Innocent by Erin Kinsley is a very character-driven crime mystery that is a compelling story. Set in the small town of Sterndale where there is a hotbed of gossip and everyone judges everyone else. The one thing the people of this town don’t expect is to be right in the centre of media attraction.

The local celebrity of the area is found assaulted during a lavish summer wedding. When he dies it’s immediately upgraded to murder for the West Mercia Police.D.I Muir, D.S Kirstie Weld and D.S Nate Golding are all part of the investigating team into Tristan Harte’s death, it seems that Tristan was the golden boy, beautiful second wife, Izzy and a gorgeous daughter. A Well-liked and generous man with a good career, why would anyone have a reason to hurt him?

Erin Kinsley then, rather cleverly, immediately embroils us in the lives of some of the other families in the town. Aiden Ridley, an ex-police officer Laura, his wife and their two children Gemma and Josh. Aiden and Laura being close friends of Izzy and Tristan, means that Laura is attempting to help Izzy through this terrible time. Izzy is spending her time at Tristan’s bedside, with him in Intensive Care and still in a coma. His parents are there too and Izzy becomes too overwhelmed with her bedside vigil and struggles with Flora, their daughter, quite luckily they have a nanny to take the pressure off.
Izzy has always been confident in her husband, but a discovery of a second phone she was not aware of rocks her very foundations. What follows is an unravelling of her life and needless to say the investigations of Muir and the team uncover the dirty dregs of the town secrets as they go on.
What we think of as a terrible assault, twists into a murder mystery in a little unassuming town, where we get to know the locals and we see the facades crumble as the tension and suspense slowly build and we begin to see the truth come through.

I loved the small-town feel of the book and revelled in opening chapters with the wedding party. A page-turner for me, from the start. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style and found that I kept thinking just one more chapter! A great big thank you to Random Things Tours and the publisher for the book to take part today.