The Shining Skull

The kidnapping of a teenaged pop sensation bears uncanny resemblance to the kidnapping of a 7-year-old 30 years ago, and the victim in that case appears to have reappeared -- or is it an imposter? A fake taxi driver is cutting off women's hair - will he escalate to something worse? Meanwhile Neil has found an extra body in a Regency coffin. Is it related to the cult of the prophetess Joan Shiner?

The best of the series so far. Lots of suspense and unexpected twists. I certainly didn't see the solution to the main mystery coming at all. However, since it's taken this long for it to click that Neil is more formally called Dr. Watson, that may not be very surprising.

Little Marcus Fallbrook was kidnapped in 1976 and was never returned home; his grieving family assumed the worst. Then, thirty years later, teenage singing star Leah Wakefield disappears, and DI Wesley Peterson has reason to suspect that the same kidnapper is responsible. But then Marcus Fallbrook returns from the dead. Meanwhile archaeologist Neil Watson's gruesome task of exhuming the dead from a local churchyard yields a mystery of its own.
As usual, DCI Wesley Peterson is the head of the police team dealing in a murder while his university friend, Neil Watson, is investigating a historical mystery as part of an archeological dig. This book gives us a third mystery, one from the more recent past. This one involves the kidnapping of a show more child that bears a striking similarity to the current kidnapping of a celebrity.

Kate Ellis is really good creating plots. The characters are always good, but this is not a series that the character's lives become a major part of the series. That said...you could certainly read this series out of order. You might miss a few references to events from earlier books, but you will in no way, be confused.

Wesley is a detective in a small town in England. This story is about two kidnappings that are thirty years apart. along with that is the discovery a 2nd skeleton buried in coffin that is being relocated. The first kidnapping, 30 years ago, is of Marcus Fallbrook. He was 7 years old when he disappeared and was never found.

The 2nd kidnapping is a young local teen celebrity, Leah, who is a singer. Some of the circumstances of Leash's kidnapping are similar to those of Marcus's. At the same time as all this is going on, Neil, an archeologist and good friend of Wesley's, discovers a 2nd skeleton in a coffin that he has been hired to relocate. The skeleton is that of a young teenage boy and dates back approximately 100 years. Both, closely parallel each other.

It's an enjoyable, well plotted story as is this entire series. You might sometimes lose patience with Wesley and Neil...but the mystery and their skill in solving these cases are well worth the reading time.

This was the August Group Read: (Mystery & Suspense group) show less

I have now read enough of these books to understand the style. Kate Ellis' detective, Wes Peterson, deals with a couple of crimes at a time. The first is resolved some fifty pages from the end and, the clues are such that the reader gets there just before our hero. Feeling confident, we over stretch and are convinced that we have also solved the major crime but, of course, a neat body swerve leaves us looking foolish, as the perpetrator inevitably turns out to be someone else.

I LOVE IT!!!!

This book contained so many kidnappings and planned kidnappings that it all got a bit ridiculous. The police were so incompetent in their efforts to get Leah back that I was surprised they didn't all get demoted. Neil's storyline bored me for most of the book, although of course everything came together at the end. I didn't feel the author gave any good explanation of the appeal of Joan Shiner, which made things seem a bit under-motivated.

I think I've talked enough about the shortcomings of this series in the past. But I'll mention something new(ish): this time I thought this was the wrong book to read if you were looking for good police procedure - I can't believe that this is how anyone would handle a kidnapping. However I guess the short answer (if there was a question) is that I'm not after pin point accuracy in lieu of a good yarn, and Kate Ellis can spin a decent yarn. One of the things I like about this series in the thinly disguised version of Devon used for location - a short scene set at "Whitepool Sands" had me remembering my daughter falling in the sea at Blackpool Sands for the rest of the book. Good entertainment.