Title: Critical Incidents

Author: Lucie Whitehouse

Genre: Thriller/Crime

Publisher: Fourth Estate

Publication Date: Out Now

Rating: 4.5/5

Cover:

Book Summary:

Detective Inspector Robin Lyons is going home.

Dismissed for misconduct from the Met’s Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, unable to pay her bills (or hold down a relationship), she has no choice but to take her teenage daughter Lennie and move back in with her parents in the city she thought she’d escaped forever at 18.

In Birmingham, sharing a bunkbed with Lennie and navigating the stormy relationship with her mother, Robin works as a benefit-fraud investigator – to the delight of those wanting to see her cut down to size.

Only Corinna, her best friend of 20 years seems happy to have Robin back. But when Corinna’s family is engulfed by violence and her missing husband becomes a murder suspect, Robin can’t bear to stand idly by as the police investigate. Can she trust them to find the truth of what happened? And why does it bother her so much that the officer in charge is her ex-boyfriend – the love of her teenage life?

As Robin launches her own unofficial investigation and realises there may be a link to the disappearance of a young woman, she starts to wonder how well we can really know the people we love – and how far any of us will go to protect our own.

Review:

I love starting a new crime series, getting to know the lead characters and their circumstances. Critical Incidents is the first book in the DI Robin Lyons series and it promises to be a series I’m going to love reading. We meet Robin at a low point in her life, she has been dismissed from the Met for misconduct and forced move back in with her parents in Birmingham, along with her teenage daughter. Then, tragedy strikes her best friend’s family and Robin finds herself trying to solve the case from the outside, stripped of the protection of her career as a detective.

Robin is a character that makes mistakes and doesn’t always, in fact almost never, follows the rules. However, her flaws make her feel fundamentally human and despite her sometimes detrimental stubbornness and her struggles within relationships, I found her easy to root for throughout. She’s a tough and smart woman, and her determination, along with her clear unequivocal love for her daughter, makes her a force to be reckoned with. I really enjoyed this first foray into Robin’s world and I can’t wait to start the next book in the series.

★★★★.5

Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for my place on Team Lyons and for the copy of the book. My review is entirely my own honest opinion.

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