Dead good debut thriller set in Inverness. Monica Kennedy investigates the death of a 16-year-old boy knowing more deaths will follow. Social Worker Michael can't locate a client and is getting worried. The two cases are linked but can they work together before the next killing? Lovely descriptions of landscape and well-rounded characters. Recommended.

Very entertaining, suspenseful and an enjoyable read. Started off slowly, but soon picked up pace. If you like the type of thriller - whodunnit - kind of story, then this is definitely for you.

From the outset, Halliday keeps the pulse pumping as children disappear and the weather darkens. Scotland is almost a character in this crime novel, chilling, windswept and dark.
The central characters are fallible and earn grudging respect as they stumble through the strange array of evidence. At times their apparent foolhardiness is bewildering but this adds to the realism.
This is a great read with enough grit to keep the pages turning.
My only reservation was what seemed to be a hasty conclusion. The suspects collide and some threads are tied quickly but others are left dangling. Perhaps this is realistic but it felt rushed and detracted from an otherwise worthwhile read.

This is a good fast paced read. I liked the characters and the setting. I got caught up in the story from the start and thought that overall it was very good. My only gripe is that it was confusing in places as to what was happening and who it involved.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

wow, what a novel! I loved every minute of it, it was well written, interesting and full of plot twists! The characters were well fleshed out and I enjoyed my time reading it.

If I could give it more than 5 stars, I would. RECOMMEND IT!

I found this a very difficult book to read, not because of the subject matter but because of the formatting, which was absolutely atrocious. Hardly any capitals, paragraphs etc, it felt like one blended monologue, sometimes couldn't even work out who was supposed to be speaking.

I am sure the book will be tidied up prior to printing, but to be able to review a book you do need to be able to read it properly.

I found the story very confusing, with unanswered questions at the end.

Sorry for the first time ever on NetGalley, I could not recommend this book.

This is in an unusual setting in the Scottish Highlands but that is used to advantage to give the story an element of mysticism as well as greater depth. Much of the tale depends on a social worker who is guilty about a youth for whom he was responsible and the interaction between him and thef Emailed detective works well. She,as ever in books like this,has to have a dysfunctional personal life. There are several strands to the story which are brought together to good effect. The story keeps the reader guessing about the outcome. You are sure to be surprised!

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for the ARC.
Sixteen year-old Robert gets home late, his father issuing harsh words for him not letting him know where he was, goes straight to his bedroom, and disappears. DI Monica Kennedy attends the discovery of his body on scrubland a few miles away.
Meanwhile, Michael Bach a social worker, has reported his teenaged client Nichol Morgan as missing for 7 days. Michael thinks the body may be Nichol and meets Monica at the identification.
Another teenage boy goes missing from his home whilst his mother is on holiday and when his body is found in similar circumstances to Robert's, Monica starts to form hypotheses.
However, the narrative told mainly between Monica and Michael, and 'The Watcher' only served to confuse things further - not so much 'mystery', but clouding the issue. Sorry - I just do so hate being negative about writers' gifts, as I certainly couldn't do it - but my job is to give an honest opinion from a reader's point of view.
I love to come across a new detective series and, hopefully follow it through and experience how the character develops. Unfortunately, I feel the story content really did not present DI Monica Kennedy very well at all, and additionally her characterisation was somewhat repetitive. She's a single mother who relies on her mother to care of her daughter. She's plain-looking, tall, wears a once-expensive but now threadbare favourite long woollen coat, has feet like dinner-plates and constantly has wet and uncomfortable footwear on. There was really no development of the team she was working with.
There are some very nice, atmospheric passages, giving a good sense to the reader of the loneliness of the Highlands, dark roads, no cell coverage, forests, isolated family dwellings.
From quite a confused storyline we are led to a violent conclusion, which in itself was confusing, and I felt, rather unsatisfactory, leaving things just a little 'too much up in the air' (of course this may have been intentional in order to follow-on, but I hope not - I do hope for a better-planned storyline next time).
This was worth reading if only to look forward to DI Monica Kennedy's next exploit, hopefully in better circumstances.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Random House UK, Vintage Publishing for an advance copy of From the Shadows the first novel to feature DI Monica Kennedy od Inverness Police.

When the body of a teenage boy is found in a remote location DI Monica Kennedy is given the case. The nature of his wounds and the posing of the body make her think it may not be a one off killing but, apart from that, she doesn’t have much to go on. In the meantime social worker Michael Bach is searching for his client, Nichol Morgan, who seems to have vanished.

I thoroughly enjoyed From the Shadows which is a good procedural with the added advantage of a scenic location. The novel is told mostly from Monica and Michael’s points of view with occasional forays into the watcher’s (as he’s referred to in the novel) mindset. I don’t feel that these forays are particularly productive as I didn’t get a good feel for either him or his motivation, but perhaps that’s intentional to give the impression of a confused mind although maybe not as the killer is a highly organised individual. Whatever, it just didn’t strike the right note for me. The plot itself is a good page turner with plenty going on and the requisite blind alleys and red herrings. It comes to a fairly sudden head (as I imagine most real investigations do) but the resolution seems a bit half hearted with no clear solution and a lot of violence. I understand that this is a debut novel and as such is a creditable effort but I would have preferred better explanations at the end and everything tied up in a nice bow as it gives the reader a better sense of satisfaction.

DI Monica Kennedy is an interesting protagonist. She has a hang up about her appearance because she is so tall (as the author tells us ad nauseum). I find this highly unlikely in such a successful detective but it casts a long shadow over the first half of the book. Otherwise she is smart and dedicated, often to the detriment of her relationship with her young daughter, and a good, stubborn investigator. She ends up running her own off the books investigation because her superiors fixate on one suspect.

From the Shadows is a good read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

Thriller writing and crime is one of my favoured styles of literature and this could have been a good plot were it not for the following factors. Firstly, it was somewhat too horrific for my pallet (not that any crime is pleasant) and I found the ideas a little too far fetched and complex to be 'believable'. Also, I appreciate the opportunity to read books prior to publication and I am used to the fact that scripts have not been formatted fully at the time of being offered to Netgalley readers. However this was a bit too much in need of formatting with a lack of capitals and punctuation but what made it really hard to follow was the lack of proper sentence and paragraph spacing. It was often hard to work out which character was 'speaking' and where the scene was set as there was little accurate division between the changes. I cannot recommend this book in it's present form but no doubt there will be some improvement to readability before publication.

The characters and story line have the 4 stars but the presentation is awful - in these days of computers it should not be impossible to have capital letters where needed - start of sentences, proper names and so on. Names sporadically have these and at least dNa is consistent, if wrong, for DNA. Perhaps the Caps key doesn't work on the author's machine? I'd hate to be the Editor for this book. The story is set around Inverness and the Highlands, where the author lives, and this gives an authentic moody credence to his descriptions of the landscape. Welcome to my world of phone black spots. 4G? I'd be happy with reliable G! A missing boy and various murders keep the police busy while a social worker worries over a missing client. How these all interact make for a strong story. The detective is an unusual character - very tall, single mother - trying to balance a difficult career and family, but at least with an amazingly supportive mother. I think that she, the detective, could joint the ranks of 'favourite detective' given time. Although I found it a bit of a trial to finish that was mainly due to the tedium of putting in my own capitals. I spent more time trying to understand what was being said than getting caught up in the story. A shame. Still, it is pre-publication and there are always some wrinkles at this stage,
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy in return for an honest review.