A review by tessyoung
The Corfe Castle Murders by Rachel McLean

2.0

I was so disappointed with this new series from Rachel McLean. I'm not new to the author and had been looking forward to this series set close to the area I grew up in. However, I found it difficult to warm to this apparently no nonsense detective, probably something to do with the combination of peach skirt suits and court shoes with a sensible height heel - more practice manager than senior, supposedly hard nosed, detective. While this may have been used as a comment on the challenges and contradictions of gendered expectations within the police force, it wasn't. Likewise the setting was simply an opportunity to have bodies in inconvenient places and to trot out, and reinforce, well worn stereotypes about the rural/urban divide. The background of an archaeological dig had so much more potential within the narrative than simply two competing configurations of site and crime scene.
I'm not sure what happened at the end of the book. The narrative had built to a degree, then there was the reveal of the whodunit and that was it. Various strands of the investigation weren't really brought together. I know who did it and why, but only superficially. A lot of strands that would have provided a deeper insight simply weren't resolved. It was like the author ran out of time or space and just didn't tie up the loose ends. For a writer whose detective repeats the mantra of following the evidence to its conclusion, and to build a case, I would like the author to do the same with her narrative.