Thank you to Sanjana Cunniah at Avon books for including me on this audiobook tour.

It’s an absolute thrill to be included on the audio book tour for this novel. I am a huge fan of Helen Fields and have read all of the series so far of these Callenach/Turner thrillers. I am currently half way through her latest offering ‘Perfect Kill’, so I leapt at the chance to review this audio version of her first book in this series.

As I have a long commute, I tend to listen to these books on the way to & from work, although, I’m not going to lie, I stopped listening to this as the nights got darker as it got too spooky to listen to on my own driving down the dark Cornish country lanes!

Synopsis

A body is found smouldering in a remote Highland mountain and once the police get there all that remains are some teeth and a tiny piece of material.

Newly recruited DI Luc Callenach has come via Interpol to work at the police station; this is his first shout in charge, and he is finding it hard to settle in to a new team after relocating from Lyon. Fellow detective Ava Turner is a friendly face and they settle into a good working relationship.

Meanwhile, Dr. Reginald King works at Edinburgh university but has a terrifying side to his personality which is rarely revealed to his students. He’s been off sick from work but his lies about his illness cover a macabre series of events.

There is also another disturbing case that Callenach and Ava Turner are working on which involves new born babies being abandoned in a freezing cold park to die.

Both Detectives get to know each other professionally and their working relationships progress as the story unfolds. But then King targets Ava and there is a race against time for Callenach to find her…

As I said, I’ve read all of these books and they’re fantastic. Gripping and full of suspense with the friendship between the two main characters unfurling as the books continue. You can read any of them as stand alone reads or listen to them from the start via these audiobooks https://www.audiobooks.co.uk/audiobook/perfect-remains/408105

Robin Laing narrates this story so brilliantly. I think that in order to keep the listener engaged, the ‘voice’ of the book needs to be interesting and tell the story well. At school we talk about having a ‘storyteller voice’ when reading to keep the reader hooked and he does this extremely well!

Fields is a fantastic author, it’s really difficult to write crime effectively, I think, and she definitely has the skill to make it horrific but readable if that makes sense?!

I often wonder how authors make these situations up, but her previous career as a criminal lawyer I suppose gives her plenty of macabre ideas to work with. There was plenty of time I cringed when listening to this audio version because her description is so vivid it’s hard not to visualise it in all its grimness!

It was nice to go back to the start of these stories also, and hear it through a different medium: it gave it a different perspective!

It’s not hard for me to give this audiobook a solid 5⭐️ I hope you listen to it and then read the others in the series too!

Boo x

The Author

Helen originally studied law at the University of East Anglia and once qualified she practised criminal and family law for thirteen years. These books are set in Scotland where she feels most at one with the world.

She runs a film production company with her husband and she currently lives in LA with her three children.