📖 Book Review ~Devil's Table by Kate Rhodes #TeamScilly

Simon &Schuster
2021

DI Ben Kitto #5

My thanks to the publishers and Tracy at Compulsive Readers for my copy of this book

A MISSING CHILD

St Martin’s is shrouded in bitterly cold fog when Jade Minear and her twin brother, Ethan, are attacked in a field, late at night. Ethan manages to return home but the shocking events of Jade’s disappearance have rendered him mute.

A LONG-HELD GRUDGE

On a small island where there are few places a child can hide, DI Ben Kitto must battle the elements to search for Jade. When his investigation reveals that the Minear family have many enemies on the island, Kitto grows increasingly worried that Jade is in danger.

A KILLER HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT 

Meanwhile, someone on the island knows exactly where the girl is. Someone with a deep-seated hatred of Jade's family. To find the truth, Kitto must investigate the lives of the people he has known all of his life. Because one of them is lying – and it isn’t long until a body is found.

📖 My Review..

When Jade Minear, the eleven year old daughter of a local businessman, goes missing on one of the smaller of the Scilly Isles, DI Ben Kitto finds, once again, that there are far more questions than answers especially as the only probable witness to Jade’s disappearance is her twin brother, Ethan, and he isn’t speaking to anyone. The investigation is blighted by a lack of clues and the added confusion of a shifting fog which shrouds the island effectively cutting the place off so that the islanders find themselves placed under curfew, firstly by the weather and then with the unexpected discovery of a body at the aptly named Devil’s Table.

There’s something compelling about these stories which only gets better as the series progresses. Ben Kitto is very much part of island life and his position as Deputy Chief of Police for the Scilly Isles gives him the authority to investigate a collection of crimes but it is affinity with the islanders where the heart and soul of the stories lie. I enjoy the snippets of Ben’s past with stories of his childhood in the islands and enjoy how his methodical, and often unconventional, approach to crime investigation gets the results needed to see that justice is served.

Devil’s Table is a particularly complex investigation with lots of secrets to uncover and the added possibility that someone close to home is involved in Jade’s disappearance only makes the investigation all the more difficult. Tempers run high and old hurts are allowed to fester until they threaten to destroy the equilibrium of this peaceful place. There’s all the usual twists and turns in the plot which kept me turning the pages of Devil’s Table faster, and faster, until the ending which I didn’t see coming.

Devil’s Table is now the fifth book in this excellent crime series, each one more enjoyable than the last and as one book finishes I’m already looking forward to meeting again with DI Ben Kitto, and his amazing dog, Shadow, in The Brutal Tide, which is book number six in the Scilly Isles series.

 

About the Author

Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker, Dave Pescod. She visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child which gave her the idea for this new series. She is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group.

Twitter @K_RhodesWriter #TeamScilly

@simonschusterUK

@Tr4cyF3ntOn