Before picking up Other People’s Houses, I’d never read anything by British author Clare Mackintosh, but it turns out this is her eighth novel, and the third to feature DC Ffion Morgan. This mystery was a mix of different police investigations tangling into each other, which I really enjoyed, and earlier this year the book was longlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Whodunnit Dagger Award.
I enjoy police procedurals. The painstaking work to assemble clues and make sense of them always holds my attention; and the best ones (in my opinion) are those where the reader is also given an insight into the working relationships of the police team and the story doesn’t just focus on the super-sleuth.
In real life, Claire Mackintosh served in the police for more than ten years, which included time in CID, so there’s certainly a whiff of authenticity in her writing. And I’ve now discovered that her debut novel (I Let You Go) won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award in 2016, so the woman has pedigree.
Other People’s Houses is a cross-border mystery, with two police forces working on different and separate investigations. One is concerned with the discovery of the body of a young woman in a kayak, floating on a lake that straddles the border between England and Wales; the other, a series of burglaries on an exclusive housing development in Cheshire. On the surface there doesn’t seem much to connect them.
DC Ffion Morgan works in the North Wales Police and is assigned to the kayak case. Her boyfriend, DS Leo Brady (who works in the Cheshire Constabulary), is investigating the burglaries. Ffion’s team soon realise their young woman had been murdered. She was an estate agent, visiting the area with her work colleagues for a team-building weekend, which mostly seems to have involved high-jinks and heavy drinking. The police need to quickly establish the motive for the crime, as well as who-was-where-when because her colleagues seem to be slippery characters.
The Cheshire Constabulary is over-stretched and under-staffed, so Leo doesn’t have much support investigating the burglaries. The homeowners he’s dealing with are fairly unpleasant and entitled people, reluctant to give him much assistance or time unless, of course, their own lives have been affected by the crimes, in which case they are beliigerent and quick to criticise. The burglaries are strange, because nothing much of any value has been taken – as if the burglar was looking for something, or someone, in particular. But what?
It’s about half way through Other People’s Houses that, unexpectedly, these two cases are shown to be linked and then the pace of the story hots-up.
My verdict
I thought this was a really good and enjoyable whodunnit. Ffion and Leo are appealing characters and Clare Mackintosh does a good job of painting their relationship with each other and their colleagues, without overdoing it. And the way she handles the two mysteries keeps you engaged, as you bounce between Wales and Cheshire. Occasionally I did get a bit muddled with all the different characters, but it was only ever momentary.
Woven through the novel are chapters following a True Crime podcast about a cold case double murder, where, ten-years earlier, the wrong man had been charged and convicted. It’s not obvious from the start, but it’s the podcast that helps the reader realise the two current cases are connected. I’m not a great fan of reading pages of online chat but, again, Clare Mackintosh doesn’t overdo these. The online stuff is short, to the point, and always brings useful and interesting information. It does a good job, in fact.
Talking about this book at our Oundle Crime meeting, I discovered that Mo had also read and enjoyed it. She’d also read some of the others and said that – if you can – it’s better to read the novels in their correct order. Ffion is an opinionated character and if you’ve read the earlier books you have a much better understanding of where this bullishness comes from; and you get a better understanding of her relationship with Leo.
Even though I haven’t read any of the other mysteries, I thought Other People’s Houses was really entertaining. A page-turner that wasn’t adrenaline-fuelled but kept me interested as I tried to work out the connections within each crime, and the connections between the crimes themselves. Having read and enjoyed this so much, I will be looking for more books by Clare Mackintosh. I give this 4-Stars.
Review by: Cornish Eskimo
What’s in a Star?
At Oundle Crime, a 4-Star rating is “A good book with an interesting, layered story that you will still remember after a month.”
If you’d like to meet other crime fiction fans and chat about the books and authors you enjoy, why not come along to an Oundle Crime meeting? It’s relaxed and friendly, and anyone can drop in. Email join@friendsofoundlelibrary.org.uk and we’ll send you the details.