Don’t trust ANYONE…

When a young woman makes a distressing middle-of-the-night call to 911, apparently running for her life in a quiet, exclusive beachside neighbourhood, miles from her home, everything suggests a domestic incident.

Except no one has seen her since, and something doesn’t sit right with the officers at Hampstead County PD. With multiple suspects and witnesses throwing up startling inconsistencies, and interference from the top threatening the integrity of the investigation, lead detective Casey Wray is thrust into an increasingly puzzling case that looks like it’s going to have only one ending…

And then the first body appears…

I received a review copy from Karen at Orenda Books and I would like to thank Anne Cater at Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the Black Reed Bay blog tour.

Hi, can we have our ball back please? Everything was fine until Rod Renolds came along with Black Reed Bay and utterly smashed it out of the park.

I should just stop there. Read it, loved it and basically I didn’t want it to end. The lead character, Casey Wray, is one of the strongest and most interesting new headliners I have encountered for a long time and I want to read more about her. Rod Reynold’s writes beautifully and builds a world around his reader which keeps you hooked on the story he is telling.

Everything starts with a panic call to the police. A young woman is running down a street in a nice residential area but is clearly terrified of something, what is she is trying to escape from? She manages to give the police details of her location but not what the threat is. Then the call ends abruptly and the woman disappears before the police can respond.

Casey Wray and her partner Cullen are investigating but it seems everyone they speak with has a different version of events. Many residents saw the missing woman run down the street and the man she had been visiting (and Casey’s chief suspect) agrees she had been at his home before panicing and running out. But nobody knows where she went and (crucially) nobody wanted to open their door to help her.

Staying well clear of spoilers makes it tricky to outline why I enjoyed this book as much as I did. Casey’s missing person enquiries see her stumble into a much bigger concern. This puts Casey and her colleagues into closer contact with other departments within the police and this isn’t the best of time to put her boss under pressure as he is feeling the pinch too. An internal investigation focusing on how a violent and intoxicated suspect was brought under control with “excessive force” means the whole team feel they are being picked on by the top brass.

Casey’s investigation is detailed, compassionate and thorough, the author has given real life and energy to his characters and I was utterly absorbed by what I was reading. This, in turn, made some of the shocking twists more dramatic and gave them bigger impact. The missing woman’s family are anxious, worried, angry and desperate, this rubs off on Casey and on the reader and your investment in this story grows.

Late night phone calls, screaming women and then a body is found, everything is escalating and Casey and Cullen are in the thick of it. This is page-turner central, the kind of book I love to read with the drama and tension you always hope your next read will offer.

Consider me a very happy, satisfied reader. Black Reed Bay – read it!

Black Reed Bay is published by Orenda Books and is available in paperback and digital format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08T65D9XX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0