📖 Publication Day Book Review ~ The Mortician by Sharon Bolton

Orion Book Group
5 November 2026

My thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this book 

Prepare the body. Don't ask questions. Protect the ones you love.

Mortician Ella Foxton has built her life around honouring the dead and guiding them to their final resting place. Her peace is shattered when Jonny Massey, a notorious gangster, arrives at her small funeral parlour demanding she provide a lavish funeral for his brother Jimmy.

As Ella prepares Jimmy's remains, she soon realises it's not just a body Massey wants buried, but a lifetime of violent secrets. Secrets that may just tie the Masseys to a double murder investigation headed by the tenacious DS Brian Rushton.

Caught between a live investigation and warring gangs, Ella must decide how far she'll go to bring the truth to light.

After all, the dead can't speak, but every body tells a story…

📖 My Review..

Mortician Ella Foxton is slowly building up her funeral business with a good reputation and a growing following on social media however, when she has an unexpected visit from a local gangland leader who wants her to handle his deceased brother’s funeral she is ill-prepared for what follows or of how deeply she will become enmeshed in an underground world of crime, secrets and deadly rivalry.  With so much to lose both personally and professionally Ella must put her reservations to one side but in doing she compromises not just her own safety but also that of those people she loves.

There’s plenty of action which kept me turning the pages quickly and a creepy edginess which had me jumping at shadows, especially when the ‘scuttlers’ appear. There’s a couple of really clever twists which I didn’t see coming but once the secrets start to be revealed everything began to slot nicely into place and I really enjoyed trying to join together the pieces of this complicated and fascinating plot.

Dark and gritty this is an addictive crime thriller which hits the ground running with a gripping opening chapter and which doesn’t ever lose its momentum until all the deadly secrets are finally revealed. The Mortician is a really cleverly plotted story and is Sharon Bolton writing at her absolute best.

About the Author 

Sharon (formerly SJ )Bolton loves in Buckinghamshire with her husband and occasionally her grown-up son. The Mortician is her nineteenth book, her ninth with Orion. Her first book Sacrifice was voted Best New Read by Amazon UK, while her second Awakening, won the Mary Higgins Clark award (part of the prestigious Edgars) in the US. In 2014 she won the CWADagger in the Library. She has been shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger, the CWA Steel Dagger, the Theakston’s Prize for Best thriller, the International Thriller Writers’ Best First Novel award, the Prix du Polar (France) and the Martin Beck Award (Sweden).