The Devil’s Claw: A Jennifer Dorey Mystery by Lara Dearman

The Devil’s Claw: A Jennifer Dorey Mystery by Lara Dearman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jennifer Dorey needed to return to the quiet town of Guernsey after a traumatic experience on her job as a journalist in London. Taking a job at the local newspaper in the town Jenny never expected to find herself stumbling onto a big case involving a serial killer but that is just what she did when the body of a woman is found. Jenny started to dig into similar cases of drowned women and finds a pattern leading back fifty years.

DCI Michael Gilbert is a distant relative of Jenny’s on the verge of retirement from his job when Jenny brings him what she has found with the case. Michael is not one to push her concerns to the side as he sees the pattern in the cases that Jenny has found and becomes determined to help her figure out if there has been a killer hiding in Guernsey for the last fifty years right under their noses.

The Devil’s Claw by Lara Dearman is the first book in the new Jennifer Dorey mystery series. The story is told by switching the point of view between three characters, Jenny, the reporter, Michael, the detective, and an unknown voice of the killer. The chapters told from the point of view of the killer give the reader a look into his beginnings and his crimes over decades all without revealing just who he is until the very end.

For me the one thing I found with this book that had me a bit hesitant to really and truly enjoy the story was that I found it a bit odd to have Jenny be sort of a tormented and timid character but yet a journalist that goes out and digs into a story. The two sides describing her sort of clashed in my mind and it just felt a struggle to picture this as one character. In the end I felt this was just an OK read to me with not totally connecting to Jenny but the writing was good otherwise so I may try the next in the series regardless.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.