Without Trace by Leigh Russell
With a terrifying certainty, she knew she was going to die.
DI Geraldine Steel knows people go missing all the time. So when her partner Ian asks her to look into the disappearance of his football-buddy’s girlfriend, her first instinct is to reassure him there’s no need for concern.
Until she’s called to a suspected murder.
The young woman has earth and fragments of twigs in her hair. It’s as if she’d been completely encased in earth. And yet she was found on the pavement, at the side of a suburban road, where she wasn’t in contact with any soil or mud.
Without a crime scene, the investigation focuses on her boyfriend. But then another young woman is reported missing. Unless he has an accomplice, they have an innocent man in custody. And Steel is running out of time . . .
A page-turning puzzle of a case with an unexpected final twist. If you’re a fan of Angela Marsons, Mel Sherratt and Karin Slaughter, you’ll love Leigh Russell.
About the author
Leigh Russell is the author of the internationally bestselling Geraldine Steel series, which has sold over a million copies worldwide. Her books have been #1 on Amazon Kindle and iTunes with Stop Dead and Murder Ring selected as finalists for The People's Book Prize.
Review
‘Without Trace’ was a brilliant read that was packed full of tension, gruesome details and a team of floundering detectives! This is book twenty in the Geraldine Steel series - how are we on book 20 already?! You can easily read this as a standalone though as it's quite a distinct storyline and Leigh gives you all the background details that you need to know! I do recommend reading the full series though as it really is a good one!
On a pavement in a sleepy suburb of York, a young woman is found unconscious and covered in dirt, twigs entangled in her hair and soil under her fingernails. It looks like she escaped being buried. When she later dies in hospital DI Geraldine Steel’s team is called into solve the case. Geraldine’s partner and fellow police officer Ian has recently told her that his friend’s girlfriend has gone missing. Is she the woman covered in dirt? When another girl disappears without trace Geraldine is worried we have a serial killer on their hands…
I thoroughly enjoyed this outing for Geraldine and the gang. Since we knew who the killer is from the start this was more an example of how limited the police can be in an investigation with little evidence or clues. They have to fall to probabilities - the victim’s partner is the most likely to be the killer. Is Occam’s razor going to hold true or will it cause assumptions and incorrect judgements? The pace of the book really picks up in the later of the book as we chase around a few suspects. It was packed full of tension and the pacing was spot on.
I love Geraldine as a protagonist - she is steady, doesn't jump to assumptions, knows who she is and I am loving her partnership with Ian! She always examines the evidence and pushes against the boundaries, she wont go for the quick arrest if it isn't warranted. I love her! I can't wait to see what happens in the next book after that personal revelation in the final chapter. Roll on book twenty one!
Let me know if you pick this one up!
