The Body in the Snow

DCI Craig Gillard, Book 4

By: Nick Louth

Narrated by: Marston York

Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's Summary

Money, success, family? All deadly....

The gripping new DCI Gillard thriller. Perfect for readers of D. K. Hood, Patricia Gibney and Mark Billingham, The Body in the Snow is a remarkable and gripping crime thriller.  

A young detective is out for a jog on a snowy winter morning. Then she sees something terrible: a murder in the park, sudden and inexplicable. A woman has been killed by a passing hooded cyclist. It’s just DCI Craig Gillard’s luck that he’s on duty. The body is that of Tanvi Roy, one of the richest women in Britain and matriarch of a food empire. 

With a tangled web of family and business contacts and jealousies, Gillard’s job just got even more complex. As he delves deeper into the Roy family, it’s clear that everything is not as it seems. As the investigation threatens to unravel, Gillard realises it's only the beginning of his problems. Trouble of a different sort is brewing close to home.

©2019 Nick Louth (P)2020 W. F. Howes Ltd

Great listen

Well done mystery/police procedural that kept me guessing almost to the end. It dragged occasionally, hence the 4 star rating for the story but overall an enjoyable listen. Also enjoyed the narration.

Good mystery, tired of Aunt

I like this series, but really it is time to move on from the problems with the Aunt. If our hero is as smart as he is supposed to be, this problem should have been solved by now. The red herring of stalking was also feeble, otherwise worth a credit.

Another Fabulous Installment To The Series

DCI Craig Gillard became involved in a Sunday morning slaying in a snowy English town. The matriarch of an Indian family whose claim to fame was their amazing spice empire, was murdered as she walked her boxer in a snowy park. The assault was delivered by a speeding bicyclist wielding an altered workout weight with which he bashed her brain, turning the fresh snowfall a gruesome red! Witnessing the event was a new detective, Kirsty, who was walking her own dog at the same time ; yet despite her timely and skillful preservation of the crime scene, arresting the perpetrator was not an easy job! Louth writes such very imaginative personal relationships, that it is only natural for the reader to feel empathy,,, and sometimes anger with his well written characters!

Marston York was again excellent with the delivery of the story

Sam needs more work

One of the attractions of Mr. Louth's books was the personality of Sam when Gillard met her. But she lost some of that vibrancy in the next book and all of it in this one. In addition, this story had way too many red herrings. Impatience was my reaction too much of the time.

A good series

Book 4 in the Craig Gillard series is another good one. I must admit that I get the police colleagues confused. I had to take notes. (This may be because I listened to the audiobook and it’s hard to go back and see the names.) So when one of them runs into a bad situation I couldn’t really place him.

The story itself is interesting. The murder of the matriarch of a spice company and the family dynamics that produces provide much work for Gillard and crew. His family life takes a hit and I dislike the fact that he tends to forget about his wife too often. And he has to deal with his aunt who has returned from an earlier book.

The narration, again, is wonderful.

Amazing!!!!!!

I can’t wait for the next one! I can already imagine who is missing and where it may lead!

Series Gets Even Better

Loved the plot and range of characters. Hope that our hero learns to spend more time with his spouse. He's really risking his marriage. How is the series getting better? Wicked humor cuts through some very tragic happenings. Writing shows sophisticated understanding of power dynamics in family businesses. The plot was precariously balanced between action, suspense, false leads, and good detective work. The book was not longer than it needed to be. The author quickly and neatly summed up the solutions, court outcomes, and relationship consequences. There are loose ends: suspicious characters lurk on the edges of the ending, and at least one plot line left this reader wondering if there is a false narrator in the police unit, plotting to mess up Craig. we shall see. Great narration as usual.

Disappointing

After three fantastic books, Louth fell down. Loose plot ends, unconvincing solution. And the crazy Gothic aunt is a little over the top. Willing to try the next in the series, but I hope it's better than this one.

Fast becoming one of my favorite authors

And Marston York is one of my favorite readers. He can handle a variety of accents...in one instance a mix of Persian, Afghani and Birmingham...I have no idea if he got it right, but it sounded sufficiently unique.

What I like about the series is that each mystery is different in nature. The first was a murder with connections to Gillard's past, the next had a lot of international intrigue, the third a lot of family drama involving Gillard's aunts and now more traditional murder in a wealthy British-Indian family. The strength of Louth's writing and characterization is seen in the complex web of character inter-relationships that are easy to keep track of as each character is very well developed and distinct. In many mysteries with a large cast of characters I have to make a character list to keep everyone straight. I did not have to with this book.

My only knocks on it is the use of his conniving aunt from the previous book as a little more than plot device. It was clear from the end of the previous book she would carry into this one, but her only real role is to make Detective Gillard's wife miserable and in this book his wife is a background character while his fellow investigators take a front seat. The book relies too much on the cop devoted to his job and wife who is neglected for it cliché that come up too often in modern detective fiction in books and on tv. I know it is based on realism but it gets repetitive as a recurrent plot

Not as good as the first three.

I was excited to see that another book had been published in this series, as I really enjoyed the first three. I was disappointed in the writing and the performance of the narrator. The premise was a good one, but the dialogs were often clumsy and the writing often seemed trite to me. I wish I had counted the number of times he used the phrase "he made his way" to indicate movement. When you notice something like that, you know there's too much repetition. I also found the narrator to be irritating. The plot was good; nice and twisty. I can't say I figured out the culprit early in the book. I seem to be in the minority regarding negative reviews. I'm glad so many liked it. I don't think I'll be downloading another of the series.

Brilliant and Great.....Listen to this series

As always a great story line, you can't help but become really involved. Thoroughly entertaining and looking forward to the next one.

Books just keep getting better and better

Nick Louth keeps writing more and more clever police procedurals. The twists contained therein kept me listening from start to finish in almost one sitting. The lead characters all had very strong personalities and I found myself totally disliking Trish. Hopefully she'll come to some messy end at some point in the future. I would highly recommend this book, if like me you enjoy a good whodunit.

Weird and intriguing

This one starts off well, with the murder in the snowy park and then spirals off into a myriad of deceits and misdirections, who is to be trusted in this story? I had my guesses ... was I right? You should buy this and see what you think for yourselves, it's a damned good story, Mr Louth just gets better with every book and Marston York is a wonderful narrator so I'm just waiting now for book five please.

Tedious Story

This book needed a good editor. I could not stay engaged, the charcaters did not grab me and overall it was quite tedious.

Excellent

The best in the series so far, twists, turns and red herrings along the way, hopefully more to come.

Did you know he drives a Vauxhall?

Nothing irritates more than repetition. I think we are told around 5 times that the protagonist drives an unmarked Vauxhall! Otherwise a good story with multiple possible outcomes that keeps you guessing until realisation dawns. Even then there's no end to the wickedness, tragedy and spite depicted beforehand. I will read this author again as I enjoyed the pace and detail of the narrative.
The narrator does well although I think it needs a slightly longer pause between sections within chapters to avoid confusion and allow absorption of the end of the last section. However, I feel that this is the fault of the editor. Furthermore, I really could do without the massively exaggerated Cockney accents which make the characters sound a) stupid and b) like Michael Caine's much rougher younger brothers.

Actually better than 4* but quibbles make it a four. Still recommended.

Much better

I was disappointed with the last one of the series but this was back up to standard.

Brilliant

Loved the storyline, good honest police work with a superbly natural team, flaws included! Brilliant.

what a shame!

I think the story would have been good but for me it was totally spoiled by the narration.

Struggled

Started off brilliantly, i struggled to stay enthralled but persevered. Not my favorite story of the series though.