The Body in the Marsh

DCI Craig Gillard, Book 1

By: Nick Louth

Narrated by: Marston York

Length: 12 hrs

Publisher's Summary

Criminologist Martin Knight lives a gilded life and is a thorn in the side of the police. But then his wife, Liz, goes missing. There is no good explanation and no sign of Martin.... To make things worse, Liz is the ex-girlfriend of DCI Craig Gillard, who is drawn into the investigation. 

Is it just a missing person or something worse? And what relevance do the events around the shocking Girl F case, so taken up by Knight, have to do with the present? The truth is darker than you could ever have imagined.

©2017 Nick Louth (P)2018 W. F. Howes Ltd

Exceptional

I listen to many British police procedurals and this is one of the best. From the research to the narration, you won’t be disappointed.

Tight...Taut...Terrific...Trust Me...!!!

Why oh why isn’t there another of this authors books available at present from Audible beyond me... while I figured out fairly soon what the outcome would be,.. I was still gripped throughout.. great read,.. great ride..

Finally! An extraordinary murder mystery after recent disappointments

Wow! An exhilarating thriller incorporates two murder cases with a twisted ending I never expected, though a bit over-the-top at the very end. Looking forward to the next book in this series. Great writing and narration! Recommended. You won’t be sorry; well worth the credit.

Excellent Police Procedural/Mystery

I read dozens of mysteries a year, and this is one of the best I have read in years. The characters are well fleshed out and compelling. The plot is a superb whodoneit. And the narrator is perfect.

One of the best I've "read" in a while!

This was a great listen! The characters were interesting and the police procedures detailed but believable. The plot kept me guessing, although I did figure it out before all was revealed in the book. I highly recommend.

Clever

This is an excellent book. Worth a credit, very well written. I understand a second in the series will be coming out soon. Can’t wait.

Brilliant

First time I’ve read this author and I can’t wait for more now. I hope there are more Gillard books. This one kept me guessing til nearly the end which I loved. Very cleverly written plot and the narrator is great.

WORTH THE PURCHASE

Even though the listener to the audiobook "The Body in the Marsh" figures out who done it fairly quickly, the how and why remain a mystery until the end. An intricate plot and great narration make this an excellent listen.

Difficult to make myself finish this one....

I love a good British police procedural and Murder mystery. This one caught my eye, but ultimately was a waste of a credit. Try as I might, I couldn’t get past the bad gender stereotypes and damsels in distress. This was written by a man who can’t write women. AT ALL. Narration was great except when he was trying to do an American accent. That was hard to listen to.

No cliff hanger!

If you like a mystery that you can solve immediately and the good guys struggle with for another 9 hours, you’ll like this book. The author beats you over the head with the obvious conclusion for most of the book, but our intrepid heroes can’t figure it out until the last few pages. Pretty irritating.

Tired old tropes.

This story turns out to be rather depressing and it has nothing to do with the plot. *Maybe* Louth was trying to say something about the continued sexism, racism and general bigotry that is still part of modern policing, but, if so, at no point does he challenge it. Instead, I rather suspect that he uses very old stereotypes in order milk the rewards of populist fiction to avoid rocking the boat. I'm getting so bored of seeing this same old sh*t.
The protagonist, Gillard, is the worst of these bigots (ignoring the deviant police officer in the novel). He rescues a dependent subordinate, toys with her feelings a bit, and, rather perculiarly, she agrees to marry him at the end - definitely fantasist male egoism there for a start. But then there only seem to be two types of women in this story: the first are women who are super interested in his tight bum and willing over-look his objectification of them when he stares at their boobs; the other type of women are in positions of authority, whose only aim in life seems to be 'emasculating' their subordinates.
Sheesh...really?
Wake up male writers! I hate to break it to you but professional women are too busy doing their jobs to score points - they actually aren't thinking about you AT ALL.

Loved this book

You know when you don’t want a book to end, well this for me was one of those books. Well you do want it to end because you are really curious as to the outcome. This was a well researched book with a great story. The narration was second to none and very enjoyable. Nick Louth is now on my list of favourite authors. The story is complex and I don’t want to go into it in depth frightened of giving too much away, well worth a read

Good plot

It is a long book and at times you may lose track of who is who.
Unfortunately I realised the twist and called it really early in the book. I still enjoyed listening to it so I can get confirmation of my suspicions.
Very well researched so I cannot fault any part of it.

Started off well...

Loved the first part of the book, characters were interesting, as was the story, but my attention flagged in the second half due to the plot being too convoluted and drawn out. Disappointing, since the book had all the elements of a great story.
I'm about to read the second in the series though, hoping for better second time around.

Makes you want to find out how!

This was a new author to me and I quite enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot. I knew what had happened very early on, just couldn’t work out how it had been achieved. In that sense it kept me reading until the end.

Good story overall

The story is a good listen, if slightly predictable. It’s definitely worth hearing.

My big gripe is that the author has a character who’s a feminist, but clearly has no real idea what feminism is. He has that character criticising other female characters on their looks, and being obsessed with attracting male interest. It’s not really what feminism is about...

Also, maybe go easy on saying how attractive each female character is...

What a complicated story!

I did guess quite early on where the main plot was heading, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment because I really couldn’t work out how it was done. The secondary strand about Child F, was also a good plot. The fly in the ointment for me was the narrator’s not very credible estuary-style voices for most of the police. Highly recommended.

Spellbinding

Unforeseen twists and turns. Excellent and exciting. Very little vulgar language which was a blessing. I am truly fed up with vulgar books. This one proves there can be all that is expected from a first class novel WITHOUT resorting to graphic sexual scenes or vile language. Well done Mr Louth. Looking forward to reading more from you.

Brilliant with one small irritating fault.

Very detailed and interesting story.

Although I really liked listening to Marston York when reading narrative, I found his S.E. accent for male and female characters dreadful. I come from this area and the accent was far too exaggerated and jarred on my nerves. He also went up an octave which made the 'hard man South London' accent sound puny and almost laughable. Neither was there any differentiation between one character and another and so I got confused as to who was meant to be speaking.This also applied between male and female characters too!

If I ignored this problem, I found it to be a great read.

Good read

Enjoyable read, I did work out what was happening fairly early on but that didn’t detract much from the story