Wealthy economist Frank Ley has a sizable estate, called Westacombe, in North Devon - with a large house and several outbuildings. Web searches for other countries return the same kind of information in seconds. Take that action before taking any other actions. Please. It can not be said often enough: That investment of mere seconds can do you no harm.

It involved the suicides of two young men and the possible failure of the health system in providing them adequate care. Could someone have been meaning to silence him? The story belongs to the characters and I've enjoyed how this little world is built. I look forward to more from this series, in the future. Will Matthew ever wear a wrinkled shirt, will Jen ever rise above takeout for her kids, and can Ross stop trying to climb the ladder and instead be happy to do the job he has now?

DI Matthew Venn gets the case, and he and his colleagues - Detective Sergeant Jen Rafferty and Detective Constable Ross May - investigate. Dr Yeo seems an unlikely murder victim. He’s a good man, a public servant, beloved by his daughter. Matthew is unnerved, though, to find that she is a close friend of Jonathan, his husband. Unsurprisingly, Cleeves didn't disappoint. This woman could teach a master class on writing an engaging Police Procedural. This was an enjoyable and solid detective story with the team racing all over to discover why and who the killer was. The story allowed glimpses of the teams personal lives but not enough to take away from their non-stop police work. It was fun and entertaining trying to figure out who the killer was and why, so there were quite a few unexpected turns and a few twists that kept my attention. I enjoy reading books by Ann Cleeves and I will look forward to reading more written by her in the future. There are several murders in this book and the investigation is both interesting and surprising. I couldn't guess correctly who the real threat was, and I liked that.

The judging panel consisted of Geoff Bradley (non-voting Chair), Lyn Brown MP (a committee member on the London Libraries service), Frances Gray (an academic who writes about and teaches courses on modern crime fiction), Heather O'Donoghue (academic, linguist, crime fiction reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement, and keen reader of all crime fiction) and Barry Forshaw (reviewer and editor of Crime Time magazine).MY THOUGHTS: It has been said that Ann Cleeves is a master of her craft, and I am not going to disagree. She paints fluent pictures of her characters and their environs, drawing the reader into their dramas. The coastal community in North Devon provided an insular, small town atmosphere, which I tend to enjoy in my Mysteries. I loved learning all about the town's secrets; the underbelly of an otherwise picturesque place. Every community has things they would prefer to keep from the outside world.