#BlogTour: DEAD GUILTY by Michelle Davies @M_Davieswrites @panmacmillan @graceharrison55 @annecater #RandomThingsTours

Publication: 11th July 2019 (eBook); 22nd August 2019 (paperback) – Pan Macmillan

Has the killer in DC Maggie Neville’s cold case returned after a decade of silence?

Katy Pope was seventeen when she was brutally murdered on a family holiday in Majorca. Despite her mother’s high rank in the Met and the joint major investigation between the British and Spanish police, Katy’s killer was never caught.

Ten years later, Katy’s family return to the Spanish island to launch a fresh appeal for information, taking with them the now skeletal team of investigating Met detectives, and newly seconded Maggie as the family liaison officer.

But Maggie’s first international investigation quickly goes from being more than just a press conference when another British girl there on holiday goes missing, and Katy’s killer announces that it’s time for an encore . . .

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Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for DEAD GUILTY, the gripping new novel by Michelle Davies. A huge thank you to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the blog tour and to Pan Macmillan for providing me with a copy of this brilliant novel.

Mallorca is the largest island in the Balearic Islands, just off the Spanish coast. Beautiful, exotic, a fantastic place to go on holiday. But it was also the setting of the kidnapping of Katy Pope, a young English girl on holiday with her family and boyfriend. Her body was found mutilated a week later and her killer was never arrested. Ten years later, Katy’s family is visiting the Spanish island again hoping that the memorial service will draw new attention to the case and it will help the police to find her killer, at last.

DC Maggie Neville has recently joined the Met, but she is not finding it easy so when she is asked to join the team still investigating Katy’s murder as the family liaison officer, she doesn’t have to think twice. Sure, Maggie has to endure the continuous demands of Katy’s mother, her conflicting and unprofessional feelings for Katy’s brother, and the encumbrance of the uncooperative Spanish police, but this is her chance to prove herself. When another woman goes missing, for Maggie and her colleagues is a race against time to find the killer before it’s too late.

So, this is the fourth novel featuring DC Maggie Neville, but it’s my first time reading this series and I loved it. I am definitely going to read the first three books and whatever comes next (especially after reading the shocking revelation at the end). Maggie is determined, intuitive, and good at her job. I can’t say I always liked her because I didn’t like some of the choices she made, but being flawed and making mistakes made her more realistic and relatable.

I loved how the author structured the novel switching the point of view from Maggie to the family of the victims, from the killer to one of his victims giving the reader a 360° view of the story, but never giving away too much so that I didn’t figure out the truth until it was revealed.

DEAD GUILTY is self-paced and with the tension building slowly. The author plays also on the emotions of the characters: Maggie’s insecurities, a family in mourning, a young scared woman trying to survive. These feelings are vividly drawn and make the characters feel more real and the story more intriguing.

DEAD GUILTY is a suspenseful and compelling procedural novel, highly recommended to all crime lovers!

Michelle spent the formative years as a reporter on a local newspaper in Buckinghamshire and interviewed many relatives of serious victims during that time.

Later, as a freelance journalist for women’s magazines, she secured an interview with Kerry Needham, whose son Ben Needham went missing in Kos in 1991 when he was a toddler. It was hearing her talk about it that gave Michelle the idea for making her central police character a FLO.