Ideal for fans of the very slow burn that spirals off in an unexpected direction. Lots of descriptions of forensic clean-ups after undiscovered deaths. This will be a good read for anyone looking for an unusual mystery with an unusual sleuth. The same but very different.. With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an advance copy.

I have mixed feelings about this book. At the beginning, I really liked Grave and felt sorry for her. However, I soon started to dislike her and found her quite narcissistic. I’m not sure if that’s what the author intended but it just didn’t sit right with me. I simply loved her relationship with George though!

Grace McGill cleans up after people have died - it's as you'd expect, a pretty gruesome job.

Then she spots some discrepancies in a few different homes where the occupants have supposedly died of natural causes... this is a good, interesting page turner with a difference and I enjoyed it.
My frustration was with the character Grace as the book develops, because, unfortunately she doesn't and I found as the book progressed, it became a tad boring.

Overall though, a decent read and I'm grateful to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview.

This is a very enjoyable novel, featuring a very well-written and well-crafted character. Grace is the sort of protagonist who’s different to most, which adds a different layer to the book.

I was hooked from the off, and found it full of intrigue and interest.

Grace McGill knows death. She's well acquainted with it, maybe even tentative friends at this point. Grace is the person who comes after death, to clean up the fallout left when someone dies and is left undiscovered. Usually it's just household mess, furniture, dust. But sometimes it's bodily remains and buried secrets.

Grace knows that death isn't always the end of the story - so when she's called to clear up after an elderly man who's been dead in his home for months unnoticed, it seems like a lonely end to a lonely life. But she knows that's not true. She knows there's always something remarkable hiding in the most unremarkable of places. There's something more about this man, about his life and the way he died - if you just know where to look.

"I'm here because I'm angry and I'm here because of the daisy. I'm here because my undiscovereds stay with me. I'm here because no one else is, because they couldn't be arsed to care enough in life or in death."

Dark, dry and haunting funny, Grace McGill is the type of character to live rent-free in a readers head for a long time after the final page is turned. A compulsive, compelling character with a tortured soul, trying to find a way to make the world a little better for other tortured souls in her own way.

With an air of morbid curiosity and uneasy tension hanging over every page, there was a beautiful sense of respect for death and a celebration of lives that ended scattered throughout the mystery and intrigue.

Dealing truly shocking revelations in such casual and subtle ways that makes you flick back the pages in awe, leaving you wondering how you hadn't unravelled any of the mysteries before.

Darkly twisted, unsettling and utterly engrossing, Grace McGill is one story you can't leave undiscovered.

I really enjoyed this book, the storyline kept you reeling in and wanting to read more and more. Grace was described and written so incredibly well, a matter of fact all of the characters were. It kept me so intrigued. I loved the thrill and suspense, couldn't put it down once i started reading that i stayed up to the early hours to finish it. I had an idea where the ending was coming but i still enjoyed the book and thought it was such a likeable book. I would recommend to fellow book readers 5*

Thank you to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for letting me read and review this book, i look forward to what's more to come from the author.

Good grief this is absolutely mesmerising! Long time since I read such an original voice and intriguing story. Grace McGill is probably one of the most complex and original characters I have encountered in a thriller. She is so compassionate, unforgiving, an avenging angel with only a cat for company. The narrative - all in Grace's voice - is always interesting but seems fairly safe to start with but gradually little things start to jar and information is revealed to seep through and disturb thoughts. This is a cracking read, action-packed, twisting, dangerous and unpredictable.

Thank you to the author, publishers Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley UK for access to this as an advance reader’s ebook. This is an honest and voluntary review.

Grace McGill cleans up after deaths. She takes her job very seriously and works hard to remove every biohazard left by a decaying body.

Her specialism is the undiscovered deaths. Ones where bodies aren’t found for weeks, or sometimes months, after dying. She treats the deceased’s belongings with respect. Preserving mementos for their families or friends. But, sometimes people aren’t found because they have no loved ones. No one to notice they were no longer around. No one to miss them. So, Grace remembers them. Often she’ll go to their funeral as one of the few mourners.

Tommy Agnew’s funeral is a fairly typical example of this. Only three mourners apart from Grace. But, the other mourners are part of a secret Tommy has been hiding most of his life, one which might help solve the mystery of a girl who went missing in the 1960s.

The story is told in the first person from Grace’s perspective. Although she lives alone she’s at the beck and call of her drunken abusive father. She’s very shy and finds it difficult to talk to people. This makes the first part of the book quite slowly paced and introspective. That’s not a bad thing, the writing remains very readable, but it did lull me into thinking this might all be as steadily paced. But just over halfway through the whole book takes an unexpected turn which really shook things up.

The result is a dark, deceptively paced psychological suspense novel which I really enjoyed.

Even as I write this review I’m still largely undecided on how I feel about it. Grace McGill is a fascinating character, her self-confessed awkwardness lends itself to her less than desirable career choice. She spends her days cleaning the homes of those who have lain undiscovered and her nights alone in her flat. But this suits Grace as she struggles with social interaction, this lack of social skills is never fully explained as to whether it is because she has had little interaction or whether it’s a deeper psychological issue. Either way, Grace is very interesting and the way in which we are introduced to her at the start is utterly gripping.

I felt that the further we went into the story, however, Grace’s character became more diluted and there were a lot of inconsistencies with what we were told and what she did. For example: she makes it very clear how angry she feels towards the ‘friends and family’ that allow the people she cleans up for be undiscovered for so long. And yet her actions imply that this is something she actively enjoys.

Her awkwardness, which is probably one of her biggest factors is less noticeable the more time you spend with her. Whether that’s because she’s pretending to be someone else in her ‘investigations’ or just through the development of her character.

This dilution of the main character is interesting though because ultimately Grace McGill (or whom ever she was at the start) becomes one of the forgotten. Now, I’ve no idea if that’s deliberate? If it is, then that’a masterful and quite sad. If it wasn’t then it’s just disappointing and the reason I can’t figure out how to rate this book.

I’ve so much I want to debate but I can’t without writing a huge spoiler! But ultimately, I enjoyed the book. It was twisty and engaging. But I was disappointed that the book took a huge u-turn half way though and it felt less thought out than the premise.

Thanks to NetGalley for my advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

I have read many books over the past few years with characters named in the title, Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, The surprising days of Isla Pembroke, The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle to name a few....

I don't think of those characters will stay with me longer than Grace McGill....she is an amazingly, complex character.

Grace works as a cleaner, however she is no ordinary cleaner.....she attends the scenes of those who have died and lain undiscovered for a number of weeks and months. Whilst this is not a job many of us could stomach, Grace takes great pride in her job and feels she is doing a great public service.

Grace is cleaning a number of properties in Glasgow and discovers what might be a link between a number of deaths in the city which appear unrelated. She also discovers information relating to an unsolved missing persons case within one of the houses which she has cleaned. This takes Grace on an investigation across Scotland as she seeks to uncover the truth.

I really enjoyed this novel, set in Glasgow and containing great, realistic descriptions of the city. I will, of course, not spoil of anything however the journey of Grace and her character will live with you for a long time.

Thanks to Hodder and Stoughton and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest, inbiased review.

This is a murder mystery with a difference. The story is told by Grace who is employed to clean up after people have died and lain undiscovered for a long time. The account Grace gives of her work is not for the squeamish as she goes into considerable detail about he aftermath of such deaths. In the curse of her work, Grace stumbles on a mystery involving some of the deceased and sets about investigating. Her investigation leads her to the island of Bute and to discoveries surrounding a disappearance that took place in 1964. What makes the story different concerns Grace's own back story. This fuels a twist in the story that happens unexpectedly in the middle of the novel. This twist comes as quite a jolt and feels as though the story has changed direction so suddenly that it takes the reader some time to adjust to it. It made me wonder whether the writer planned it from the beginning or just had the idea mid-way through writing. Nevertheless, I wanted to find out the whole story and this kept me reading so that I finished the book very quickly. I would recommend this novel to anyone who likes crime thrillers that are a bit different as long as they have a strong stomach!

I would like to thank Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an advance copy of The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill, a stand-alone novel set in Glasgow.

Grace has an unusual job, she cleans the houses of people who have died without being noticed. She is meticulous in her cleaning of the detritus, be it stains or mementos, respectful but not emotional until it comes to the death of an old man who had lain undiscovered for months. She cannot get his death out of her head and thinks there may be more to it than natural causes. Soon she is being threatened.

I have loved Craig Robertson’s writing for years and I always like a novel set in my home town of Glasgow so I was disappointed to find that The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill didn’t capture my attention the way I hoped it might. I liked it and found much to admire in it, but I didn’t find it unputdownable. I found the first 60% really slow with Grace flitting about aimlessly with no obvious plan or apparent goal. This changes dramatically when the truth starts appearing. It never becomes compulsive but, for me, it became much more interesting with some good twists and a greater sense of urgency.

Grace is a very unusual protagonist with an even more unusual job so that grabs the attention immediately. There have been other novels with crime scene cleaners, but not ones that are prepared to discuss the nitty gritty of the job. I think the author does a great job of describing the yuck in a detached tone and making sense of a job that most people couldn’t do. Grace handles it with aplomb and a respectful, caring detachment but there’s no getting away from the fact that she’s odd and obviously keeping secrets. I’m not sure that I would go as far as calling her unreliable, but I quickly started taking what she said with a pinch of salt. Still, she eventually has a great story to tell.

This is not a novel where crime is the main focus, it’s more an incidental in the adventures of Grace McGill. She is the focus, with her thoughts and actions shining a light on the issues of ageing and loneliness. Obviously there is more to the novel than old people dying alone, but you’ll have to read it to learn what.

It’s a clever novel with a good sense of location and a strong, well developed protagonist. It also takes a path I wasn’t expecting with several well executed twists. I found it a bit slow, but can still recommend it as a good read.

Seldom does a book engage me where I literally have to say up all night to reach the end, this book did.
Very hard to summarize without revealing the plot, so suffice to say, Grace engages you from the start and takes you on a journey of many twists & turns, most totally unexpected.
Best book I’ve read in 2021 so far.

4 - 5 stars

Who is Grace McGill? Who indeed. She’s a death cleaner, that person who goes in after a body is found that may have been undiscovered for a while. However, there’s much more to Grace than this unusual career, oh yes, so much more .... she doesn’t just clean up the Glaswegian properties, she also likes to clean up mysteries too. Grace tells her incredible story.

Wow! This book starts dramatically and grabs your attention immediately and it’s one of those novels that is genuinely hard to put down. The premise is fantastic and I think it’s fair to say it’s unique and kudos to the author for that. You hear Grace's voice clearly as she takes you on a real journey. At times she’s darkly funny, she’s a loner except for George the cat, at others she’s almost a tortured soul and her voice becomes almost haunting in its tone. She’s obsessive and as she tells her tale you can see she has a compulsion to seek the truth no matter how much it may cost her. At heart she’s an unhappy but very good soul and much of her unhappiness can be laid at the feet of her appalling father whose characterisation is excellent, as you see him for the lowlife he definitely is. I don’t want to give too much away about what unfolds but let’s settle for a very messed up, dark mystery set in the past and as the reader makes sense of the clues Grace gives us or the discoveries she makes, it becomes even darker and dangerous. Although I do guess some parts of it that is irrelevant as the storytelling is so powerful that you are swept along in it and there are plenty of surprises still to come.

Overall, a twisted story of undiscovered deaths and twisted minds, of people of little or no morality and Grace right in the thick of it, setting records straight and doing good in her own inimitable way.

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Hodder and Stoughton for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

Will post to Goodreads when the book appears there and to retail sites on publication day.

The undiscovered deaths of Grace McGill was a very clever story, something very unique. I haven’t really come across a book with a similar storyline before. Therefore was intriguing.

It was engaging and I did enjoy it and was happy to finish until the end however I found it very unrealistic in parts (which of course most stories are). I also got confused at parts but that could just have been me.

I predicted the ending fairly early on but i still enjoyed reading why and how they’d been done. It was clever how it all weaved together and I quite liked how socially awkward the main character was.

Thank you NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for allowing me to read and review this book.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a great storyline with excellent characters. I would highly recommend this book as it was a great read.

Wow! What an absolute stunner of a book. This was so different to a lot of the books out there at the moment. Totally gripping and thrilling and I couldn't stop reading it although I really didn't want to finish it!

A Premise That Gratifyingly Delivers….
What an intriguing premise. A premise that, gratifyingly, delivers the goods in spades and does so with a superbly well drawn cast of characters and a rather unique, well written, often dark narrative. Compelling and wholly engaging reading. Top notch.

An unexpectedly good read!
Grace is a tortured, sad, lonely young woman who has chosen a career that lets her think she's helping people when in fact she's punishing herself. While believing that she's helping people she's causing herself more pain by doing terrible things until she stumbles upon a decades old mystery where she finds people with more secrets than she has.

I loved this book it had a very Rear Window feel to it. The idea that someone who sees what you’re up to but doesn’t necessarily interact with you. The story was engrossing and I couldn’t wait to see where it would go. I highly recommend this.