Under a silent moon by Elizabeth Haynes – a review

As readers of this blog will know I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth Haynes having originally met her in the toilets at the festival a few years ago. At that stage she was in the New Blood panel. This is now her fourth novel, and according to the internet is the start of a new detective series.
In Under a Silent Moon the story starts with two women being found dead the same night in the same village. Barbara has apparently killed herself by driving her car over a cliff. Polly has been murdered whilst home alone. Detective Lou Smith is charged with finding out who killed her and she soon starts to uncover the secret side not only of Polly but those around her including her best friend Flora. As the investigation continues it becomes clear that the two victims might be linked.
I really enjoyed this book. The story is set over a week with each chapter spanning a day. The novel is interspersed with police reports and emails which gave a really good impression of the actual investigation. It also meant that you felt like you were given all the information to solve the crime. I guessed quite early on who the murderer would likely be but that didn’t ruin my enjoyment at all as I still wanted to know the how and why. I liked the fact that the investigation was laid out clearly and it was easy to follow. It almost reminded me of some books I remember having as a child where you basically got to make decisions which changed the ending of the book. You actually felt that you were investigating the crime.
Whilst I thought the story and writing were excellent, I wasn’t overly enamoured with either the main Detective Lou Smith or any of the other police team except analyst Jason. Lou just seemed a bit weak to me, she’d had an affair with Andy until she found out he was married with children. Surely you’d know that one of your colleagues had children? She then jumped straight into a relationship with Jason, which seemed a little unprofessional. Although in my head he was a bit of a Brad Pitt lookalike so maybe that was understandable. I think reading a new detective is always difficult as you don’t have any background of them, so I hope that like many other fictional detectives Lou Smith will grow on me.
I think Under a Silent Moon is the start of what will become a very popular new series with an interesting take on the police procedural. It just goes to show that the New Blood panel is never wrong and I look forward to reading more.