Audiobook April - The Murders at Fleat House

As many of you know Lucinda Riley sadly passed away in June 2021 due to cancer and was the best-selling author of the The Seven Sisters (the surprise eighth and final book in the series, Atlas: the Story of Pa Salt was started before her death and her son, Harry Whittaker, finished). But Lucinda touched into different genres and The Murders at Fleat House has an interesting history. 

Lucinda wrote this murder mystery back in 2006. Once written, she put it to one side and it's believed she would return to this once she had finished the Seven Sisters series. After her death, her family discovered the manuscript and, with the lightest of touches, edited and allowed to be published. 

I have never read a Lucinda Riley novel (I do own the first book in the series on my Audible and I would like to listen to it once Amazon figure out what the hell they did to my account!), but I have always wanted to read The Murders At Fleat House, but was saving it. And then, out of nowhere last month, my brain went "Now! I want to listen to this NOW!"

Title and Author: The Murders at Fleat House by Lucinda Riley

Publisher: PanMacmillan

Bought, Gifted or Borrowed: Audiobook Bought and Borrowed via library's audiobook app

Buy from (Affiliate): Bookshop.org

The death of a student at a small private boarding school of St Stephen's sends shockwaves within the school and the head teacher is desperate for it to be a tragic accident. But why would the boy take aspirin when he was deathly allergic to them?

The boy's father demands the Police to look into it and the case prompts the return of Detective Inspector Jasmine 'Jazz' Hunter to the force. Jazz has her reasons for leaving the Met and the Police as a whole but, as a favour for her old boss, she decides to look into the death. 

As she enters the closed world of the boarding school and the boarding house of Fleat House, she discovers that the student was a bully and not well liked. Plus, with it being common knowledge that the student was allergic to aspirin and took drugs to control his epilepsy, it would have been easy to swap his medication. 

But when one of the teachers kills himself and another student vanishes, it looks like Fleat House has a dark secrets and history and Jazz needs to figure out what is going on. And fast.

I had high hopes about this. Such high hopes and, barring a few niggles, this met them wonderfully. 

Let me get the niggles out of the way. I have a few. Not many, but I do have a few. We did have repetition on some characters's actions. One character kept staring in the space, another character is Irish and would use stereotype sayings to say us that they are Irish and all the characters seemed to always have baths. I do have more examples, but these are the ones that jump to mind. 

And there were one or two times that things were a little too easy/convenient. I won't say what, but I remember at one reveal, I did a double take and went "Wait, what?"

HOWEVER, I really liked this book. I rounded it up to five stars on Goodreads as this is an example of what good crime writing should be. The plot is beautifully-plotted, unsettling and full of twists and red herring while, at its heart, you had heart and emotion with Jazz and her struggles with the case and her personal life. 

This reminds me of PD James and classic murder mysteries, and I'm really sad that we only have this story with these characters (though the ending made it feel like there could have been sequels, which I would have devoured) but, yes, I enjoyed myself HUGELY and I want you crime-lovers to get this on your radar as this has all the makings of a classic murder mystery.