#BlogTour ‘The Woman In The Wood’ by M.K Hill

About the book…

Three years ago, Danny ‘Abs’ Cruikshank, star of reality show Laid in Essex!, was living the dream – but on the night of the party, everything changed. It was supposed to be an intimate weekend gathering, just a few close friends in a remote cottage in Wales. But after a night of heavy drinking in the village pub, a local girl was reported missing – and never seen again. Abs and his friends had been the last to see her alive.

No-one was ever charged, but the controversy destroyed Abs’s career. So now, three years later, the celebrity who once captured the heart of millions is opening Basildon’s new branch of Quidstore.

But then one of Abs’s mates is murdered.

Does someone know what really happened that night in Wales? DI Sasha Dawson and her team must race against the clock to find the killer before they strike again – but first she must discover what happened to Rhiannon Jenkins on the night she vanished.

Will the truth set Abs free? Or bury him?

A reality TV star becomes a suspect in an Essex murder case in the sharp, exciting and moving new thriller from the brilliant new star of crime-writing M.K. Hill.

My thanks to blogtour supremo Anne Cater, of Random Things Tours for the invite and publishers Head Of Zeus for my gifted review copy of ‘The Woman In The Wood’!

To be frank, it has been too long since first making the acquaintance of D.I Sasha Dawson and her team of detectives in ‘The Bad Place’. Therefore I was delighted to be involved in the blogtour for her second time out of the blocks, investigating the unsolved disappearance of late teen, Rhiannon Jenkins, and its potential connection to the murder of a man questioned about it, at length.

Starting with a nasty murder, dressed up to look like a drunken suicide, Sasha finds herself involved with mid-level celebrities, as the victim, Deano, was one of 4 men interviewed following Rhiannon’s vanishing act, the others being Abs, a reality tv personality who is trying to raise his profile. The other 2 are Jez, Abs best friend, and Tony, Deano’s best bud, who all play different roles in the group dynamic. Abs and Jez are bonded best friends from shared childhood trauma, Deano has then bought Tony into the circle and now, a drunken fall off a train platform indicates that someone has decided one of them are guilty. And they are all in the firing line.

On the cusp of getting back into the pages of papers and lifestyle mags, Abs does not need this association of having been one of the last people seen talking to the girl at a pub in North Wales, near his holiday cottage. As the layers of what actually happened the night Rhiannon went off in the woods, and never returned, are peeled back, you get a building of established characters such as Sasha’s trouble making sister Connie, husband Kev, children Denny and Angel as well as Sasha’s work team of boss, Vaughn, DC Lolly Chambers and Ajay de Vaz.

Sasha’s voice is a welcome one, as a reader, you fall quickly in step with her personal and work life juggling act, this time, overlapping quite alarmingly thanks to Connie throwing herself at recently seperated Vaughn, leading to some hilariously awkward conversations and dinners! Sasha is such a real character, with an authentic, female voice, her muttered asides, truncated phone calls, multi tasking and closeness with husband Kev, all are so natural and relatable. This makes her problem solving ability at work so precise, she handles her team with aplomb, follows clues doggedly, with fearsome determination.

Rhiannon is just one of several girls of similar age, who have disappeared in similar circumstances, and Sasha’s inquiries into that missing person investigation dovetails with her duty to protect these men who have been found guilty through association. The story looks beyond what could be a cheeky rip off of ‘Love Island’, Abs show is called ‘Laid In Essex’ , but there are serious underlying threads of what the public perceive, and expect of those in the public eye. Particularly because Abs is just a survivor of a broken childhood, simply looking for validation in the reflection of star struck eyes at the local shop, in nightclubs, and pubs. He is genuinely a sweet, clueless soul, trying to do the right thing yet tarred with a reputation for sexual shenanigans due to the nature of the show he stars in.

His fame seeking contrasts beautifully with Sasha’s non nonsense policing, but, even she is not immune to his charms, and , as the book progresses, I genuinely felt sorry for him. He was being threatened ,possibly erroneously, for having been  somewhere close to a vanishing girl, and it has clung to him, like scandal tends to do. Sasha’s family relations might be fraught and awkward but she has people around her. Abs has a small coterie of friends, growing smaller by the page, and as the mystery progresses at a frantic pace, you begin to question who is after justice here, and why. What is the bigger picture? Pulling back, you can view this rich tapestry of characters who have been pulled into this investigation whether by intent or not, and it makes for an incredibly human read.

The dialogue is distinctive and written with a deftness of touch which helps you visualise the conversations, I have such a clear picture of Abs and his love, Queen of Reality TV Kelsey, in my head, that it really had me thinking about how, whether you watch reality tv or not, these larger than life characters inhabit spaces in your head. Rather like osmosis, you absorb these modern day cultural figures without really being aware that you have, and begin to wonder-are they a construct which has been demanded, or are they fulfilling a pre-destined role since the beginning of time? The joker, the faithless lover, the strong man, the envious lurker in the shadows….all of these characters exist but how much of them are authentically themselves is difficult to separate from the persona which editors and media sources portray them to be.

Perception, smoke and mirrors, all of which exist in this story to hide the truth, are cut away in swathes by Sasha and her team, with fierce determination. I absolutely loved this twisting narrative and trusted myself to the process of just opening the book, and being taken away. And I am so grateful to M.K Hill, Anne Cater and Head Of Zeus for a much needed respite from reality.

About the author…

Mark Hill was a journalist and an award-winning music radio producer before becoming a full-time writer.

The first novel in the Sasha Dawson series, ‘The Bad Place’, was described as ‘everything a police procedural should be‘ by The Times, who also named it as their crime book of the month. He lives in London.

Links-http://mkhill.uk/

Twitter @markhillwriter @HoZBooks @RandomTTours