Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham

Fiona is thrilled when she gets sent out a new case on the weekend.  The weekend dangled emptily before her with no plans.  A fresh new case would keep her busy and let her use her bloodhound instincts to help solve a crime.  What she didn't expect was to find a piece of a woman's leg in the freezer of a dead woman.  It still had a shoe on its trim foot...

Bantam Dell and Net Galley allowed me to download this book and read it for review (thank you).  It will be published February 18th.  Make a note to check with your local bookstore then.

I like murder mysteries, police procedurals and reading about localities I'm not familiar with.  The one fits all three; it's set in Wales.  It begins with the portion of a woman's leg found in the freezer.  Soon more parts are being located in the neighborhood.  If that's not enough to get the police detectives going, they soon find more parts of Moroccan male is in a park abutting the property.  The bodies are years apart in the killing dates, but they are both hacked to pieces.  Could the killer be the same?

The clues are small and insignificant unless you join them together with the right thread.  It's a bit like those children's games where you follow the numbered dots to complete a picture.  Fiona is more than willing to do this, but when she finds that the woman had danced in an exotic dancer's club, she's stricken.  Her father owns one, has for a long time.  Could he be involved in this case?  He denies it, of course.  What con man wouldn't?  So while she searches for answers, she worries about what she might find.

Fiona herself is an interesting character.  She was left in the back of her family's car while she was two.  No one knows where she came from or who her parents were.  Her adoption was a happy one and she loves her parents, but she worries a bit about "before".  She's also had mental health problems.  She's constantly on alert to make sure she doesn't backslide.

This is a mystery with a lot of complications, a lot of people involved, and most of the players are dead now.  The ones left are powerful and mean and willing to use all their resources to stop one little cop that won't play right and leave things alone.

The cop action was similar to any big city force around here.  The country was colder and seemingly more park-like than around where I live.  It's a good story and it takes a long time to unweave the facts and get to the conclusion.  The bad guys are still around, but so's Fiona.  I see more books in the future.

Happy reading.