Review: Murder in the Studio (D.I. Siv Drummond #5) by Gretta Mulrooney

                                  

Print Length: 269 pages

Publisher: Joffe Books (August 31, 2023)

From Goodreads.com: A victim who’s made her last mistake.

A killer hiding in plain sight.
Detective Siv Drummond faces her toughest case yet . . .

One Saturday morning, Detective Siv is called to Lansdown Court, a secluded little seaside community of artists, entrepreneurs and drifters. Where someone just committed the ultimate crime.

Behind the doors of Jem Calloway’s studio, the walls, the canvases, everything is stained red. With blood.

Slumped in Jem’s chair, there’s a dead woman. A knife plunged deep in her neck . She is Luanna Forbes , owner of the bijou gift shop next door.

Jem says he has no idea how she got there. He spent the whole night at a party, in a drunken haze. Detective Siv has her doubts. Because her sergeant was at the same party.

And something was eating Jem that night. A secret he couldn’t tell.

What — or who — made him hold his tongue?

Siv must break through a wall of silence to uncover the truth. But in a tight-knit community where blood runs thicker than water, she’s got her work cut out . . .

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My Rating: 1 star out of 5

I don't do this often as I feel as though any book I am lucky enough to be granted an ARC for deserves my time and attention so that I can put together an honest review, but I had to send this one to the DNF shelf. 

After making it to 45% and being utterly bogged down by too many characters and way too many unnecessary details, I set it to the side and read something else before giving this one a second chance. And sadly? I still just could not get into it. There is a lot of jumping around between characters, and so many of them that I never really warmed up to any of them, or gotten a feel for them as anything but a two-dimensional figure. 

The plot, what little of it there was, seemed entirely way too slow for my tastes, but then I enjoy more action in my thriller novels than was given here. If you are already a fan of this series, or enjoy a great deal of detail in your stories, then you may enjoy this one more than I did and I encourage you to give it a shot. 

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

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                                           Murder in the Studio is available on Amazon.com

                                             (for free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited)