Cold Pressed by J.J. Marsh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another competent DI Stubbs tale set in a warm country. This time the calm and clever female detective investigates the deaths of women of a certain age onboard a luxury cruise liner criss-crossing the Greek archipelago. As a pure gesture of political goodwill, Beatrice Stubbs, a well-respected Scotland Yard detective, is called in by the Greek authorities to investigate the death of a British eighty-year-old woman, who’s fallen off a cliff at a beauty spot in Santorini. Everyone thinks it’s a case of death by natural causes, until Beatrice and her young Greek counterpart, DI Stephanakis, start investigating.
Cold Pressed reminded me of Agatha Cristies’ novel, Death on the Nile. The novel has the same quality of the luxurious surroundings hiding a raw desire to murder. The author here also has the same eye to detail, some of which turn out to be false and some not so. JJ Marsh keeps the readers guessing right to the moment when the killer(s) is (are) revealed.
But as well as a story about nasty happenings on a luxury cruiser, Cold Pressed is, just as the other Di Stubbs novels, about the complicated personal lives of the two detectives. We learn of the self-doubts of the young, newly promoted, Detective Nikos Stephanakis, and are given very interesting revelations into Beatrice’s mind, and her relationship with Matthew, her long-term partner.
I read this book in two days flat, so all I now need is the next Beatrice Stubbs book, please Ms Marsh!
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