When naked bodies start getting discovered on top of graves in different cemeteries the police team led by DI Mike Nash are quite baffled .Then other murders are also happening is this one person or several it takes the team weeks to sort out what is happening .
This is a mystery with so many twists that it is not easy to decide on who the killer is . I would recommend it as a as an enjoyable read.

Quite the mystery with many characters and twists and turns. The lead characters' dialog is humorous and quick witted.

This is my first of this series and it piques my curiosity about the others. I cannot wait to read more.

I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Joffe Books for an advance copy of Burial Grounds, the 14th book in the DI Mike Nash series.

I love this series, although its been a while since I read one, think I am up to book 7, although I have all the books in between. There are to many great series, I need to retire and read all day! As you might expect there have been some developments in the characters since I last read one. But it is not really a problem. Still feels like family friend.

As always a great plot, well thought out and executed. DI Nash has a great team who share a lot of light hearted banter. That seems natural. Great character's.

Overall an excellent read and note to myself, must catch up.

This is the first mystery I read in this series and won't surely be the last as I throughly enjoyed it.
It's cleverly plotted and kept me guessing. I liked the storytelling and the fleshed out characters.
Even if it's not the first in the series it can be read as a stand alone.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A clever murder mystery. This is part of a series but read well as a standalone, great characters, clever plot line with humour throughout and the twist in the tale.

“There was a figure directly in the car’s path. He yanked at the wheel in a desperate attempt to avoid the oncoming runner. It was far too late. The impact flung the jogger violently against the sign that read, “Bishopton Welcomes Careful Drivers”. A split second later, the car came to a halt against the sign, pinning the unconscious woman between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. The passenger’s scream died away into an empty silence”.

After hitting a young woman the driver and passenger get into an argument about what to do. Eventually, the driver, thinking there is nothing they can do to help this woman, says they should immediately leave the scene before somebody see them. Little does he know, the jogger he hit wasn’t beyond help and the accident did not go unwitnessed.

“The man, who was standing in the shade of an ancient yew tree at the perimeter of the cemetery, had begun recording the scene on his mobile phone before the couple got out of the car”. We then quickly learn that the man recognized both the driver and passenger and this new footage he obtained just gave him the opportunity to commit a “much graver crime. One that could prove highly lucrative”.

The husband of the woman who died in the hit-and-run is later approached by a lady, given flash drives with the footage of what happened, and offers to help him with whatever he decides to do with the information he was given, adding, “‘If it was my decision, I would want to make them suffer as much as you have’”. After the lady leaves, he starts putting his plan into place.

The book then skips ahead three weeks later when a naked body is found in a cemetery. Mike Nash and his team are called to the scene. We learn that the victim had been “restrained with manacles, and then drowned, his body kept upside-down in water for several days after death”. Not long after this body was located another body turns up in the cemetery, having been killed and left on display in the same manner as the first victim. Then the team learns about a missing person, a person who worked at the same IT company that both victims worked at.

Burial Grounds immediately starts you out with a mystery, a mystery that pulls you in and makes you want to keep reading. Although aware of who the perpetrator is and their motive, we are left wondering why the victims were chosen and if the perpetrator will end up getting away or not. The author did a great job pulling the reader in right at the start but the intensity you feel does not last. The book quickly warps into a slow burn that is more procedural than thrilling. I did really enjoy how everything was eventually pieced together. This book offered up something different, more unique than most procedural-type crime novels that I have read. The character development, while weak, is to be expected as this is book number fourteen of a series. While an enjoyable read, I wish the entire book read as the first couple of chapters did.

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This is an honest review of an uncorrected, advance copy of Burial Grounds. Burial Grounds is book number 14 in the Detective Mike Nash Murder Series. Even though this book is part of a series it can be read as a stand-alone. Mike Nash, a talented detective, is back to doing what he does best, solving crimes!

I’d like to thank Netgalley, Joffe Books, and Bill Kitson for this ARC in return for an honest review.

An enjoyable murder mystery. Chapter one is very intriguing and enticed me in straightaway. I loved the drama created by having an illusionist as a key character. The illusionist's part made it so vivid and entertaining.
Looking forward to reading more from Bill Kitson.

Loved it, fantastic story with great plot and characters. Highly recommend to others. Really enjoyable thriller.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Joffe Books for an advance copy of Burial Grounds, the fourteenth novel to feature DI Mike Nash and his team, set in and around the fictional North Yorkshire town of Helmsdale.

A young woman is killed in a hit and run accident. Months later a body is found in a cemetery naked and showing signs of torture, then another one. What links a mechanic and a drug dealer? Mike Nash will have to figure it out.

It is several years since I spent time with Mike Nash and the team, so I took advantage of the offer of reading Burial Grounds to renew my acquaintance. I was slightly disappointed as I didn’t find it as entertaining as my memories suggested I would. It’s not a bad book, just less gripping than I thought it would be.

The plot is well conceived and offers some mystery. The motive and the perpetrator are never in any doubt to the reader as they are established early in proceedings, but remain unknown to Mike and his team. For the reader the question lies in who the victims will be and how the perpetrator will get away with it. The twists come in the actions of the killer while Mike gradually accumulates knowledge in his hunt. It’s interesting but they are generally clueless. The ending is rather inconclusive, but is cleverly very fitting for what has gone before.

The detectives are a close knit team, so there are flashes of humour in their dialogue, which seem natural and not so different from real life. The characters themselves are not well developed, but don’t have to be as it is a plot driven novel.

Burial Grounds is a solid read.

In this, the fourteenth outing of DI Mike Nash, Nash is no longer a London copper. He’s moved back to Yorkshire hoping for a quieter pace. But, we don’t always get what we wish for. The book opens with the prologue of a young, much-loved, pregnant woman’s death at the hands of a hit and run driver. Fast forward to the here and now with Mike and his team being called out to the first in a series of grizzly murders. More deaths follow, and the challenge becomes connecting the dots and preventing more deaths.
I found the flow of the book disjointed. I realize Kitson has done this to bring the lives of the characters and the day to day operations of the station house into play but I’m not sure it worked well. I did really enjoy the characters and will definitely search out more from this series.

I love this story.
Police books are a favourite of mine.
This had all the hallmarks of a great one.
Gripping story,great detective
Thank you for the chance to read it

I received this book free from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Short stories. That’s what I honestly thought this book might be after reading about half of it. It seemed to be several disconnected stories that had little to do with each other. The flow of logic between the events described was tenuous, at best, and I had difficulty following the storyline. I also observed what, to me, seemed to be logical inconsistencies and contradictions in the story.

This novel is apparently supposed to be a police procedural novel set in the North of England (Scotland??) in the present day. Detective Inspector Mike Nash, and his sidekick Detective Sergeant Clara Mironova are based in the city of Helmsdale. The author introduces us to several characters that could easily have been left out of the story with no adverse effect, but he chose to tell us about a number of police officers of various ranks, and even about his dog – a Labrador, by the way. It isn’t clear why the author believed that this might be important for us to know.

The activity seems to be focused on the cities of Helmsdale and Netherdale, two cities that can be found within Scotland, but apparently not England. Unfortunately, the two localities are nowhere near each other in Scotland, so it appears that they must be fictional cities with coincidental Scottish names. On the other hand, on Location 641 of 3759 in an Amazon Kindle Fire, Inspector Nash comments about a weapon being found in “a remote part of North Yorkshire,” so who know where the story really takes place? I am not of the view that this was a good idea by the author. If you want to use fictional city names in a novel, make them truly fictional with no chance that such cities might really exist anywhere near where the story is supposedly taking place.

Somebody is murdering people by drowning them in tap water. Their bodies are found draped across headstones in cemeteries, hence the title of the book. I think the author might have been able to think of a better title but, oh, well. There seems to be no connection between the murders and the victims, but this becomes more clear near the end of the book.

I found some inconsistencies that I found confusing. One was on Location 1368 where we are told that the chief constable had arrived. Two paragraphs later, we are told that he apparently said “’Good, good.’ And with that, he left.” He left. Four pages later, however, we are told: “’I’ll get them to send an officer across,’ the chief volunteered.” I thought he (the chief constable) had left. How could he be telling anybody what he was going to do? Is this a case of the author referring to multiple different characters by the same title or name? I don’t know.

At Location 2203, the author tells us: “Although they weren’t to know it, Nash’s knowledge of history would later provide the solution to an aspect of the case they were investigating – and in so doing, set them what was likely to be an insoluble mystery.” Why would the author tip off his readers as to how the story might end? This is a spoiler that should have been alerted. Better yet, omit the entire paragraph from the book. It contributes nothing meaningful to the story and makes us wonder if we should keep reading if the mystery won’t be solved.

At Location 2455, a man opens his front door and “presse[s] the numerical code on the keypad to deactivate the alarm system.” The alarm was active when he entered the house, so if anybody was in the home, the alarm should have already been triggered. The man had every reason to be certain that nobody could be in the home where motion detectors would have alarmed his presence. Yet, two paragraphs later, the man is “transfixed by fear, as the hooded figure approached.” It appears that the alarm system in use was not a modern, easily and inexpensively available system that could be installed by a homeowner without special skills or tools. Maybe the setting for this novel is actually in the 1970s. No . . . Everybody has a cell phone, so it must be later than that. Who knows?

At Location 2558, the author tells us that Mrs. Blackburn refers to an “angry silence.” It isn’t clear what might make the silence “angry,” but it seems to me to be the wrong adjective. Perhaps the most conspicuous inconsistency of all is to be found in Chapter Twenty-three. Two of the detectives visit the school where the suspect attended, and they speak with the headmaster. They are told the following about the suspect: “I don’t think there has been a lock manufactured that he couldn’t open . . .” In the next paragraph, we are told that the headmaster says: “He produced one of those multi-tool implements from his backpack, and a couple of minutes later, he’d opened my study door.” And when the headmaster said that he needed some papers from his desk: “He promptly unlocked it for me.” The detectives then “thanked the headmaster for his time, and headed back to the station where [they] told the others what [they] had heard,” that the suspect was able to open any lock at any time with no apparently difficulty.

Imagine a reader’s surprise, then, when the author has Mike Nash answer a telephone at Location 3107 and say: “It’s done what? . . . Yes, that’s what I thought you said. How on earth did that happen? Was someone careless enough to forget to lock up?” A little later, he clarifies by saying, “They’ve only gone and lost the Beamer!” Clara then asks how it happened, and Nash replies: “I have no idea. And by the sound of it, neither do they. I asked if someone had accidently left the compound unlocked, and he wasn’t at all happy by the allegation, as you probably heard.” The victim’s BMW had been stolen from a police impoundment yard and the detectives, including the lead investigator, is surprised. Even after they had learned that no lock was apparently able to stop the chief suspect! Are these cops dumb, or what? As an aside, I think that the word “allegation” is not as appropriate as the word “implication” in this quotation. Asking a question is not the same as making an allegation. At Location 3143, Nash finally tells the forensic chief how the BMW came to be stolen, but it might have been helpful if the detectives had told him that the suspect was a gifted locksmith before the car was stolen.

In Location 3127, Inspector Nash tells the forensic chief that “We’ve no idea what he looks like, or what he does for a living.” Yet, earlier in the same chapter, when the detectives had interviewed the headmaster, they were told that the suspect “. . . was left with an unsightly scar that ran from his forehead to his chin . . .” So if the detectives know that the suspect has an unsightly scar that runs from his forehead to his chin, how is it that they might have no idea what he looks like? It makes no sense!

I found the ending of the story to be unsatisfying with a couple of major loose ends left dangling. If you have a sense of justice, this is probably not the book for you. I award only two of the available five stars for this lackadaisical effort along with no recommendations.

As usual we have not one but two unsolved murders but are they connected ?

A young woman killed in a hit and run, a naked body in the cemetery , DI Nash must discover the connection and find the killer before the body count rises

Another riveting DI Nash read

272 pages

4 stars

Detective Inspector Mike Nash and his partner Clara Mironova are called out to a suspicious death. The body of a naked man was found face down on top of a grave. The pathologist outlines the strange circumstances of his death. When the victim’s sister identifies him, there seems to be no reason why anyone would murder him.

Before long, they have bodies everywhere. Sadistic drownings, knife attacks and a case of arson with another stabbed victim.

The team is very busy, handling several cases at once. A drug conspiracy and an attack on a homeless man are just two of the other “distractions” from the primary case of the bodies in the graveyards.

With three people dead and a fourth missing, the detectives are beginning to have certain suspicions.

While the identity of the murderer was given away in the first few pages of the novel, it was a great deal of fun getting to the end. The characters are very lifelike and interesting. Even the “bad guys” are colorful. So, do they get away with it, or what?

This book is extremely well written and plotted. The transitions are smooth and well placed. I liked that this police procedural dealt with several cases at once. It was much more realistic. The police must deal with more than one case at a time; it is just how it is. I certainly liked the team members and the ongoing banter between Mike and Clara as well as the other team members. I have read other Bill Kitson novels, and I believe this is one of his best. More please, Mr. Kitson.

I want to thank NetGalley and Joffe Books for forwarding to me a copy of this great book for me to read, enjoy and review. The opinions expressed here are solely my own.

DI Mike Nash #14

A young woman is killed in a hit and run. A naked body is found in the cemetery. A local woman reported missing. What connects them? DI Nash has to piece the clues together. He is on the trail of a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to ensure he truth remains hidden.

Finding a link for these killings was like finding a needle in a haystack, but with hard work and dedication from the local policemen and women, things start falling into place.

I was quickly pulled into this story, The characters are well developed, the pace is steady and the plotline is gripping. There's a few twists and some humour. This is the first book that I've read by the author and even though it was the 14th book in the series, It still reads well as a standalone.

I would like to thank #NetGalley #JoffeBooks and the author #BillKitson for my ARC of #Burialgrounds in exchange for an honest review.

A Ruthless Killer…
The fourteenth Detective Mike Nash murder mystery and our protagonist is finding that Yorkshire life is absolutely not the quieter existence that he had been anticipating since his move from London. This time Nash is faced with a catalogue of potential crimes that may well be linked. Once pieces are put together he realises that he’s hunting a perfectly ruthless killer. With credible characters and a fast paced narrative this is a straightforward yet engaging read and a worthy series addition.

Burial Grounds by Bill Kitson was an adventure. It was filled with a thrill I was craving in a story. The characters were enticing and the story drew you in from the first page. I definitely wished I read this in October it would have been fitting during a eery time of year

Thank you NetGalley and Joffe Books for the eARC.
This is a pretty good mystery with a cast of characters that are likeable police women and men.
The car accident that starts off this case is very sad, and the subsequent murders are a bit gruesome and at first the police are stymied. It takes quite a while for them to put everything together. The ending was great, very clever, I loved it.
This is the first book I read in the Nash series and I found it easily read as a standalone. Recommended!

This book was a decent read, it had suspense, action good police work and a bit of a who done it! The storyline was Interesting and flowed nicely but it was just ok for me?! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!