When a young woman is found murdered on Lindisfarne DCI Ryan, who is living on the island, cuts short his sabbatical to investigate. Markings on the body suggest ritualistic overtones requiring the help of a civilian consultant, Dr Anna Taylor. Taylor has connections to the island and could prove invaluable to the investigation.
I'm a recent convert to audiobooks. To date all the ones I've listened to have been reviews via NetGalley, this means that I don't always have an audiobook on the go. I stumbled across Borrowbox which allows people to borrow and download ebooks and audiobooks from their local library. Holy Island from LJ Ross is my first audiobook using this service.
The DCI Ryan books have been on my periphery for quite a while as I'm from the north east and the books are set around Northumberland, the only thing that put me off starting the series is the sheer number of books, twenty to date. The idea of being able to listen, rather than read, gave me the impetus to start the series.
The setting for the murder was ideal. Lindisfarne has both Christian and pagan links so there were lots of historical references. The fact that the tides cut the island off from the mainland gave an added twist in that only one of the residents could have been responsible for the murder. With less than 200 residents on the island this meant that almost everyone from the tight-knit community was a suspect.
DCI Ryan is a bit of a cliche; tall, dark, handsome and brooding. Right from the start we know that there is an issue in his recent past because of the sabbatical. It takes a while for the true horror and tragedy of these events to be revealed. Once I'd heard about the case leading up to the sabbatical I did wonder why this wasn't used as the first book in the series as I felt it would have been more impactful.
Cliches continued once Dr Anna Taylor arrived. Ryan and Taylor didn't hit it off, Ryan dismissed her because of her appearance and was incredibly sarcastic towards her at times. Unsurprisingly they became romantically involved very quickly.
Having already realised that almost any of the residents could be the murderer there was a bit of a scatter-gun approach where virtually everyone seemed to have means, motive or an alibi that collapsed. Added to this was the "Circle" of people who were part of the pagan cult on the island.
The best part of the story was the epilogue, not because it was the end but because of the content, the teasing comments that not everything had been solved completely.
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