Anna Britton’s debut police procedural “A Shot In the Dark” introduces us to female detective duo DS Gabe Martin and and DI Juliet Stern who have been working together for a little shy of a year and who are tasked with solving the gruesome murder of Melanie Birt.

Melanie is is a 17 year old woman, from an immigrant family, who at the start of the book is running away from an unseen terror and a vicious dog. She hides in a tree, but it’s not enough to save her. The next day, her body is discovered on the estate belonging to a local monied family, the Dulworths. It soon transpires that she was not only mauled by a dog belonging to the family, but by the time that happened, she had already been shot 3 times. Suspicion falls on Melanie’s boyfriend, the groundskeeper, Karl who alerted the police to Melanie’s body, and the obnoxious Dulworth family – Dad Timothy and his sons Terence and Leo. Privileged as the Dulworths are, they are also pretty awful people, and won’t be winning any awards at charm school anytime soon. As time progresses it becomes clear that they all have their own secrets to keep, getting in the way of full disclosure, and there are lots of twists, turns and red herrings while Gabe and Juliet work their way through the evidence in search of a resolution to this most unpleasant case. Down at the station there’s another high profile case stealing all the headlines and the resources as a team tries to find the whereabouts of a missing 7 year old girl. The parallels between the two cases, and their assigned importance is a theme that runs through this novel.

Early on we learn that Gabe is relatively new to this role and so lacks the confidence needed, and displayed by her superior, Juliet, to put the screws on when she needs to find information from difficult and confident suspects. However Juliet has other problems, including some very prominent issues in her marriage, and perhaps as a result of that, seems to lack the soft skills needed to draw information out of the more vulnerable, and nervous people under suspicion. So they work well together. Juliet also displays very neurodivergent tendancies although she is never confirmed as having such a condition – this may follow in a future book in the series, or maybe we’re just supposed to make our own minds up.

There are many references to Gabe’s life up until recent years, including some heavy hints about her sexuality, and it’s implied that some elements of her past may be affecting her ability to be an effective officer who can follow her gut instincts. Her instinctive distrust and dislike of the Dulworth family appears to be strongly linked to the unconscious bias she carries because of their wealth, presumably in comparison to her own circumstances. Trying to follow her gut instincts – such an important part of police work for the best literary detectives – and being empathetic to the wrong people because she identifies in some way with them takes her down the wrong path on many occasions, and she flip flops between who she thinks is guilty so often that it became a bit frustrating for me by the time we got to the culprit (Just a side note, I, and several of those reading along with me at The Pigeonhole book club had guessed who the baddie was earlier on, despite the apparent misdirection from the author). It was cleverly done though and although I was semi-convinced I had it right, I was never quite sure whether it was clever misdirection or the rug was about to be pulled out from under me and prove me wrong. I hope that in future novels in the series we will find out more about Gabe and get to see her grow and hone those instincts, choose a path and stick to it, and not be so easily swayed by people who are Not. Very. Nice., playing on her inexperience and lack of self-confidence.

Back to the story, the suspects and red herrings form an orderly queue, and the pace ramps up. There are a couple of things Gabe and Juliet did that stretched credibility a bit (suspension of disbelief required!) but I was very invested in the characters and looked forward to reading it each day via The Pigeonhole. I think it’s a very promising start to this Detective series, and I look forward to purchasing book #2 very soon!

Published by Canelo Crime.
Book #2 “Close to the Edge” was released on 12th September 2024.

4/5 stars

About the Author:

Read more about Anna Britton and find her social media handles via her Goodreads author page.