Cover Your Tracks by Claire Askew #Review

 

 Claire Askew's Cover Your Tracks will be published by Hodder & Stoughton on 20th August. Claire's debut novel. All the Hidden Truths won the Scottish Debut Crime Award

What if I told you,' he said, 'that I believe my mother's life to be in danger?'

Robertson Bennet returns to Edinburgh after a 25-year absence in search of his parents and his inheritance. But both have disappeared. A quick, routine police check should be enough - and Detective Inspector Helen Birch has enough on her plate trying to help her brother, Charlie, after an assault in prison. But all her instincts tell her not to let this case go. And so she digs.

George and Phamie Bennet were together for a long time. No one can ever really know the secrets kept between husband and wife. But as Birch slowly begins to unravel the truth, terrible crimes start to rise to the surface.

Beautifully written and ingeniously plotted, Cover Your Tracks confirms Claire Askew as a major new talent in crime fiction.

My Thoughts 

Set against the city of Edinburgh, this tightly plotted crime thriller ticks all the boxes. The central figure of DI Helen Birch gets involved despite the best efforts of her boss to keep her out of the investigation which starts off as a missing person cold case and which becomes much more complicated. There are a range of characters who you meet whogive you a different perspective on the story. Helen is a workaholic but there is more to her than that. Her complex family background is always on her mind and you see a different side to her through her relationship with her brother. 

    You feel as though you are in good hands as you are led through the story to the surprise twist at the end. I did foresee where it was going but the story kept its energy to the end as you learnt exactly what happened years ago. The relationship between Helen and Amy works as they support each other in the workplace and look out for each other. The strength of the story for me lies in the characters who breath real life into a police procedural. 

In short:  Can you read the clues?

About the Author

 Claire Askew is a poet, novelist and the current Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh. Her debut novel in progress was the winner of the 2016 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, and longlisted for the 2014 Peggy Chapman-Andrews (Bridport) Novel Award. Claire holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh and has won a variety of accolades for her work, including the Jessie Kesson Fellowship and a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award.

Her debut poetry collection, This changes things, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016 and shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and a Saltire First Book Award. In 2016 Claire was selected as a Scottish Book Trust Reading Champion, and she works as the Scotland tutor for women's writing initiatives Write Like A Grrrl! and #GrrrlCon.

Her first novel, All the Hidden Truths, was published in 2018.

You can follow Claire here: Twitter

Book link: Amazon UK 

Thanks to Claire Askew, Hodder and Stoughton and Jenny Platt for a copy of the book and a place on the tour.