Kate Marshall is back! While many readers may be more familiar with Robert Bryndza’s outstanding Erika Foster series, I am a Kate Marshall fan through-and-through. Shadow Sands is the second book featuring this character, but there is no “sophomore slump” here. Shadow Sands keeps the excitement and tension level just as high as her first appearance in Nine Elms.
Taking place about two years after the events of Nine Elms, Shadow Sands opens with a young man in the wrong place at the wrong time, seeing something he really shouldn’t have, with disastrous results. Two days later, Kate and her son Jake, who is now sixteen years old, are diving in the man-made reservoir at Shadow Sands and find the young man’s body underwater.
They, of course, report this to local authorities, but being a former police detective, Kate realises that the officer in charge of this investigation may not be up to the challenge. Some of the deceased young man’s family agrees that his case may not get the attention it needs and deserves and having heard of Kate’s exploits with the Nine Elms Killer they reach out to her to investigate on their behalf.
While Kate and her assistant Tristan had previously decided that they wanted to keep working at the University and not become full-time private investigators, they are pulled into this mystery from several directions. Kate’s involvement sets off a chain of events throughout the official investigation as her conversation with the medical examiner results in the young man’s cause of death being changed from accidental drowning. As the investigation continues and Kate and Tristan conduct their own research, it becomes hard to tell whether there is an issue with police corruption, or ineptitude.
In addition to the mystery in the foreground, we get to learn more about Kate, Tristan, and even Jake. We see how Kate is continuing to deal with her issues with alcohol and how her relationship with Jake is changing as he is growing up. We learn more about who Tristan is, besides being Kate’s research assistant. Jake also becomes more of a character playing a role in this story. We get to learn more about him, how he feels, and how events of the past have had an effect on him now that he has gotten older.
The story keeps a fast pace throughout, and never backs away from dark, gritty details. Full of twists and turns, readers will be engaged from the first page to the last and will be ready for the next case to find Kate and Tristan.
Shadow Sands can be read as a stand-alone thriller, but with one word of warning. If you are going to read Nine Elms (which I highly recommend), you need to read it first, as there are definite spoilers for the events of Nine Elms within the story of Shadow Sands.
Shadow Sands is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of November 3rd 2020.
Will you be picking up Shadow Sands? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
The internationally bestselling author of Nine Elms and The Girl in the Ice is back with a nail-biting new Kate Marshall case, a woman with a dark secret and a powerful sense of justice.
When Kate Marshall finds the bloated body of a young man floating in the Shadow Sands reservoir, the authorities label it a tragic accident.
But the details don’t add up: why was the victim there, in the middle of the night? If he was such a strong swimmer, how did he drown?
Kate is certain there is more to this case than meets the eye. As she and her research assistant Tristan Harper dig deeper, they discover a bloody trail that points towards an active serial killer hiding in plain sight. People have been silently disappearing for years, and when another woman is taken, Kate and Tristan have a matter of days to save her from meeting the same fate.
