I love this book. Atmospheric and spooky, the landscape becomes a character in itself, and at times I felt like I was sat nearby watching what was going on.. As a first crime fiction novel from the author, it's a spectacular start, and I can't wait for the next in the series. Sometimes, no matter how much you believe in the supernatural, the reality can be so much worse.

Thank you to Netgalley and Oneworld Publications for this e-copy in return for my honest review. The first in a promising new series, the book was dark and creepy. I can't wait for the next installment.

Bold and Unique

My first book by Helen Sedgwick took me a little by surprise and it was a cracking read.

When the Dead Come Calling marks the first in a new series featuring DI Georgie Strachan and her team based in Burrowhead, a tiny northern coastal village in England. In this compelling opening instalment, somebody is hiding in a cave and this immediately sets the scene. There is no hint as to their identity or purpose but instead the scene concentrates on the person's impressions of their surroundings. The reader then gets to meet Georgie when she investigates after psychotherapist Dr Alexis Cosse is found dead in the local playground having been stabbed several times. Short-handed as one of her officers, PC Simon Hunter has a personal connection with the deceased and dealing with a spate of other crimes which may or may not be connected, Georgie has a lot on as she tries to piece together what is happening in her adopted town.

This first book in what promises to be a marvellous series certainly caused some ripples for me! Immediately, my curiosity was triggered and the novel was quite hypnotic and spellbinding in its deliverance. All of the pertinent points were well covered, as I would expect in a crime mystery novel: the investigation itself, suspects, diversions and the solution, but When the Dead Come Calling was like no other crime novel I've read. The telling of this mystery put heavy emphasis on the characters’ reactions. I welcomed the constantly changing point of view as it allowed me a broader perspective and different reactions to the various happenings and developments. The village of Burrowhead was portrayed as an isolated, prejudiced community, which may not be everyone's cup of tea but was a great fit for this story. With both its unpalatable history and it present challenges, few of the villagers were likeable people. However, the plot itself was fascinating and with a comfortable pace there was certainly no room for tedium or boredom.

Helen Sedgwick is an excellent storyteller and this bold book marks a uniqueness in its genre. I am immensely keen for more stories from the dark and cold Village of Burrowhead.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from Oneworld Publications/ Point Blank via NetGalley and this review is my unbiased opinion.

This was an unexpectedly dark and claustrophobic read. Sedgwick describes Burrowhead and its accompanying countryside with such raw intensity that you feel pulled into the novel. It's cold and dark, full of menace and danger. Very well written, and genuinely with a few twists and turns I didn't even consider whilst reading it.
The premise of 'otherness' is portrayed throughout, whether it's racism, homophobia, misogny etc. But there is also an underlying menace of something more supernatural. Although Sedgwick hints on this quite a bit, it's never really explained leaving the reader to second-guess. A little more of a definitive explanation/answer would have made this a much more satisfactory conclusion.
I sincerely hope there will be further explorations to Burrowhead.

Unique, original, sad and beautifully written When the Dead Come Calling is so atmospheric you can almost feel you are there. Unfortunately I found it to be too dark an atmosphere for me personally; there was no contrasting light to offset the bleakness of the environment and the activities therein.

Sleepy northern villages such as Burrowhead are almost a disguise. Perceived as calm and quiet, it's a shock when darkness is revealed to be simmering beneath the surface. DI Strachan and her team investigate the murder of psychotherapist Alexis Cosse, it results in an atmospheric read that lures you in.

Helen's writing is fantastic: her previous works are exceptional, and though crime is not a personal preference, the quality of her prose is hard to dispute. A strong sense of place, an even stronger sense of unease. For crime fans, it's highly recommended.

This book was really entertaining especially because of its pace. Super fast, I turned the pages to reach to the end. The writing was good, thrilling and kept me interested all the time. 

Thanks a lot to the publisher and NG for this copy.

When psychotherapist Alexis Cosse is found dead in a local playground, NOT from natutal causes DI Georgie Strachan and her team are the ones to deal with it. It does become apparent pretty quickly that nothing is as it.seems in Burrowhead.
This book keeps you gripped, it combines elements some people may balk at...not me, I find it fascinating! Not a straight forward police procedural for sure and at times not an easy read but if you like to  get stuck in to a book, this is a good one to have a go at! Big thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

My thanks to Oneworld Publications/Point Blank for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘When the Dead Come Calling’ by Helen Sedgwick in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first in her Burrowhead Mystery series set in the sleepy northern village of Burrowhead close to the coast. 

When the body of psychotherapist Alexis Cosse is found in the Burrowhead playground, the case is investigated by DI Georgie Strachan and her small local team. It quickly becomes clear that there is an undercurrent of racism, misogyny and homophobia lurking beneath the surface of the village. Then another body is found and this becomes an increasingly complex case with links to the village’s history.

This was a layered narrative very much like the landscape around Burrowhead itself. Georgie’s husband, Fergus, is fascinated by archeology and the history of the land and becomes quite distracted by this research. 

Georgie and Fergus had moved to Burrowhead some years previously and have “become familiar fixtures of the village but are not quite from the village either”. Yet Georgie’s background and even her accent remains a mystery to the villagers. We are told: “She’s not from here though, that much they know. Brown-skinned. Tight dark curls. But originally? Well, where Georgie became Georgie is a mystery no one has been able to solve.” This gives her very much an Outsider status that becomes more evident when the darker aspects of the crimes emerge.

The following paragraph summed up Georgie’s response well for me. “If it was all racism she’d know how to fight back, if it was all misogyny, if it was all from one person, even a group, but this–violence used against a local girl, a gay man, threats and vandalism, racism, murder–is it every kind of otherness they hate? And it’s not just now, is it, it hasn’t just started, it’s historic, it’s endemic.”

With its emphasis upon characterisation, social issues (including Brexit), local history, and the role of the landscape brought to mind Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler series. So it’s very much what I would class as a literary crime novel rather than a more straightforward whodunnit or police procedural. 

Its macabre title highlights another aspect that I found very compelling as elements of folk horror were woven throughout the narrative. While remaining ambiguous and understated, they provided another layer and some quite creepy moments. Tales of haunted churches, coffins rising through the graveyard soil, rituals, whispers of sacrifice and the ‘Others’, who were known to the ancestors, all add to this.

Overall, an atmospheric work of crime fiction and I am very much looking forward to reading the next in the series and learning more about Burrowhead and its mysteries.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

This book was fast paced and worked hard to keep me involved and engaged. But somewhere along the line I found myself drifting. I found it hard to care what was happening. Sometimes i was flipping pages to just get myself to the end of the story. It was meh.

Burrowhead is not a comfortable place to live if you are a minority. Racism, homophobia and mysogyny are ingrained into the village's history, brought to the surface when Alexis Cosse, a psychotherapist, is brutally murdered.

The prose in this novel is beautiful. The stories of the villagers, as they react and deal with the crimes taking place, and the stories of the village's history, are entwined into an enchanting and yet disturbing narrative. It is very atmospheric, at times even claustrophobic, as a small village can often be. 

This is not a typical crime novel if you're looking for a simple 'whodunnit' and a puzzle to solve. But it is a very, very good read. It is emotional, sometimes painfully so, and it will stick with me for a long time.

I absolutely loved Helen Sedgwick's last novel, The Growing Season, and I liked the idea of her turning her hand to literary crime fiction, so I started When The Dead Come Calling with high expectations. The novel is set in a small northern village hard-hit by poverty and focuses on a murder investigation run by a police force that is clearly operating on a shoestring. It promises to explore racism and homophobia among the village's inhabitants - the victim is a gay man and, in the small section of the novel that I read, a racist attack has already been carried out against a local Spar run by Pamali, a second-generation Indonesian (?) immigrant. However, despite this promising material, I couldn't connect with When The Dead Come Calling at all - the sense of place was minimal and I found the structure disjointed. I'm willing to accept that at least part of this was me rather than the book though. DNF @ 19 %.

I found this book confusing and I struggled to understand the plot.
There's potential but some more editing would help.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Burrowhead is a village steeped in history, secrets and mystery. Where everyone knows everyone and newcomers are not welcomed with open arms. You aren’t local unless your family have lived there for generations. 

DI Georgie Strahan is the most senior officer in Burrowhead’s police station. A claptrap building with barely working facilities and four officers who the rest of the force seem to have forgotten. Until the local psychotherapist is found murdered. He’s the close friend of DC Simon Hunter but there are whispers of impropriety and there’s a note accompanying the body pointing to a possible racial motive. 

And then another body is found, that of a a local man and his sister is missing. Is she a murderer or a victim? The DI and her colleagues look beneath the layers of their small, insular community at the secrets people hold close. Do they know each other at all? As in real life, it takes some time for details to filter from community to investigator, with talk, suspicion and subterfuge. 

Ever present is Burrowhead’s history casting a dark shadow over it’s residents. How much does this darkness contribute to the happenings of the day? Is it the town and it’s history that permits evil to flourish? 

This is the first instalment into the Burrowhead mysteries by Helen Sedgewick. It’s a book rich in detail about the history of the area as opposed to an overt police procedural which was what I had expected I would be reading. It’s eerie, dark and mythical and there’s a sense of the fantastic about times past. Mythical creatures, sacrifice, secret caves and the sea. The characters are varied with a couple of eccentrics and whilst overall they initially seem small town, they continue to evolve and develop throughout the book and form the basis for the stories of Burrowhead yet to come. 

This was the final book of 2019 for me. A little slow to start and some time for me to get into the groove of it, but in all a compelling and solid start to this series. Thank you to Netgalley and Oneworld Publications for an eARC of this book. 

Pub date is 9 January 2020.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This isn't your standard police procedural. There's a lot of superstition, a sense of a brooding evil, and a writing style you don't expect to find in a crime novel. I liked it. I found myself intrigued by the mystery and caught up in the lives of the different characters. It's a very atmospheric book with an ominous feeling that runs throughout.

The writing style took a bit of getting used to, but I came to like it. I thought it worked particularly well for some characters, showing their confused states of mind. Other readers may find it a bit hit or miss however.

I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars (so 4 stars rounded up!), and would certainly recommend it to anyone who likes a mystery with a hint of the supernatural thrown in. I'll be keeping an eye out for book number two in this series.

I am afraid for the first time, to just not be able to finish this book. I couldn’t engage with the characters, the writing is brilliant, but the story for me just didn’t work, I don’t feel it is fair to give a review on something I struggled to read. As others may enjoy this book thoroughly.

Apologies on this occasion for not being able to review.

If you are in the mood for a darkly atmospheric, creepy read, When the Dead Come Calling might be just what you are after. The first book in the Burrowhead Mysteries series, it is filled with ancient Celtic menace along side normal, run of the mill racism, bullying and murder. It, oddly, blends the two smoothly and makes this story of a struggling town and underfunded three-person police force one worth tucking into. 

I admit I wasn't clear where we were heading with all the otherworldly elements but that fed into the tangible chill this book encouraged to run down my spine. It was fresh, very different from your average police investigative murder mystery and stuck with me more than I would have expected. 

I enjoyed Georgie and her wayward Scottish husband, Fergus. Georgie leads our gaggle of police in a straightforward, well executed way. Fergus, on the other hand, is rather fragmented and off with the fairies being an unemployed engineer. A mismatched couple? Yeah, but you haven't seen the half of it!

The other two police feature heavily as Simon was in a relationship with Alexis, our murder victim. Trish is a force of nature being an off the rails sort. She is impulsive and reactionary but also thoughtful and insightful too. The mix of the three fits well as they balance each other out. I won't speak of the murder or the darker elements of the book as that is part of the fun and needs no spoilers. Suffice it to say this is far better than I would have expected and I will be keeping an eye out for the follow-on.

When the Dead Come Calling is an intriguing read, like no crime novel I’ve read before, and I’m grateful to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication in March 2020.
Set in the northern coastal town of Burrowhead, we get to see a dark underbelly to a seemingly rural idyll. Secrets abound, and there’s a small-town mentality to the characters in this that is both understandable but also scary.
The style is unusual for a crime novel, and may not be to everyone’s tastes.
At the start of the novel we learn of the discovery of a body in the local playground. It is that of a local doctor. His body is discovered by a local police officer, who also happens to be his boyfriend. A note is discovered near his body suggesting that racism could be a factor in this crime.
As I imagine to be common in a police case, details are not immediately forthcoming. We spend what seems like a lot of time trying to work out what is going on, and when another body is discovered to try and establish the links.
What struck me most while reading was that everyone seemed to be harbouring some kind of secret. I don’t want to give away details that affect the reading, but this is definitely a read that becomes more engaging as we learn more about those involved.
Throughout the story I was struck by the references to the past of the village, and the beliefs that seemed to shape the attitudes of those currently living there. I am still unclear as to how some of the references to the Others are linked, but I understand this is the first in a series so we may get answers further in the future.
2 likes

Sorry I could not get into this book at all. I kept reading hoping that it would get better but unfortunately that did not happen. The writing style was too rambling for me and the story was different to what I had imagined it would be.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

This was just an ok read for me. I couldn't immerse myself into it and felt it lacked a bit of cohesiveness.