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The Fells by Cath Staincliffe - Review

Sunday, October 6, 2024


Thank you so much to Joffe Books for giving me access to this book via Netgalley! I cam across it while browsing and was intrigued, so I was pleased to be able to read it. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

I love detective fiction but I hadn't come across Cath Staincliffe before. This is her first book in the series with these detectives, but she has other books with other officers and I would be interested in picking one of those up. I would also definitely read more in this series, I hope to see one soon! 

The detectives are Leo, who is fifty something, happily married, and good at his job. His son, though, is causing a bit of worry because he's quite right wing and racist and stuff like that. Leo and his wife don't know what to do with him. 

Shan is new to the department I think, she's definitely new to Leo. She's married to a woman and she's pregnant with their first child. She tells Leo this straight away but is keen to get stuck into her new job.

And the job is this: a potholer has found a skeleton in a cave and Leo thinks it must be the bones of a young woman called Vicky who went missing in the late 90s. She was in the area with friends, at a festival, when she went missing, and was never found. It was commonly thought that she was another victim of a serial killer in the area, although he always denied it. She left a note saying she was going to watch the sunrise, but was never seen again. Two of her friends have stayed in touch with her mother, who desperately wants to know what happened to Vicky and to bury her properly. 

Leo and Shan - who has Chinese heritage, although she's adopted - get to work going over the cold case. 

I was worried in case this book was a bit too close to something by J R Ellis - there's even one of his about a body found in a cave in the Yorkshire Dales - but I shouldn't have worried. This story felt fresh and new and I liked how the mystery was solved. I liked the parts set in the 90s, too, and I liked Leo and Shan and want to know what's in store for them in the future. As you can see from the photo I was reading this while on holiday and it was perfect holiday reading for me! I'm giving it four out of five. 

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