📖 The Coffin Makers Garden by Stuart MacBride

 

Harper Collins
7 January 2021
Ash Henderson #3

My thanks to the publishers for my e-copy of this book

A village on the edge…

As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith’s home is falling into the North Sea. But the crumbling headland has revealed what he’s got buried in his garden: human remains.

A house full of secrets…

With the storm still raging, it’s too dangerous to retrieve the bodies and waves are devouring the evidence. Which means no one knows how many people Smith’s already killed and how many more he’ll kill if he can’t be found and stopped.

An investigator with nothing to lose…

The media are baying for blood, the top brass are after a scapegoat, and ex-Detective Inspector Ash Henderson is done playing nice. He’s got a killer to catch, and God help anyone who gets in his way.

My Thoughts...

The Coffinmakers’s Garden sees the return of Ash Henderson, the ex-Detective Inspector who is now working as part of the Lateral Investigative Review Unit alongside Police Scotland.

When coastal erosion and a storm of mammoth proportions threatens the Scottish coast, the damage uncovers human remains close to the home of local man, Gordon Smith. With no sign of Gordon and with his home threatening to fall into the sea at any minute, Henderson is brave, or foolhardy, enough to go into Gordon’s abandoned house only to discover a truly horrific secret in the basement. What then follows is a convoluted crime mystery which looks for reasons behind the horrific discovery and seeks justice for the victims of crimes which have gone unnoticed for far too long.

This is my first time at reading crime investigation in the company of Ash Henderson and I have to say that it took me a little while to understand and warm to his character. He’s a bit of a maverick, easily rubs people up the wrong way, and yet for all his taciturn investigative skills he seems to get things done unlike the police who seem to be bumbling around in this investigation. The story moves along at a cracking pace and there’s a definite sense of chill as the story progresses. There are twists and turns aplenty and more than enough red herrings to keep you guessing and after my initial reservations I found that I was definitely gripped by the direction of the story, and grew to like Henderson more and more as this challenging investigation continued.

I am sure that fans of this author’s writing, and of the Ash Henderson series in particular, will be well pleased with this story, as, I believe, it’s been seven years in the waiting.

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