Synopsis
Detective Sara Hirst is at a crossroads. Can she take the heat or is she about to burn out?
It’s the hottest summer on record. Norfolk is parched.
One steaming night an old thatched barn at Wild Thyme Farm is torched. The battle to put out the blaze rages.
Detective Sara is on the scene when there’s a horrifying discovery: there’s a body in the embers.
Sara and her team have been investigating a series of fires breaking out all over the county — but this is the first body.
Accident or murder?
Suspicion soon falls on struggling farm owner Jean Simpson and her daughter, Faye. Mother and daughter had a searing row the day before the barn went up – and now Faye’s husband is missing.
At the same time Sara’s personal and professional life are reaching boiling point. Her boss wants her to go for promotion. Her boyfriend wants to settle down.
Can Sara solve this case and keep everyone happy — or will it all go up in smoke?
My Review
I have been a fan of Judi and her work for a while now. Although I haven’t quite caught up with everything that she has written, I hope to before too much longer. When I heard that Judi was due to release another book in the bestselling Detective Sergeant Sara Hirst series, I knew that I had to grab a copy at the earliest opportunity. Well ladies and gents, the wait is over because the sixth book in the Detective Sergeant Sara Hirst series is called ‘The Wild Thyme Farm Murder’ and it was released on 4th April 2024. I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘The Wild Thyme Farm Murder’ but more about that in a bit.
I must be honest and say that it took me a little while to get into ‘The Wild Thyme Murder’. Part of the problem was the fact that I was tired when I started to read and I was finding it hard to concentrate. However once I got into the story that was it and I was away as the say goes. It didn’t take me long to feel as though I had reunited with an old friend in Sara Hirst and her team. I developed my own theories as to what was going to happen so of course I had to keep reading to see if I was on the right track or if I had wandered off in the opposite direction. My Kindle wasn’t exactly glued to my hand but it might as well have been because it travelled everywhere with me. I couldn’t bear to miss a single second of the story. I was so wrapped up in the story that I lost all track of time and just how quickly I was getting through the book. All too quickly I reached the end of ‘The Wild Thyme Murder’ and I had to say goodbye to Sara and her team. I found ‘The Wild Thyme Farm Murder’ to be a gripping and tense story, which certainly kept me guessing and kept me on the edge of my seat.
‘The Wild Thyme Farm Murder’ is extremely well written but then I have come to expect nothing less from Judi Daykin. Judi certainly knows how to grab the reader’s attention and draw them into what proves to be one hell of a story and then some. Judi clearly cares about her characters and this shines through in the very vivid and realistic way in which she describes them. She makes her characters seem just as real as you and I. In fact I believed in the characters so much that I felt like an extra member of Hirst’s team. For me, this story hit the ground running and maintained a steady pace throughout. Reading ‘The Wild Thyme Farm Murder’ felt like being on an unpredictable rollercoaster ride with several twists and turns along the way. I love the way in which the author makes the reader feel as though they are part of the story.
In short, I really enjoyed reading ‘The Wild Thyme Farm Murder’ and I would recommend it to other readers. I hope to read much more of Judi’s work in the future. The score on the Ginger Book Feek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.
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