#BlogTour ‘Marshal Of Snowdonia’ by Simon McCleave

About the book…

Living and working in Snowdonia was always retired detective Frank Marshal’s dream. Until a phone call asking for his help turns it into his worst nightmare.

Retired detective Frank Marshal lives in a remote part of Snowdonia with his wife Rachel who is suffering from dementia. Working as a park ranger, Frank gets a phone call from close friend Annie, a retired judge. Her sister Meg has gone missing from a local caravan park and she needs his help to find her.

As Frank and Annie start to unravel the dark secrets of Meg’s life, it seems at first that her disappearance might be linked to her nephew and a drug deal gone wrong. In a shocking twist, their investigation leads them to a series of murders in North Wales from the 1990s and a possible miscarriage of justice.

Can Frank and Annie uncover the sinister truth so they find her sister in time to save her? Or will a brutal serial killer add Meg to his list of victims?

My thanks to Angela McMahon and Stamford Publishing for the blog tour invite and gifted review copy of Simon McCleave’s series opener, ‘Marshal Of Snowdonia’

The complexity of life as a retired detective, but still protector of both family and community, weighs heavy on the shoulders of Frank Marshal-he has a daughter living too far away , with his only grandchild, in a dubious relationship. His son has died in tragic circumstances, and he daily watches his wife succumb to the inisidious grip of dementia.

His days as a ranger in Snowdonia, bringing down poachers and keeping an eye on county lines drug runners maximise his detective skills whilst allowing him the freedom to wander amongst the rugged landscape of a country he is proud to call home, Yr Wyddfa, which takes on a significant role as both setting for this gripping tale as well as reason for him to keep going.

Marshal is the one Annie turns to , her past history as a judge bringing them into contact during his long career, her sister wouldn’t just go missing without telling her where she was going.

There is no reason for her, and nephew Callum, to just empty their static caravan, take the deposit back and disappear-but as 2 adults, the police, led by a detective Marshal considers sloppy at best, arrogant and unprofessional at worst, do not take this seriously, feeling they have left under their own steam.

As events from past and present conspire to intersect, what looks like a casual disappearance has much deeper implications not only for the people involved in the case, but convictions secured way back in the 1990’s.

What is worse then having 2 family members missing?

When one of them turns up with memory loss about just what has happened to them both…

A small community where everyone knows each other, for many generations past, is probably the best and worst place to hide a dark, deadly secret-pull one brick and the whole wall falls down.

With so much invested in seeing Megan stay missing, how far will Marshal’s reach as an ex-detective go towards solving this case?

As a series opener, I think this book really does well introducing the main cast of characters and creating the sense of wildness and also, paradoxically, the closeness of a Welsh community, The vernacular is well conveyed, I could hear the dialogue so clearly (South Waleian here!)

There was a certain amount of repetition of phrases and words, often within the same paragraph which had me tracing my steps thinking I had read the sane sentence twice, which was distracting. Tension was created and built convincingly between the main characters, particularly Annie and Marshal, and there were enough hints dropped about past actions that I think will snare readers into wanting to read future entries in the Marshal series.

Da Iawn!

About the author…

Simon McCleave is a million-selling crime novelist who lives in Wales with his wife and children. His first book, The Snowdonia Killings, was an Amazon Bestseller, and all other novels in the DI Ruth Hunter series ranked in the Top20. The books are now set to be filmed as a major television series.

The Dark Tide, the first book in an Anglesey based crime series, was a hit in 2022. Reaching Amazon’s UK Top10, it became the highest selling Waterstone’s Welsh Book of the Month ever.

Links-https://www.simonmccleave.com/

Twitter @simon_mccleave Instagram