Sadie Nicholls has been found dead, brutally and strangely murdered, in her South East London flat. Her little boy is missing.
DI Alex Finn and DC Mattie Paulsen know that, in the case of a missing child, it's the first 24 hours that count. They don't have many left to find out where Sadie's son might be and the identity of her killer. Why would anyone want a struggling single mother, loved by many, dead?
But when they realise a similar crime was committed at the same house nearly 20 years ago, a question is on everyone's lips: is this more than just a coincidence?
I'd like to thank Jenny at Hodder Books for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour and for my copy of The Hunting Ground to review.
The Hunting Ground is the first book in the DI Alex Finn series by Will Shindler that I have read despite having previously bought copies of The Burning Men and The Killing Choice which I had planned to read in order but sadly time ran away from me. And having finished reading The Hunting Ground, the only thing I potentially missed out on was some background information on the personal lives and working relationships between Alex Finn, Mattie Paulsen and the rest of the Major Incident team who we meet during the course of this book.
The book opens with us meeting the victim Sadie alive and well at work. She finds herself in an uncomfortable situation but despite the fact that she'll lose out on some much needed cash to look after her little boy Liam, she sticks to her principles and leaves early and makes her way home. But sadly this decision ultimately costs her as the next morning Sadie is found dead and there is no sign of Liam. It's down to Alex Finn and the team to find out what happened to Sadie, but more importantly to try and find Liam as everyone knows the first 24 hours following a disappearance are the most crucial.
The Hunting Ground is so much more than a whodumnnit, it's a perfectly balanced tale between the serious crime, a look into an old case that happened in the same house that bears striking similarities to this current investigation, as well as getting a glimpse into the everyday lives of the community where these events happened. We also get insights into the personal lives of Alex and Mattie which is where I might have gained a little by having read the previous books but I was able to gather enough insight from the snippets provided to see how Alex was coping with his personal loss and how Mattie had a connection with one of the neighbours as both have fathers suffering from early stages of Alzheimers.
So many books set during this period have chosen to completely ignore the situation we have been living with during the last couple of years so it was refreshing to see brief mentions of the pandemic, lockdown and the impact that it had on their lives. The fact that they have ultimately had to change their daily routines, loss of income and the impact it has had on their lifestyles.
Every time I thought I had figured it out and came up with a potential motive, something else would come along and throw all my theories out the window. So many of the neighbours seemed to be hiding secrets from their loved ones, friends and neighbours that I had multiple potential suspects to try and eliminate. The more I learned about each of them, the more I tried to work out what could possibly have been the reason for the murders, both in the present day and in the past, and was completely floored when the eventual truth was revealed. I went through a whole cauldron of emotions, from sadness to anger, when various snippets are revealed about incidents in several of the characters pasts that have shaped them to be who they are today.
The Hunting Ground is a thought-provoking read that had me on the edge of my seat whilst reading and I think from about the midway point I don't think I moved an inch as I was so eager to find out the truth, and even asked myself 'what would you have done in that position?' multiple times. And as for that ending... I was definitely not expecting that!
Now if only someone could invent a time machine to make our free time longer so that I can go back and catch up with the rest of the books in this series as I hope they are just as brilliant as this book was.
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