Victoria Blake

Bloodless Shadow by Victoria Blake had been sitting on my bookshelf for a number of years and when I finally brought it down to read this month I was in for a couple of surprises. The first was the timing of the book, for some reason I had gotten it into my mind that this was historical mystery but in actuality, it is the first book in a small series about a modern day British Private Detective. Instead of a light crime story this was a gritty dark story featuring a P.I. that has more issues show more than her clients. The second surprise was how much I enjoyed this book.

Set in London and Oxford, Sam Falconer is hired by the husband of a missing woman. As she investigates the woman’s disappearance she becomes convinced that this is not a woman that will be found alive. Everyone in the story has secrets, and when Sam receives a letter from her father, a man who has been dead for twenty years, she is forced for confront more than a few secrets of her own.

I found Bloodless Shadow to be a well plotted, developed and written mystery. The main character is an angry, troubled and unhappy young woman but by the end of the book she had confronted her past and had received some closure. It would be interesting to see what happens next but these mysteries are not readily available so, although I will keep my eye open for more, I doubt that I will be continuing with the series. show less

I enjoyed this a lot - Victoria Blake is very good at evoking a strong sense of place in both London and Oxford, and the atmosphere of heat and menace. The themes and story lines that run through this series move some way to resolution, while new revelations open up and the story is enjoyably far fetched and baroque - very suitable for Oxford and the Pitt Rivers which acts as its focus.

This is a another mystery from Victoria Blake with her Oxford sleuth, Sam Falconer and it's a good one. Sam is asked by the Oxford University Boat Club to find a young rower who has disappeared just before the all important race with Cambridge. Her search leads her to the icy waters of the Thames but the body is not the rower. At the same time, her sinister father, a former SAS officer, shows up at her London apartment claiming he is being pursued by assasins. Highly recommended.

Sam's brother, Mark, an Oxford Don, asks her to investigate a strange letter received by the head of his college. At the same time one of Mark's students seemingly commits suicide. Then Mark disappears and it becomes clear that this is linked to their father's past as an SAS man in Ulster. Victoria Blake manages to intersperse moments of humour, most particularly with Sam's fat orange cat, Frank Cooper, who needs to go on a diet, which work to heighten the tension.