What a lovely sunny Friday I’m dropping by a little later than usual because the sun was calling my name to share my thoughts on the fifth book in the Grace Macallan series with you.
–
At a dark place in Edinburgh’s heart, secrets refues to lie dormant.
At Police Scotland HQ, Grace Macallan has pitched up in Counter Corruption. But the demons of her past are never far behind.
Meanwhile, Edinburgh’s gangland is in turmoil. As a new breed of upstarts challenges the old criminal order, their battle for territory causes serious havoc.
Into the war steps DI Janet Hadden. Ambitious, hardbitten and addicted to risk-taking, she knows how to throw opponents off balance. But when she’s thwarted, Hadden seeks help from a notorious underworld fixer, a man who keeps secrets but always extracts a price.
Beset by violence and double-crossing, Grace is soon embroiled in a savage game of cat and mouse with colleagues and criminals alike. With all sides driven by dark desires, theirs is an endgame that will take Grace down unless she holds her nerve.
Amazon | Goodreads | Kobo
–
I’ll make no bones about the fact that I could easily read anything that Peter Ritchie writes because it is clever crime fiction that comes from a place of first-hand knowledge. I have been a lover of the Grace Macallan series from the start and I’m always excited for the next instalment.
Our Little Secrets has the same compulsive material that the other books had, it is very easy to get swept up in Edinburgh’s underworld once again but this time with some characters that we haven’t come across before. It is definitely a story that you can get your teeth into and as always has an intricate plotline that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again Peter Ritchie can create characters that you can get absorbed in no matter what side of the coin they fall on. There is definitely something about the deviousness of his characters that just can’t help but catch my attention, I like guessing if any of the “villians” are going to make it through unscathed.
I have to say though as much as I am always happy to pick up a book by this author I was slightly disappointed that Grace didn’t really make an appearance until the last quarter of the book. I’ll be honest and say that it wasn’t until I was halfway through that I realised that we hadn’t really checked in with her but once that thought popped into my head I was very conscious of it. It is difficult because there are so many new characters to introduce and you do need a lot of the background for the story but I do feel like she maybe should have made more of an appearance throughout.
Having said that I was very intrigued in the slightly different side that we see to Grace within the last few chapters. There are some choices that she makes that feel like they might have some kind of impact on her when we next meet again and I am very interested to see what effect this has on her.
Our Little Secrets is a very engaging and suspenseful story and I will be eagerly looking forward to the next book that Peter Ritchie writes.
–
–
–
Peter followed his forefathers and started his working life at 15 as a deep sea fisherman.
He eventually joined the police service moving through the ranks of CID/Murder Squad/Regional Crime Squad in Scotland. He then went on to manage the Organised Crime Unit in the National Criminal Intelligence Service in London where he ran a multi agency team drawn from various branches of the law enforcement and the security services. This was a unique concept at the time and Peter travelled to many parts of the world in this role. He was subsequently appointed as the UK Liaison Officer to Europol in The Hague where he spent five years.
He returned to Lothian and Borders heading the Major Crime Team before taking on an advisory role for a project in Croatia. Following his retiral he worked on a number of private investigations before spending the next few years as part of the public inquiry team looking into the murder of the LVF leader Billy Wright in the Maze Prison.
–
Reviews of other Peter Ritchie books
Cause of Death | Evidence of Death | Shores of Death | Where No Shadows Fall
–
everywhere-and-nowhere.com 