Mad, Bad And Dead (Judi Westerholme Book Three) by Sherryl Clark

 

Mad, Bad and Dead (Judi Westerholme Book Three) by Sherryl Clark.

Published 22nd August 2022 by Verve Books.

From the cover of the book:

A dead employee. A missing child. Anonymous phone calls in the dead of night. Judi Westerholme's troubles aren't over yet...

Already struggling to juggle co-running the local pub with her childcare responsibilities for her orphaned niece, Judi does not need life to become any more complicated.

Yet, as usual, complications arrive in spades: she starts receiving threatening, late-night phone calls before discovering one of her employees, Kate, shot dead.

Judi finds herself caught up in a murder investigation, as well as the hunt for the Kate's fourteen year-old daughter, who has been missing since the murder.

Add in the uncertainty of her relationship with Melbourne-based DS Heath and the fact that her estranged mother's nursing home keeps urging her to visit, and Judi might finally be at breaking point.

***********

Judi Westerholme has her hands full co-running the local pub/bistro in the small Australian town of Candlebark, being a parent to her orphaned three-year-old niece Mia, coping with an on-off relationship with a Melbourne detective, and fielding the frequent demands from her estranged mother's care home to go visit her. She could certainly do without any further complications coming her way, but somehow she does seem to attract them. Suddenly she has to deal with the added burden of late night threatening phone calls from an unidentified caller, and the very vocal accusations of the owner of the local spa, which have her unsettled.

When her normally reliable employee Kate fails to turn up for work Judi is immediately concerned. Shockingly, she discovers that Kate has been shot dead by an unknown intruder, and Kate's fourteen-year-old-daughter Emma has gone missing. On top of everything Judi is now caught up in a murder investigation that opens up a disturbing can of worms about the life Kate and Emma used to lead in Sydney, and what they have been running from. Of course, Judi being Judi she cannot stand on the side-lines, but this investigation might just bring her to breaking point.

Mad, Bad and Dead is the third instalment in the Judi Westerholme Aussie crime series, but my first Sherryl Clark book. There are some threads that run through the book from Judi's previous adventures, especially in terms of her relationships with quite a few of the the characters, but the crime story itself is self-contained and I had no trouble to reading this as a stand-alone.

I love an Aussie crime story, especially one set in a small Outback town, so this book caught me right from the word go. It ticks all the boxes of my taut small town vibe requirements and makes a fabulous backdrop for the story that Clark weaves around the good... the mad... the bad... and the dead of the cast of characters she creates. Interestingly, this has the added spice of a metropolitan edge too, as some of the action takes place in Melbourne, and it brings in a lovely element of big city corruption and double-dealing as Kate and Emma's part of the story unfolds. I really enjoyed how Clark builds in crackling tension and a tangible atmosphere of mystery and menace in both environments, injecting very clever misdirection and making you question who Judi can trust - even among her friends. I did not see the harrowing direction in which this story was taking me, and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. She also has you looking closely at the different approaches to small town vs big city police procedurals, which was quite thought provoking.

Judi is a complex character, and has clearly been profoundly affected by her upbringing, her previous brushes with violence, and how she has related to the trustworthy and incompetent among the police fraternity. She sometimes lets her temper get the better of her, which I think makes her quite relatable, but her heart is firmly in the right place. There are characters here to both ground her, and incite her rage, and the interplay between them causes plenty of riveting drama, as well as some very touching moments and a good dose of humour. 

This is one of those gratifying books that combines a solid central core of characters with a gripping crime story. I really felt that I had become part of the community of Candlebark, and I did not want to say goodbye to them at the end of the story. I will definitely be picking up the next book in the series to find out what happens next, and look forward to going back and reading he first two books to catch up on all the back stories. Highly recommended if you are partial to top quality Aussie noir!

Mad, Bad and Dead is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Verve Books for sending me a paperback copy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting e to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Sherryl Clark has had 40 children's and YA books published in Australia, and several in the US and UK, plus collections of poetry and four verse novels. She has taught writing at Holmesglen TAFE and Victoria University. She recently completed a Master of Fine Arts program at Hamline University, Minnesota, and is now studying for a PhD in creative writing.