I was kindly sent Broken Wings by Barry N Rainsford a crime thriller to review by random things blog tours. This is the first in the series of Broken Wings and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series too!
Broken Wings
When the body of a young woman is discovered in a remote North Yorkshire barn DI Zara Fisher is called back to duty before she’s ready. Haunted by her own past and exiled to an anger-management group for “difficult” officers, she’s forced to share therapy with three equally broken colleagues. But when their so-called routine cases begin to echo one another, they uncover a web of secrets stretching from the Dales to darkened corridors of power.
Broken Wings is a darkly humourous, rain-lashed thriller about guilt, obsession, and the dangerous comforts of denial.
Barry N Rainsford
Born in Birmingham and now resident in North Yorkshire, Barry turned to crime-writing because he saw it offering the opportunity to create compelling narratives that draw the audience in whilst being able to engage with wider ideas beyond just the consideration of ‘cops and robbers’ or even ‘right and wrong’. For him the genre provides the possibility to consider many of the issues he feels strongly about, issues that arise from his roots and from his experiences teaching in difficult, deprived areas of a major city.
That and the feeling that life ought to be less about looking after chickens and more about wild car chases and finding the best places to hide a body…
Cutting ties with his London based literary agency, his new series of darkly funny crime thrillers is set in North Yorkshire and centres on a group of once high-flying officers exiled to an anger-management therapy group dubbed ‘the broken wings’. With each member of the group carrying their own particular psychological and emotional baggage, they discover their anger might be turned to a greater good in solving crimes that might enable their return to mainstream policing.
The first book ‘BROKEN WINGS’ introduces the characters, an oddball group who soon find their own mundanely routine cases are not only linked but offer the solution to the high-profile murder case absorbing the efforts of the rest of CID. Described as “…a rain-lashed thriller about guilt, obsession, and the dangerous comforts of denial…” the book has drawn comparisons as ‘a North Yorkshire Slow Horses’
My Thoughts
I love a good crime thriller especially one with such a fantastic, dark sense of humour throughout!
DI Zara Fisher is called back to duty after a leave of absence when a woman’s body is discovered in a remote barn. Her boss decides it’s a suicide but Zara is not so sure herself so begins to investigate, when yet another death is again ruled a suicide by her boss she is determined to carry on her investigations alongside Pan who agrees. During her leave of absence Zara was forced to attend an angry management group where she meets 3 officers from around North Yorkshire, in this first book of the series we get to meet each character and get to know them really well. These 3 officers end up working on cases that have some similarities to the cases DI Zara Fisher has been called back to work on, between them they begin to discover the links between the cases and uncover some dark secrets.
With lots of dark twists and turns you can’t help but get lost in the storyline and characters who all have their own unique personalities, issues and part to play in unravelling the secrets across North Yorkshire.
Honestly this was such a gripping and humourous read and I can’t wait to read the rest of the books in the series, I will definitely be keeping an eye out for them!
