn to a slow movement not far from her cosy farmhouse. She’s not expecting visitors. And as the back door opens with a bang, she doesn’t even have time to shout for help.
On a dark winter night, the bodies of Malcolm and Jean Angus lie cold and still in a pool of blood in their kitchen. Detective Jessie Blake is called in to find out what happened to the reclusive pair.
Searching the couple’s property, Jessie learns about a vicious dispute with a nearby land owner, Rachel Ferguson, and when Jessie looks into Rachel further, she doesn’t expect what comes up. Rachel isn’t the person everyone thinks she is and a previous murder conviction just made her Jessie’s prime suspect.
The small Perthshire town begins to gossip about the double murder and Jessie’s own past comes back to haunt her, when her abusive ex-husband begins to interfere in her new life. As the town starts a witch hunt against Rachel, Jessie is under pressure to find out what really happened in the farmhouse that night. Because if it isn’t Rachel, then who is the murderer living among them, waiting to kill again?
If you like LJ Ross, Val McDermid and Helen H. Durrant, you’ll love this addictive new crime thriller from Kerry Watts. Her Secret Past will have you hooked from the start!
REVIEW
Her Secret Past is book 3 in the Detective Jessie Blake series and this was easily a stand alone read, in fact I didn’t realise it was book three util after I read it,,, ooops!
The book starts off gruesome, in the prologue a man and his wife are brutally murdered by their 14 year old granddaughter Alice and her 19-year old boyfriend in their farmhouse on Skye, fast forward 30 years and Detective Jessie Blake is called out to a similar scene this time in a rural Perthshire town. When it comes to light that the neighbour of the deceased Malcolm and Jean Angus was none other than Alice who now goes by the name of Rachel, our detective cant help but wonder at the similarities.
Rachel swears down she didn’t do it, and when the grandson of the Angus’ turns out to be obsessed with serial killers especially what Alice did in the past, the detectives on the case start have their work cut out to find out just who killed the couple.
There were many twists and turns in this book that kept me on the edge of my seat and when the killer is finally revealed I never saw it coming!
4 stars
