The Murders at Fleat House by Lucinda Riley

Synopsis
The sudden death of a pupil in Fleat House at St Stephen’s – a small private boarding school in deepest Norfolk – is a shocking event that the headmaster is very keen to call a tragic accident.

But the local police cannot rule out foul play and the case prompts the return of high-flying Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz’ Hunter to the force. Jazz has her own private reasons for stepping away from her police career in London, and reluctantly agrees to front the investigation as a favour to her old boss.

Reunited with her loyal sergeant Alastair Miles, she enters the closed world of the school, and as Jazz begins to probe the circumstances surrounding Charlie Cavendish’s tragic death, events are soon to take another troubling turn.

Charlie is exposed as an arrogant bully, and those around him had both motive and opportunity to switch the drugs he took daily to control his epilepsy.

As staff at the school close ranks, the disappearance of young pupil Rory Millar and the death of an elderly classics master provide Jazz with important leads, but are destined to complicate the investigation further. As snow covers the landscape and another suspect goes missing, Jazz must also confront her personal demons . . .

Then, a particularly grim discovery at the school makes this the most challenging murder investigation of her career. Because Fleat House hides secrets darker than even Jazz could ever have imagined . . .

Review

I have been reading Lucinda Riley’s books for over ten years, and she had become one of my favourite authors. Her untimely death last year was a shock and I know she will be missed by many, includung me. The Murders at Fleat House was written in 2006 but never published, until now. This was Lucinda’s first foray into a crime thriller set in a boarding school where a student dies. What seems like an accident soon begins to look like murder, and DI Jazz Hunter is pulled back from her sabbatical, and her new life in Norfolk to look into the students death. As well as the murder Jazz is facing her own troubles, having tried to resign from the Met Police after her divorce, she needs to contemplate her future, but first she has to accept her past.

As soon as I picked up The Murders at Fleat House I felt at home in a weird sort of way. Even though this book was written sixteen years ago, immediately I could feel Lucinda’s writting style, drawing me in from the very first page with her wonderful prose. There is an ease in her writing that makes her books such a joy to read and hard to put down and this was the case from from the very beginning. Her descriptions of Norfolk, it’s bleakness in the winter, but also the beauty of this bleakness, are perfect; it’s a place I know well and she really trasported me back there. The plot itself is brilliantly constructed with a well developed and tense murder mystery that has many twists and turns that kept me reading all day. A well as the murder plot there are sub plots of DI Jazz Hunter’s divorce and her undecided career path, and there are some really touching moments of how a parent will do anything to protect their child and a touch of romance to off set the secrets and lies that underpin the plot.

DI Jazz Hunter is a fascinating and intriguing character. She is at a crossroads in her life after leaving the Metropolitan Police in London after her divorce from a fellow detective. Norfolk is a new start for her, she wants a quiet life where she can paint and live life at a much slower pace. As a detective she is repected by her contemporites and her superiors as well which is why she is asked to lead the murder investigation. I liked that we got to see all the sides of Jazz’s character; her analytic and methodical investigate technique, her venerability after her divorce and her love and care for her parents. The same attention is paid to the cast of supporting characters who open up the story and many of whom I felt real empathy for, of course there are a few who a very dislikable to say the least.

As I anticipated I absolutely adored reading this book and was really sad when I finished it. With The Murders at Fleat House, Lucinda Riley showed her skills as a masterful storyteller, able to to move between genres with such style and ease. I found myself wondering that if Lucinda was still here if this would have been the first in a new series featuring DI Jazz Hunter, that I’m sure would have been as popular as her Seven Sisters series.

I would like to thank Pan Macmillan and Laura Sherlock for sending me a copy of this book in return for my honest review.