Publication: 4th April 2019 – HQ
She was racing towards the gorge. The place the locals knew as ‘Dead Girl’s Drop’…
DI Meg Dalton is thrown headlong into her latest case when she finds a ten-year-old girl running barefoot through the woods in a blood-soaked nightdress. In the house nearby, the girl’s father has been brutally stabbed to death.
At first Meg suspects a robbery gone tragically wrong, but something doesn’t add up. Why does the girl have no memory of what happened to her? And why has her behaviour changed so dramatically since her recent heart transplant?
The case takes a chilling turn when evidence points to the girl’s involvement in her own father’s murder. As unsettling family secrets emerge, Meg is forced to question her deepest beliefs to discover the shocking truth, before the killer strikes again…
I am very delighted to welcome you on my stop on the blog tour for DEAD MAN’S DAUGHTER, the new suspenseful novel by Roz Watkins, the second book in this fantastic series featuring DI Meg Dalton and I’d like to thank Lily and HQ for inviting me to join in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of a story that kept me completely engrossed for two days.
DEAD MAN’S DAUGHTER is the second book in the series, but it can easily be read as a stand-alone (although I highly recommend you read The Devil’s Dice, too!). In this second book, DI Meg Dalton is called to investigate the appearance of a girl running through the woods and covered in blood which leads her to the discovery of a man murdered in his own home. What it seems to be a robbery gone wrong, it turns quickly into a creepy and inexplicable murder that leads Meg to question her beliefs and her instincts.
I first met the protagonist, DI Meg Dalton, when, last year, I read The Devil’s Dice, the first novel in the series. After years away, she is back in the Peak District to stay closer to her mother and she finds a job in the Derbyshire Police. Now, six months after her return, she still has her ups and downs professionally and personally. Inside the police station, she has a good relationship with both her colleagues Fiona and Jai (although for the latter she has mixed feelings of friendship and romance), but she also has to suffer the jealousy of a resentful colleague and an obnoxious boss. Outside of the police station, she doesn’t have much of a social life, but she knows that she can always rely on her best friend Hannah, and family issues keep her mind busy even when she is at work. Thanks to the author’s detailed descriptions and beautiful writing, the character of Meg feels realistic: she is smart, determined, and well-developed, and her flaws, her emotions, her guilt over her job, her family, and her sister’s death make her more human and likable.
I found the setting very atmospheric and evocative. For some reason, I kept picturing Derbyshire as a cloudy and rainy place and this fits perfectly with the twisty, sinister, and very gripping plot of the novel. DEAD MAN’S DAUGHTER is a terrific read that captivated me from the beginning to the very end and it confirms Roz Watkin as a brilliant author who knows how to create thrilling and unpredictable stories.
Roz Watkins is the author of the DI Meg Dalton crime series, which is set in The Peak District where Roz lives with her partner and a menagerie of demanding animals.
Her first book, The Devil’s Dice, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger Award, and has been optioned for TV.
Roz studied engineering at Cambridge University, before training in patent law. She was a partner in a firm of patent attorneys in Derby, but this has absolutely nothing to do with there being a dead one in her first novel.
In her spare time, Roz likes to walk in the Peak District, scouting out murder locations.
Find out more at www.rozwatkins.co.uk
Book After Book 