📖 Book of My Month ~ Death on Wolf Fell by Nick Oldham

Severn House
6 May 2025

Thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

 

A tense and utterly addictive police procedural set on the Lancashire moors featuring Sergeant Jessica Raker.

Former Metropolitan Police firearms officer Sergeant Jessica Raker is on a mission to bring down a brutal organized crime group operating in the idyllic Ribble Valley.

The OCG's leader, Mags Horsefield, is determined to make one of the members pay for getting caught by the police, using her contacts to make sure he’s released from prison early . . . into her waiting clutches.

Jess knows Mags from their school days, but their lives now couldn’t be more different. A fire at a local mill puts Jess on the tail of Mags’ OCG; is this her opportunity to catch the Ribble Valley’s most wanted criminal? The battle lines have been drawn, but when Jess is called to an incident at Wolf Fell Hall, a series of terrifying events follow…

📖My Review..

I love a good crime novel where I can instantly be familiar with the characters and also picture the setting in which they go about their nefarious business. Death on Wolf Fell intrigued me particularly because it’s set in my home county of Lancashire and some of the places mentioned I have visited so can easily put everything into context. The story begins with a dramatic opener which gets this pacy police procedural off to an explosive start with a gangland madam determined to succeed and a feisty police sergeant who is equally ferocious in her determination to stop crime boss Mags Horsefield in her tracks.

Nick Oldham is a new author for me and whilst I haven’t read the first book in this Jessica Raker series, this second book hits the ground running with enough back story included so that I never felt as if I was floundering in a sea of what happened before. It’s gritty and occasionally violent without being gratuitously so which makes everything feel authentic, if rather gung-ho at times. I feel DS Raker is a central character who will grow more into her lead detective role as the series progresses.There was enough bad stuff going on to keep me guessing and I enjoyed the insight into Jess’s personal life, with her kids and mother, and her burgeoning interest in fireman Joe.

I raced through the story pretty quickly as once started I could put the book down eager for the final outcome and hoped that Jess Raker would sort the good guys from the bad. The story ends on a real cliffhanger which gave me hope that there will be another DS Jessica Raker novel following in the not too distant future and in the meantime I can read the first book in the series Death at Dead Men’s Stakes so I’m all caught up. I am delighted to make Death on Wolf Fell the Book of my Month for May.

About the Author

Nick Oldham was born in Belthorn, Lancashire, in 1956. He has been a police officer since the age of nineteen, spending the majority of his service in operational roles, before retiring in 2005. He lives with his partner, Belinda, on the outskirts of Preston.

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