Buried Lies by Jenny O’Brien

Blog tour: 15 to 19 November 2021

Synopsis

Her partner. Her son. She’s next.

Hannah Thomas returns home one morning to every mother’s worst nightmare: a missing child and a dead fiancé. When DI Gaby Darin questions her, Hannah insists she can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt her family – and yet it all feels disturbingly personal.

Mere hours into the investigation, a second body is found. As Gaby and her team dig into the victims’ lives, they hit dead ends at every turn – particularly when it comes to Hannah’s past. What is the grieving woman hiding?

But when Gaby stumbles upon Hannah’s tragic secret, it doesn’t bring her any closer to the truth. Can she connect the dots before the killer strikes again?

My review

Buried Lies is the fifth book in the Detective Gaby Darin series and after enjoying others in the series (I haven’t got to the third one yet!), I was really keen to read this for the blog tour.

The novel begins with work colleagues Hannah Thomas and Milly Buttle enjoying drinks at a spa hotel in Ruthin, but things take a sinister turn the following morning. Hannah returns home to discover her fiancé, Ian Strong, a police officer, dead in his car in the garage and her five-year-old son, Hunter, missing.

Gabriella (Gaby) Darin is now a detective inspector and heads up the Major Incident Team at St Asaph. After a spa weekend in Betws-y-Coed to celebrate family liaison officer (FLO) Amy Potter’s upcoming wedding, it’s back to work with a bang for the pair and their colleagues.

At first, the case seems clear cut but when a second body is found, the team have to pull out all the stops and investigate everyone involved to try and work out what happened. They follow several different lines of enquiries and put forward numerous theories but struggle to work out who is responsible for the deaths.

The puzzling investigation is set over the course of 10 days and, despite the numerous frustrations and dead ends, the storyline develops well and I found it a gripping and satisfying read with some surprising revelations. I flew through it in a few hours, frantically turning the pages to see how everything was going to be resolved!

Buried Lies is a well-written and cleverly plotted police procedural with some intriguing twists and turns and elements of misdirection and suspense. I had several theories but didn’t put everything together until close to the end!

I really enjoy this series – it’s very entertaining and engaging, with a good pace, and I like the main character, Gaby Darin, and her rather slow-moving relationship with resident pathologist, Rusty Mulholland. She’s a great protagonist and I really like her personality and the way her character is developing.

Gaby has a good working relationship with her colleagues and manages to support and encourage them while getting the best out of the team and successfully solving cases. She gets the job done and is firm but fair. She has her flaws and isn’t very good with the more sensitive side of her role, but FLO Amy Potter makes a good foil and covers that aspect well!

The Detective Gaby Darin books can be read as standalones but there are a few passing mentions of previous cases and events so it’s probably best to read the series in order to get the full experience and learn more about Gaby Darin and her life.

This was another excellent, compelling read from Jenny O’Brien and I’m already looking forward to the next book!

Buy the book

Buried Lies by Jenny O’Brien can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle now (and is released on 20 January 2022 in paperback), and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks. See also Ethical Book Search.

About the author

Born in Dublin, Jenny O’Brien moved to Wales and then Guernsey, where she tries to find time to write in between working as a nurse and ferrying around three teenagers.

She’s an avid reader and book blogger, in addition to being a previous Romantic Novel Awards (RoNA) judge.

In her spare time, she can be found frowning at her wonky cakes and even wonkier breads. You’ll be pleased to note she won’t be entering The Great British Bake Off. She’s also an all-year-round sea swimmer.

Twitter: @ScribblerJB
Facebook: @JennyOBrienWriter
Instagram: @scribblerjb
Website: https://jennyobrienwriter.wordpress.com

Blog tour

Thanks to Alliya Bouyis at HQ Stories for my digital copy of Buried Lies and for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.