Today, I’m so excited to be posting my review of Kate Daniels’ first DCI Kate Daniels book, The Murder Wall. I am part of a huge book tour for #TeamDaniels. This means we will all be reviewing every book of the series! Thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and Orion Books for allowing me to be a part of this special project.
The Murder Wall is Mari Hannah’s first gripping crime novel featuring DCI Kate Daniels.
Eleven months after discovering a brutal double murder in a sleepy Northumbrian town, Detective Chief Inspector Kate Daniels is still haunted by her failure to solve the case. Then the brutal killing of a man on Newcastle’s Quayside gives Daniels another chance to get it right, and her first case as Senior Investigating Officer.
When Daniels recognizes the corpse, but fails to disclose the fact, her personal life swerves dangerously into her professional life. But much worse, she is now being watched.
As Daniels steps closer to finding a killer, a killer is only a breath away from claiming his next victim . . .
I adore having a full series of books to get stuck into. The Murder Wall by Mari Hannah had my interest piqued just from the blurb.
We meet DCI Kate Daniels, who is in the North East of the UK. She’s a tough detective who expects the best from her team and won’t ask them to do anything she wouldn’t do. I immediately warmed to Kate, as I read. In fact, Mari Hannah has created some great characters. She has really humanised them all. Kate herself is flawed and makes grave errors that, to me, make her all the more authentic.
This is a book that’s most definitely a ‘one more chapter’ read. The short chapters fly by as the plot unfolds. Tension and a feeling of thinking something is going to go badly wrong had my pulse pounding in places. Mari Hannah certainly has that skill perfected already! I was trying to work out who was the killer all the way, but the misdirection was excellently done, which kept me on my toes throughout.
As a reader, I always wonder if I will ever get bored with certain genres. If every crime thriller is as clever and well written as The Murder Wall, I will never be bored! A welcome new addition to my author list and I am looking forward to the next instament.
Author Bio
Multi-award winning Mari Hannah is the author of the Stone & Oliver crime series, the Ryan & O’Neil series and the DCI Kate Daniels series.
In July 2010, she won a Northern Writers’ Award for Settled Blood. In 2013, she won the Polari First Book Prize for her debut, The Murder Wall. She was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library 2017 as the author of the most enjoyed collection of work in libraries. In 2019, she was awarded DIVA Wordsmith of the Year. In that same year, Mari was Programming Chair of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Festival. In 2020, Mari was named as DIVA ‘Wordsmith of the Year’ and won Capital Crime’s ‘Crime Book of the Year’ award.
She lives in Northumberland with her partner, a former murder detective.
To find her or see where she’s appearing, visit her events page at: marihannah.com or follow her on Twitter @mariwriter.
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