The Cavendish & Walker Series: Books 1-3

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A young female student from the local university body is found by lecturer Dr Georgina Cavendish Aka George. DCI Whitney Walker has been threatened with demotion if she screws up another case. So, when a killer starts murdering female students at the local university, she knows this is her chance to redeem herself. Whitney doesn’t follow rules well…she makes her own path as she sees fit.

And that is it for the positives, I'm afraid. The writing is amateurish, all tell and no show, and the dialogue is wooden and unnatural. While the relationship between George and Whitney worked, every other relationship feels awkward and psychologically unbelievable. The solution to the mystery is obvious, but at the same time, pretty unbelievable. The several dead women are treated by the narrative as disposable, and the tone felt exploitative. The crimes herein are pretty gruesome but then you're a little torn because the victims are creeps in the process of grooming young girls. So very little sympathy abounds which won't make the work of catching someone killing them very easy, as most of the general public are happy to see them cleared off their streets. Sebastian Clifford, an ex-cop turned reluctant private investigator, was never one to plan for a career shift. However, following a controversy that leads to the disintegration of his specialized squad in London, he finds himself jobless. Things take a turn when his cousin pleads for his help to scrutinize her husband's widely-publicized death, and prove it was far from suicide. Despite initial hesitations, Clifford can't ignore the growing body of evidence he unearths.Once again Sally has come through with an AWESOME read! Each case is unique in it's own way and I look forward to trying to figure out who-done-it.

By the end of 'Deadly Games', you'll be hooked wanting to keep reading more to see what Cavendish and Walker do next. Definitely the author puts her name on this readers list of go to British Police procedural authors to read. I’m aware that I’ve not outlined the plot of Last Breath. It’s not something I’m inclined to do, as a synopsis covering that is always provided by the publisher. What I want to do is highlight the reasons why I’ve awarded this book five stars and a strong recommendation. If you enjoy UK-based police procedural crime fiction, then this is a stand-out series of books that I’m confident you’ll enjoy. But also, even without that, I'm kind of torn by the book as well. On the positive side, I absolutely could not put it down. I raced through it in three evenings / late nights, knowing full well that it would leave me tired at work the next day but not caring. Right from the second chapter, in which the body of a psychology student is found by her tutor, the pace is fast and relentless. DCI Whitney Walker, placed in charge of the case, has been threatened with demotion after screwing up over a drugs raid and now has a massive chip on her shoulder against her boss, who is ambitious for himself at the detriment of his own team and the sort of character we all love to hate. Dr Georgina 'George' Cavendish knows the murdered student and longs to help the police find her killer. But the body count continues to rise, with each victim another student killed in an identical manner. The gap between each killing is getting shorter, and to prevent more deaths is a race against time ... After reading the previous book 0, This is book 1. This book sees the then DS Whitney Walker from book 0, fast forwarded 10 years and she is now a DCI.As with the previous novels I find Ms. Rigby's characters to ring true. Their relationships and behaviors are believable, as is their dialog. Actions of the police are interesting and believable as well. The main characters are likeable, their relationships and interactions interesting. Ms. Rigby's writing is crisp, well-paced, well researched, and enjoyable. I look forward to future installments and developments in this well written police procedural series. I wanted to like this series so much! 2 ladies solving a mystery sounded like it was going to be my jam. The relationship between the two women has improved significantly since their first case together and I really enjoy how they interact with each other. Walker is still having problems with her supervisor who gives the impression that he doesn't much care for women on the job, Walker especially. The bodies of the victims are found mutilated, no clues left behind. Walker and her team aren't even real sure of the motive until the killer sends a letter to a local news station. In the letter, the killer states that there are many more to follow ... if the law can't put them away, then the killer can. Throughout the book there appears to be a theme of "Secrets". Personal and professional secrets. Secrets that affect relationships and trust; provide fodder for disputes, alter plans, and leverage for occasional disruptive behavior.

That's all bad enough, but the absolutely worse part is that the police procedural elements were really, really, REALLY crap. Whitney is a terrible investigator. She doesn't follow obvious lines of enquiry. She breaks the rules in ways that would obviously compromise the investigation, and even does so when it's not important, because if police followed all the rules, they wouldn't get anything done (I have very little tolerance for this these days). She has horrible judgment about what constitutes solid evidence, as shown by how she is so convinced that a certain character is the murderer based on extremely flimsy, circumstantial evidence (and also, why on earth is the fact that someone has bondage porn on his computer something that, as is said twice, would lead him to lose his job? Whitney is a judgmental prude, as well as an idiot). It didn't help that, because I was so annoyed at the idiocy of these people, I paused reading Deadly Games for a while and read JD Robb's Faithless in Death. Eve would despise Whitney, and with good reason. I enjoyed the first book and am happy to say I enjoyed this one even more. The plot was tight and the writing style drew me straight in. I'm enjoying the character development, not just of Whitney and George but of the police team and even Whitney's unpredictable and unlikable superior, Jamieson. Wouldn't there have needed to be a bit more of an argument, with him being a bit more persuasive? And is it really likely that an academic with no police experience whatsoever would almost immediately be taken on as an unpaid advisor and given access to all the case details? I don't know, I don't really have any police or legal knowledge either. So perhaps it would. But if I'd been arrested as part of this investigation, I'd like to think that my solicitor would try and challenge it in court. Lastly, there's the solution. The case was ultimately solved not by Whitney's police work or George's input, but by an observation made by the pathologist. And I thought that more could have been made of the killer's motivation to do what he/she did. While the killer leads the police on a game of cat and mouse, Walker and Cavendish form an uneasy alliance. But will it be too late to stop the worst serial killer in Lenchester’s history?Whitney as usual can manage on her own and does not want any help. Eventually after not getting very far she frostily accepts help. Forensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, has spent her life inside the university walls, but when one of her students is murdered, she steps out from behind the text books and puts her skills to the test. Ah, another great story starring DCI Whitney Walker and Dr Georgina (George) Cavendish. If I haven't mentioned it before you would do well to start your journey with Sally Rigby's books about this pair of crime busters with book 1 "Deadly Games".