ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Unsound by Heather Critchlow
Unsound by Heather Critchlow is published by Canelo Crime and is available now. I purchased my own copy.
He left for university… and never came back
Arran went missing in Edinburgh fourteen years ago. The last time his parents saw him he was withdrawn and on edge where he’d once been happy and carefree. Still searching for their son, they turn to their last hope, true crime podcaster Cal Lovett.
Cal begins looking for answers, but is distracted by his sister’s murder trial. He’s so close to getting the justice Margot deserves. Can he finally leave the past – and Margot – behind?
As Cal unearths disturbing evidence about Arran’s fate, he suspects the young man’s close-knit group of university friends are keeping secrets to protect each other. It seems old loyalties don’t die easily. But they can’t all stay silent forever…
An unputdownable crime thriller perfect for fans of Jane Casey, Cara Hunter and Neil Lancaster.
Unsound is book three in the series featuring podcaster Cal Lovett and it’s a series that I love reading. In this book Cal is living through the trial of the man believed to have killed his sister, Margot, a strand that has run through all the series so far. When he’s asked to look at the cold case of an Edinburgh University student who went missing thirteen years earlier, it feels like more than he can handle but he agrees to take it on.
This is a fantastic crime story written with such empathy that several times a lump formed in my throat. Cal is already struggling with his sister’s case and so dealing with the investigation into what happened to Arran, alongside his daughter’s first term at the same university that he was attending when he disappeared, really piles the pressure on him and he starts to shut down emotionally.
Unsound is a dark, tense and devastatingly moving story that had me flying through the pages. I like the podcast element, although it doesn’t account for that much of the book, and I always love a cold case storyline. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next for Cal in book four.
Heather Critchlow grew up in rural Aberdeenshire and trained as a business journalist after studying history and social science at the University of Cambridge. Her short stories have appeared in crime fiction anthologies Afraid of the Light, Afraid of the Christmas Lights and Afraid of the Shadows. She lives in St Albans.