Published 27th February 2025 by Sphere.
From the cover of the book:
Even on the most desirable street, there's a dark side . . .The Hill is the kind of place everyone wants to live: luxurious, exclusive and safe. But now someone is breaking and entering these Cheshire homes one by one, and DS Leo Brady suspects the burglar is looking for something, or someone, in particular.
Over the border in Wales, DC Ffion Morgan recovers the body of an estate agent from the lake. There's no love lost between Ffion and estate agents, but who hated this one enough to want her dead - and why?
As their cases collide, Ffion and Leo discover people will pay a high price to keep their secrets behind closed doors . . .
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When the body of an estate agent is dragged from a Welsh lake, DC Ffion Morgan has to put aside her own feelings about the profession and discover why someone would want to kill this young woman and stuff her in a kayak.
Meanwhile, over the border in Cheshire, her boyfriend DS Leo Brady is involved in another tricky case that is bringing him nothing but a headache. Someone has been breaking into the swanky homes in the desirable neighbourhood of The Hill, but there is something odd about the burglaries. Was the guilty party looking for loot to sell, or engaged in a much more sinister search?
Welcome to book three in the DC Ffion Morgan series, which has Ffion and Leo trying to crack two complex investigations in parallel, while they attempt to wade through their personal problems and relationship hiccups.
Ffion's case takes her into the murky world of estate agents, which is poor timing for someone currently in the unhappy process of moving house. It is a case where everyone seems to have something to hide, and has Ffion bumping heads with her superiors as she goes off-piste following her hunches. At the same time, Leo becomes immersed in the select community living on The Hill, where the high-end properties house a group wealthy residents with secrets they are keen to keep hidden in the midst of a police investigation.
The story unfurls through the points of view of Ffion, Leo, and Leo's ex-wife Allie who lives near The Hill and is desperate to social climb her way into the lives of its residents, broken up with sneak peeks of a true crime podcase about a double murder that took place in the neighbourhood some years ago (plus pertinent details to this case dropped via on-line chatter). The lovely police procedural elements follow the increasingly complicated cases of Ffion and Leo, and there is plenty of added emotional content about their personal relationship too. Themes of jealousy, money, deception, and off-kilter relationship dynamics run through the whole book; with a seductive side-order of stirring from the fantasist aspirations of Allie, as she tries to inveigle her way into The Hill set, and vents her spleen about Ffion and Leo's relationship.
The threads of the separate investigations eventually begin to cross-over, and the twists and turns come thick and fast, building up to an edge-of-your-set climax that is an absolute cracker! Ffion and Leo are great protagonists, and Dave the dog is a joy. Mackintosh misleads and misdirects to absolute perfection, weaving her storylines around characters, and setting, to create a devilishly devious plot that catches you up in a kind of Welsh Borders Desperate Housewives affair. I was here for it all!
I love it when you discover an author who you can feel in your bones is going to become a firm favourite, and Clare Mackintosh is definitely going a fixture on my reading pile from now on...I cannot wait to go back and read the first two books in the series!
Other People's Houses is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Sphere for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.
About the author:
Clare Mackintosh is a police officer turned crime writer and the multi-award winning author of seven Sunday Times bestselling novels, including I Let You Go, which was the fastest selling debut thriller of the year it was released.
Translated into forty languages, her books have sold more than two million copies worldwide, have been New York Times and international bestsellers and have spent a combined total of 68 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller chart. In 2024 she published a memoir, I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This.
Clare is patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity based at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, which supports parents experiencing high-risk or difficult pregnancies.
She lives in North Wales with her husband and three children.
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