Synopsis
It begins as a Halloween prank. It ends in cold-blooded murder.
Halloween. One of the busiest nights of the year for Lincolnshire police. Special Constable Jane Bell is called out to reports of someone in a Dracula mask terrorising the residents of a nearby estate with a fake knife. She races to the scene — but the man in the mask flees into the night.
The next morning, Detective Steph Warwick turns up on Jane’s doorstep. There’s been a murder. Dracula went on to attack two women, retired schoolteacher Susan Gedney and her daughter Gina. Susan died at the scene, Gina survived. The knife turned out to be all too real.
Then another young woman disappears from the picturesque village where Susan and Gina lived. She was last seen out on a country walk — but she never returned.
Three women targeted from the same small village. This is no coincidence.
My Review
I am a huge fan of Janice and her work. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed every book that she has written to date. As soon as I finish her new book then I (im)patiently wait for the next one. Janice’s newest release is ‘Murder On A Country Walk’, which is the fourth book in the series featuring Detectives Warwick and Bell, and it was released on 2nd April 2024. I really enjoyed reading ‘Murder On a Country Walk’ but more about that in a bit.
It didn’t take me long at all to get into ‘Murder On A Country Walk’. In fact by the time I got to the end of the first few pages, I knew that this was a book that I was going to enjoy and that I would find it rather difficult to put down for any length of time. So it proved to be. I had picked the book up only intending to read a chapter or two but I became so wrapped up in the story and in the lives of the different characters that I was still sat there several chapters and an hour or so later. The more of the book that I read, the more I wanted to read and the quicker the pages seemed to turn. I just had to know if the perpetrator of the crimes was the person I suspected. I was concentrating on the story so much that I didn’t realise just how quickly the time was passing and the speed with which I was getting through the book. All too quickly I reached the end of ‘Murder On A Country Walk’ and had to say goodbye to the characters. I found ‘Murder On A Country Walk’ to be a gripping, tense and dramatic read, which certainly kept me guessing and kept me on the edge of my seat.
‘Murder On A Country Walk’ is extremely well written and then some but I have come to expect nothing less from Janice Frost. Janice 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. I have to say that this story hit the ground running and maintained a fairly fast pace throughout. This story is certainly going to stay fresh in my mind for a long time to come and that’s down to the way in which the story starts. Janice 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. I felt as though I was part of the story myself and that’s thanks to Janice’s very vivid and realistic storytelling. Reading ‘Murder On A Country Walk’ felt like being on an unpredictable and rather scary rollercoaster ride with several twists and turns along the way.
In short I really enjoyed reading ‘Murder On A Country Walk’ and I would recommend it to other readers. I look forward to reading much more of Janice’s work in the future. The score on the Ginger Book Geek Board is a very well deserved 4* out of 5*.
gingerbookgeek 