First, the story. A teenage girl is brutally tortured and killed, in a small town in England. She is among the popular teens at her high school, highly made-up and dressed to look older than she is. Not long after, a second murder. Friend of the first girl and similar in style.

DCI Annie Carr and partner DC Ali Karim are on the case. Annie, however, reaches out to an old friend, Kate Burrows. Kate is now retired from the murder squad, married to Patrick, an alleged criminal. In her time Kate had a remarkable record and her seasoned view is valuable. Frequently, then, Annie brings copies of the case files to her to review.

The detectives visit various homes and interview classmates and teachers. Their ace tech person searches online for connections that might lead to a killer, and scrolls through miles of CCTV footage in hopes of catching a glimpse of the abductions. But nothing surfaces. What does become clear is that the woods at the edge of the homes are not covered by cameras, and the woods is where the bodies are found. The bodies are clean of any trace of DNA or other evidence.

So how does he take them? Where does he take them? Where are the actual crime scenes?

My problems with this book:

* The quality of the writing. Frequent misuse of subject and object in sentences, careless writing in general.

* Repetitious. Certain themes are repeated and repeated. For example, Patrick loves his wife Kate. Again and again we read how much he cares about her, but there is no depth to the statements.

* Cole tends to "tell" rather than "show". She tells us how Kate is feeling and why or why Bella is a c**t, rather than let us draw our own conclusions by listening to them speak or watching them act. We learn that newly-discovered daughter-in-law Bella is "mental" because she tells us so. Bella actually says very little, does very little. Throughout we are told how to feel, not shown.

* The F-word. The novel is sprinkled liberally with f-this, f-that, f-ing this, f-ing that. I know that many people talk this way but in this book EVERYONE does. It gets wearing and seems often inappropriate.

* Verbal attacks. Characters go off on others again and again for the same things. Again, repetitious and quick to anger. Doesn't anyone have a level head here?

* Lack of real dialogue. We are treated to short bursts of dialogue and then "it went on from there" or "the conversation took hours". We get no details, nothing in the words to build from, to think about.

* The investigation. The team asks a few questions, gets a few answers, and then leaves. When asked if they want to talk to another student who also knew the victims, they say no, we have enough. It's a joke of an investigation. No real process is followed. No wonder they don't get very far. How about talking a walk in those woods? Look closely for clues. Listen to tones of voice, watch body language.

I finished it so I could say I didn't miss any of it. But I won't bother picking up any other books by this author.

Clearly, though, by her popularity, my opinion is not that of the majority. I hope this falls into the hands of those who will actually enjoy it.
( )

The story is quite interesting, though Cole relied on descriptions of blood-freezing horrors. Unfortunately, and I have already written this before in one of my reviews, Cole does not succeed - to put it mildly - in building characters and motives, and tells several unrelated stories at the same time. ( )