The Detective's Daughter

Stella Darnell resented her dad, Terry, for leaving the family when she was young and for the time he devoted to his job as a detective both on the police force and after retirement as he tried to solve a 30 year old cold case, that of Kate Rokesmith. Her husband had been the main suspect but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. In an attempt to protect him, he had sent their son, Justin, just four years old at the time of the murder to a boarding school where he was bullied.

Now Terry has died suddenly and Stella, who owns her own cleaning company, is determined to prove that even she is a better detective than he ever was. She decides to solve the case with the aid of Jack who she has just hired. However, Jack may not be as show more innocent as he seems and may have ulterior motives for keeping track of her progress in the Rokesmith case.

The Detective’s Daughter is the third book in the series by author Lesley Thomson but the second I read. This meant that it wasn’t quite as suspenseful as it might have been for me. But, even knowing some of the facts about the people involved ahead of time, I was completely taken in by the mystery. And, admittedly, it is more than a little implausible but somehow this didn’t interfere with my enjoyment. This is a fun mystery with some very quirky characters. Thomson does an excellent job of laying out suspects and red herrings only to knock them down one by one and it kept me guessing right until the big reveal at the end. show less

There are some good things in this: there is an interesting analogy drawn between the mindset of the professional cleaner and that of the SOCO, and the author can write excellently chilling horror when required. But yards of tedious minutiae do not characterisation make, and the studious avoidance of the obvious (good) was, in the end, I thought, counterproductive (bad).

Set in my old stamping ground in Essex (UK) and with enough local scenery to make it authentic and relatable.

A police procedural that holds you, willing the female detective to succeed in her quest for justice.

Nothing great or deep here just a well written novel that has bite and substance. If you like crime novels don’t miss this one.

Kate Rokesmith died on Monday, 27 July 1981 and her case would go unsolved into the cold case files. But detective Terence Christopher Darnell was determined to find out what happened and pursued the investigation after his retirement which would end on Sunday, 9 January 2011.

For thirty years, the story would be dormant in police files, and all the people involved in Kate's life would continue with their lives. Her husband left the country, her four year old son landed up in a boarding school where he was bullied. For some life would continue normally, and for others her death would change everything.

When Terry dies of a heart attack, his daughter Stella, with her own cleaning company, assumes she will just clinically finish up his show more life and home, as she is doing with all her clients, never expecting to find what was waiting for her in his home. She believes they did not have a good relationship, her dad was married to his work, and she dissociated with him after her parents divorce. She did not really know him and felt no need to mourn his death at all.

To find the case still open and being investigated by her retired dad brought even more resentment and bitterness. How did it happen that she resented a dead woman this much? It was the murder case that ended his marriage and changed his relationship with Stella forever. Until she starts to read her dad's meticulous notes.

Between the time of his death and his funeral, her entire approach to life will be challenged, her memories rearranged, her values tested, and her mission in life changed.

There was thirty years of history in different people's lives that would open up for her. In less than three weeks, she would become something she never imagined possible and get to know people she never deemed necessary in her life.

This is a brilliant detective murder mystery. Not only are there complete profiles of all the people involved, there are also the detailed memories of those who remembered the murder but never discussed what they knew. The secrets are stacked up, the veneer covering up the guilt, are polished to a satin shine. But Stella was not only known for her meticulous cleaning services, her ability to find grime in hidden places, she was also her father's daughter when it comes to detail.

This was a tremendous experience! Five stars for everything! show less

A good interesting plot. I liked the way, the author brings the reader into the character's mind by showing the random thoughts which blow through. On the other hand, it was quite tricky to read - it often felt disconnected, and I frequently found myself rereading paragraphs and scanning back through the book, to try to understand it better. This was a bit annoying. In fact, I thought it had been written with the film or TV version very much in mind, because the frequent scene changing may well have worked better on screen than on the page. However, overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it as a good read. (If you do read it, please tell me how Jack ended up in the dentist chair!)

3.5 Stars

There are eight books in this series, so this debut must have been popular enough. Not so for me, even though the blurbs intrigued me enough that I found I had sprung for two copies of this book at different times: paperback and Kindle.

Stella, the titular daughter (oh my, I'm so weary of book titles with 'daughter', 'wife', mother' and so on). Anyway, Stella - I wanted to slap her many times. That's probably not enough to dislike a book, but it certainly made reading this frustrating.

Not at all what I hoped and frankly, the editor could have done a better job on this book. Yes, it's a mystery trying to be solved by the daughter of a detective. However, the story meanders so much with her normal business and other information that it really could have been a shorter story.

There are places where the writing makes me disoriented as it jumps back and forth in time, sometimes within just a couple sentences. There are major information dumps. Taking a half a chapter to "read" what had already happened is cheating, I'm sorry. The main character pays about as much attention as a cat intent on the red dot. I had the suspect as soon as he walked on scene. How she can be a superior cleaner when she misses obvious things is show more beyond me. In that matter, she was trying to fit the facts to her suspect she'd stuck to, instead of using the facts to find the killer.

The last chapter and the epilogue could probably both gone away. The editors could have reduced a lot of the talk about cleaning and their results. I just kept stumbling through this book. I can't feel comfortable rating it higher than 2 stars. show less