ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary

Posted on 30th April 2026 By Nicola

The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary is published by Harvill and is available now. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy.

Every place has its ghosts. Edenscar, a town in the Peak District, has more than most.

17 years ago, its inhabitants were hit by tragedy when a school bus veered off the road and everyone on board drowned. Everyone, that is, except Joseph Ashe. His miraculous survival has haunted him and the town ever since.

Now a Detective Sergeant in the local police, Joe is called to the scene of a brutal and apparently inexplicable crime. The whole town is spooked, but Joe’s new boss, DI Laurie Bower, more used to inner-city police work, has no time for superstition. She just wants to find the very real killer who has left no trace and apparently had no motive.

Joining forces, Joe and Laurie work to uncover the secrets of Edenscar, both past and present.

But when you dig up the dead, expect to get your hands dirty…

When he was 11, Joseph Ashe was on a school bus when it veered off the road into a reservoir. Everyone on board drowned apart from Joseph. Why did he survive and no one else did? It’s a mystery, but as Joseph never moved away from his childhood town in the Peak District, he’s treated with either awe or a kind of suspicion. Now a DS in the Edenscar police, he’s joined by DI Laurie Bower, a newcomer to the area with personal reasons for her move, in investigating a terrible local crime.

The Drowning Place is a well-written police procedural with the addition of a number of other interesting aspects to the storyline: there’s the accident that Joe inexplicably survived and the legacy of that, which is his uncanny supernatural ability; there’s Laurie’s home life and her move from an inner-city police force to a more rural one (expecting a slower pace and then being thrust into the heart of a major investigation); and there’s the setting in the Peak District, an area with which I’m reasonably familiar.

The characters are all well-drawn and often flawed. Joe has a massive case of survivors’ guilt but his police work helps a little with that. I found him hugely likeable, if something of a closed book. Laurie is a no-nonsense cop with tons of experience so I’m looking forward to seeing her and Joe work alongside each other in the next book in the series, and I’m also keen to see if more insights about what happened on the day of the crash emerge.

The plot of this book is dark and compelling, although I must admit that at times I found it a little difficult to concentrate on, possibly due to the number of characters or the complex storyline. I’m definitely interested in reading the next Joe and Laurie book – the quirkiness of this one has me curious to know more.

Sarah Hilary is the critically-acclaimed author of nine novels. Her debut, Someone Else’s Skin, won the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year 2015 and was also a World Book Night selection, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and a finalist for both the Silver Falchion and Macavity Awards in the US. No Other Darkness, the second in her DI Marnie Rome series, was shortlisted for a Barry Award. Sarah is Programme Director for St Hilda’s Crime Fiction Weekend, and co-founder of Ledburied, a crime fiction festival in her home town. Her short stories have won the Fish Criminally Short Histories Prize, the Cheshire Prize for Literature, and the SENSE Prize.

www.sarahhilary.com