"Front Page News" by Sadie Gordon Richmond

A fashion model is found dead, strangled and mutilated. Detective Chief Inspector Lawrence Forrester and Detective Sergeant Rebecca Palmer of Scotland Yard do what police officers usually do – they start interviewing family and friends, because the perpetrator is most likely someone the victim knows. That entry to the model’s flat was apparently by house key is another sign it’s someone who knew the victim.  

But as they investigate, the case gets increasingly murkier. The victim wasn’t well liked, even by relatives; she had a penchant for stealing her friends’ (and her sister’s) boyfriends. She treated her own boyfriend badly. And she was familiar with a number of London’s more unusual clubs.

 

Sadie Gordon Richmond

Front Page News by Sadie Gordon Richmond is the first of six London Series mysteries by the author. It’s a well-written police procedural, with several sub-plots involving the investigating police officers and their families. Forrester’s wife is seriously unhappy with the hours he keeps. Palmer’s boyfriend and fiancé is the lead in an up-and-coming rock band, with a cocaine problem Palmer doesn’t know about and a self-harm problem that she does know about. 

 

The story has some unusual twists, and not in the orthodox mystery or crime thriller style, in that it doesn’t have a fully resolved ending. The author has a note at the end of the book explaining that the story will pick up again in Book 5, which suggests that the series has been developed as a whole story. Some indication of that might be advisable at the beginning. It’s an interesting and entertaining story, with solid and interesting characters. But there is a sense of being left hanging.

 

Richmond is an editor who lives in London.