Easy to read domestic crime with an interesting backstory and enough twists and tyrns to keep the reader guessing.
A bit light on characterisation but i found the relationships between the police/pathologist etc to be interesting and i would read more to find out how those pan out.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Headline for a review copy of Rooted in Evil, the fifth novel to feature DI Jess Campbell and Superintendent Ian Carter of the Gloucestershire police.

The novel opens with pathologist Tom Palmer taking a walk in the woods to try and clear his heavy cold and finding a dead body. He initially suspects suicide but little details make him think murder. Campbell and Carter are quickly on the case and it soon becomes apparent that the victim, Carl Finch, was not a pleasant man and led a rather marginal life, so the suspect pool is fairly large in some respects but being found in the Gloucestershire countryside near where he was brought up focuses attention on his immediate family, his stepsister Harriet and her husband Guy.

Ms Granger's work has long been on my radar but this is the first book I have read and it's a bit of a mixed bag. The plotting is solid and intricate enough to hold the attention but it has a very old fashioned feel - it reminds me of books I used to borrow from the library in the 70s and 80s - because the mention of mobile phones and a DNA test are the only modern technology in the novel.

I think the author prefers to rely on investigative technique and I hesitate to say psychology, perhaps reasons for the crime is a better description but I have to wonder. Campbell and Carter seem very one dimensional for an established series. They are just there and there is not enough of them to either like or dislike them which again harps back to an earlier era when the detective was there to detect and the reader was given very little information about him (it always was). The characters being investigated are uniformly unpleasant and it was hard to care which one of them did it. I find Harriet and her friend Tessa's actions incomprehensible and highly unlikely.

Rooted in Evil is a solid if unspectacular read.

This was a challenging book to read.
Despite the contemporary references to Oxford and the surrounding area, the language and style of the text could have been written in the 1950s.
The police officers in particular were not credible and their conversations used a vocabulary and speaking style which pulled me out of the story on many occasions in disbelief.
The killer had a trivial motive for the murder and none of the characters were likeable, empathetic or sympathetic.
“How”, Harriet sometimes wondered when depression settled, “How did I end up financing a pair of losers.”
Quite.
Sorry. Not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Headline for the digital proof copy.

I read most of Ann Granger’s Mitchell and Markby crime novels with great enjoyment when they first appeared and have read a couple in this Campbell and Carter series.

Rooted In Evil is the fifth featuring Inspector Jess Campbell and her boss, Superintendent Ian Carter.

This time they are investigating the murder of Carl Finch whose body has been found in the aptly named Crooked Man Wood. The case is played out in the Cotswolds, Oxford and London, in all of which places Carl has pursued a dubious career of financial wheeling and dealing.

Numerous possible suspects and witnesses emerge as well as a lot of family and other personal secrets. There is a large cast of characters including Harriet and Guy Kingsley, the victim’s step sister and brother-in-law and members of a local Art Group.A surprising number of people were in and near the woods at the time of the shooting.

Carl’s history comes under scrutiny. He emerges as a bit of a charmer, a good-looking loser and user, extracting money from whoever he can by various doubtful means to sustain his preferred lifestyle.

There was a lot of rather extraneous detail to be got through, some of it interesting but not too relevant to the plot and rather distracting-which was probably the point of it. However, I thought that some of the withholding of, and interfering with, evidence by witnesses went beyond the credible.

This was an easy read and I did not work out the solution until quite late on.

Thank you to NetGalley and Headline for the digital proof copy.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1ORXK50OBTJ48/ref=pe_1572281_66412651_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv