I don’t think I’ve read a book by the British author, Nick Louth that I haven’t thought excellent. And The Last Ride, which was published in 2024, is no exception. I was immersed in the story from the first few pages – so much so, that putting the book down was a real wrench.
A couple of years ago, I discovered Nick Louth’s books by accident, listening to The Body in the Marsh (Book 1 of his DCI Craig Gillard series) on BorrowBox. It was such a brilliant story I immediately looked for more, and when I found the library didn’t have any, I bought the rest of the Gillard series – all eleven books! (Irritatingly, a few months later the library bought more of them, so if you like police procedurals it will now be easy for you to give them a try.)
This review, however, is about The Last Ride which is Book 2 in Louth’s relatively new series about DI Jan Talantire. Funnily enough I also bought this having first listened to Book 1 – The Two Deaths of Ruth Lyle – on BorrowBox.
The story begins with Talantire attending the scene of an accident on Bodmin Moor, where a car stolen by teenagers had crashed at high speed in a small, remote village. The 14-year-old driver survived, along with three young girls, but the 16-year-old boy who’d been the front passenger was killed in the crash. While the emergency services are at the scene, the mother of another young girl arrives, worried for her daughter’s safety because she’s a friend of the joyriders and hasn’t been seen since the previous day.
At this stage the police have no evidence to connect the missing girl, Jade, with the accident, and their focus is naturally on dealing with the aftermath of the crash. Only Talantire suspects that Jade might actually have been there, because the elderly man whose garden the car crashed in, thought he had seen a young woman running away from the scene.
Amidst all this chaos the pieces slowly begin to fall into place. The youngsters had posted a video of themselves on social media minutes before the driver lost control of the car. A number of their friends, when questioned, have shaky alibis, and there are stories that don’t match. Soon the suspicion grows that this accident had been triggered by something rather more sinister than they’d thought.
My verdict
The Last Ride is an excellently plotted police procedural and, as I read, it felt as if I was following the investigation in real time. Of course, you find out more about the teenagers and their families, but you also feel quite involved with the police team.
Talantire seems straightforward, but I found out in Book 1 that there’s a mystery in her background and we hear more about that here. She and her colleagues are well-drawn, and the snippets of information and detail that Nick Louth provides about each are so carefully managed that these characters feel real. What at first seemed like a simple tragedy soon turns into a much more complicated and twisty case that keeps you guessing all the way.
This is exactly the type of police procedural I enjoy. A twisty, sharp and clever story, where the reader finds out as much about the police team and the way it functions as they do about the victims and the crime. And Nick Louth’s skill as a storyteller makes everything knit together seamlessly, so I just didn’t want to put the book down. This series looks as if it’s going to be another cracker and I give this 5 Stars.
Review by: Cornish Eskimo
For Oundle Crime, 5 Stars = “Outstanding and unforgettable. A book you can’t wait to tell others about.”
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