Book Review:The Nidderdale Murders by J. R. Ellis

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this book from Amazon Publishing UK, via #Netgalley, free of charge, for review purposes on this blog. No compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it, all opinions are my own



In a Yorkshire Dales village everyone has a motive for murder—except the killer.

The Nidderdale Murders cover

Synopsis

A retired judge is shot dead outside the Dog and Gun inn in the remote Yorkshire village of Niddersgill. There’s a witness who saw everything, and the gunman’s on the run; the case should be open-and-shut for DCI Jim Oldroyd. But the murderer had no motive for wanting Sandy Fraser dead and, what’s more, no trace of him can be found.
As Oldroyd and his team cast the net wider, they discover that Fraser wasn’t without enemies in Niddersgill. As the wealthy owner of a grouse moor, he’d clashed with farmers, debtors, hunt saboteurs and blackmailers. But none of them were at the scene of the murder. And when a local shopkeeper is gunned down in a second senseless attack, it’s clear that these killings are anything but random.
Surrounded by the dramatic beauty of the Yorkshire Dales, Oldroyd faces a race against time to connect the crimes and find who’s behind them. But with all the evidence sending him down dead ends, can he get one step ahead before someone else is killed?

Review:
This is book 5 in the series, that also takes us to England! It seems so simple, but nothing ever is. When the suspect an eye witness saw literally seems to vanish in thin air, DCI Oldroyd, knows there more than a simple death. As he spends more time in the village, he realizes many people seem to good to be true, and in fact they are all keeping secrets. As those secrets start coming out, more people are in danger and it is a race to solve before the death count goes too high. Add in an interesting backstory that weaves throughout, and you have a mystery that's a real page turner!


About the Author:
John R. Ellis has lived in Yorkshire for most of his life and has spent many years exploring Yorkshire’s diverse landscapes, history, language and communities. He recently retired after a career in teaching, mostly in further education in the Leeds area. In addition to the Yorkshire Murder Mystery series, he writes poetry, ghost stories and biography. He has completed a screenplay about the last years of the poet Edward Thomas and a work of faction about the extraordinary life of his Irish mother-in-law. He is currently working on his memoirs of growing up in a working-class area of Huddersfield in the 1950s and 1960s.

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