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This book, and the author’s following series books, “Persons Unknown�� and “Remain Silent�� were donated to my Little Free Library Shed. I decided to read this one, to see if I might be interested in continuing with the series. This book is the first in the author’s Detective Sargeant (DS) Manon Bradshaw series.

Readers meet DS Bradshaw as a single woman who listens to her police radio as a way to get to sleep. It also focuses on her loneliness as a 39-year-old who settles for one-night stands.

The victim is a 24-year-old Edith Hind, a Cambridge postgrad who was working on her PhD on fighting the patriarchy in Victorian literature.

The story is rich in character development for her leads. Readers will be able to feel DS Bradshaw’s sadness and loneliness as well as her cleverness as a policewoman. And, although Edith is absent because of her known status as “the victim,�� readers will still feel a strong connection to her in the way she is described throughout the story.

Even as the story feels depressing and disturbing, it also is compelling and highly believable. But it is slow moving with immense details about police procedurals that lead to a weak solution to the mystery and a rushed ending.

So, what did I decide about Book 2 and 3? They will go out into my Little Free Library Shed unread by me. I’m not a fan of depressing and disturbing reading these days. Interestingly enough, it didn’t take long for others to “check-out�� the books from my Little Free Library Shed. I’m glad others are appreciating this author. Maybe I am an outlier?

3.5 stars (strong character development of leads)