Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths - Review

Bleeding Heart Yard is the third book in the Harbinder Kaur series, so I immediately knew I wanted to read it! The previous ones, The Stranger Diaries, reviewed here, and The Postscript Murders, reviewed here, were really good. I got this book on Netgalley so thank you very much to Quercus Books for granting that to me. I received an electronic copy of this book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The book was published on the 29th of September so is available now!

So Harbinder has moved to London and got a promotion, she is now a Detective Inspector and is in charge of her own team. She is sharing a house with two other women. She is called to what looks like a cocaine death at a school reunion. The victim is a Tory MP, Garfield Rice. He was at his school reunion with a bunch of friends, including one of Harbinder's DS', Cassie. Cassie is obviously placed on leave when it becomes clear that Garfield, aka Gary, was murdered with a shot of insulin. Harbinder has to look at Cassie's group of friends to get to the bottom of what happened to Gary.

There's Anna, who is newly returned from Italy and who is caring for her dying mother. There's Chris, now a famous rock star, a Labour MP, Harry, the now headmistress of the school they all attended, Sonoma, and Cassie and her husband. There's Joanna, too, an actress. Some of the parts of the book are told from Cassie's point of view, and then Anna's, and the two of them go over what happened over twenty years ago when they left school, and when Cassie was sexually assaulted by a boyfriend, and how the group of them concocted a way to scare the boyfriend. But what really happened to him, and why is Gary dead, and why is a second body left in Bleeding Heart Yard? 

I found this a pleasing addition to Harbinder's story, I liked the mystery and the group of schoolfriends and all that had been festering for twenty years. It is nice to see Harbinder's career move on and her personal life too, although I won't give any spoilers about that! I hope that we get more of Harbinder's life in London - maybe she can eventually make DCI? I'm giving this four out of five.