Published 27th August 2015 by Pan Macmillan.
From the cover of the book:
Eleven months after discovering a brutal double murder in a sleepy Northumbrian town, Detective Chief Inspector Kate Daniels is still haunted by her failure to solve the case. Then the brutal killing of a man on Newcastle’s Quayside gives Daniels another chance to get it right, and her first case as Senior Investigating Officer.When Daniels recognizes the corpse, but fails to disclose the fact, her personal life swerves dangerously into her professional life. But much worse, she is now being watched.
As Daniels steps closer to finding a killer, a killer is only a breath away from claiming his next victim . . .
The Murder Wall is Mari Hannah's first gripping crime novel featuring DCI Kate Daniels.
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Still haunted by the double murder she has been unable to solve, despite her promise to the distraught parents who lost their daughter, DCI Kate Daniels' life is about to get even more difficult. Called to the scene of a shooting in a luxury apartment on Newcastle's Quayside, this is Kate's chance to shine as SIO for the first time in her career, but she is caught in a dilemma when she realises that she has a connection to the victim. Rather than come clean, and reveal a secret she has been hiding about her personal life, Kate decides to keep what she knows under wraps.
As the investigation proceeds, Kate is horrified by the uncomfortable direction her ever-watchful boss is determined to take, especially as she is now unable to explain why she believes he is wrong. She finds herself isolated from her team, going renegade to protect someone she cares about, and constantly distracted by the conviction that the murderer she seeks in the cold-case double murder is still out there... and working his way through a bizarre kill list...
The Murder Wall by Mari Hannah is the first book in the best-selling DCI Kate Daniels series, and I am delighted to be starting at the very beginning to follow Kate's adventures for the next few months as part of Orion Publishing's #TeamDaniels feature, in collaboration with Compulsive Readers.
Kate is a complicated character, and Hannah dives straight in by giving her a full backstory right from the word go. The characters come at you thick and fast, all of whom carry significant weight in Kate's personal and professional lives - her romantic history, the relationships she has with her work colleagues, and the details of a cold case and current investigation seem disparate plot lines at first, but before long the outstanding attention Hannah gives to the long-game in this story is revealed. By the time I was a quarter into this book, I was totally hooked!
The threads of the story twist and turn, gradually becoming enmeshed in each other to create an absolute page-turner of a book. Hannah does a cracking job of building weight into both characters and plot, dropping reveals with perfectly judged precision, and all the while glimpses into the disturbed mind of a killer with a plan ramp up the atmosphere of menace to the max. The pace increases, as Kate is torn between two investigations, and ends up backed into a corner trying protect her secrets. You know that confrontations with authority figures and a deranged killer are inevitable - and it is delicious when they come in a series of blow-by-blow, climactic events.
It is not easy to combine emotional storylines with a suspenseful plot, and paint an authentic picture of police work, but Hannah manages this with consummate skill. I really enjoyed how she delves into the nitty gritty of work-life balance in world of law enforcement, and the conflict between the old guard and the modern world too.
I really feel I have got to know Kate through this story, and I loved every moment. I cannot wait to continue my journey with book two, Settled Blood.
The Murder Wall is available to buy now in paperback, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Pan Macmillian for allowing me access to an ecopy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Ciompulsive Readers for inviting me to be part of #TeamDaniels.
About the author:
In July 2010, she won a Northern Writers' Award for Settled Blood. In 2013, she won the Polari First Book Prize for her debut, The Murder Wall. She was awarded the CWA Dagger in the Library 2017 as the author of the most enjoyed collection of work in libraries. In 2019, she was awarded DIVA Wordsmith of the Year. In that same year, Mari was Programming Chair of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Festival. In 2020, Mari was named as DIVA 'Wordsmith of the Year' and won Capital Crime's 'Crime Book of the Year' award.
She lives in Northumberland with her partner, a former murder detective.
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