Echoes of the Dead

DCI Monika Paniatowski has been given the task of looking into what might be a case of a man who served 22 years for a crime he didn't commit.  He confessed on his death bed that he had lied about a murder he had been forced to confess to.  Monica now has to prove that her former superior Charlie Woodend did not wrongfully wring a confession out of the man.  Scotland Yard would be sending their own DCI to investigate another who is now one of their own.

Author Sally Spencer takes the reader back to the time of the murder and the two Scotland Yard detectives who investigated it, DCI Charlie Woodend and DS Ralph Bannerman.  Whitebridge had been where Woodend had grown up, and now he was back to investigate the brutal rape and murder of a young girl.

As Woodend begins his investigation he discovers how poor a job the locals have done so far.  He discovers a feather on the girl's clothing and another at the scene of the crime.  Together, they are enough to point to the criminal.

DCI Tom Hall is sent from Scotland Yard to work with Monika investigating the now retired Woodend and now Assistant Commissioner Bannerman.  Together Hall and Paniatowski find that the killer did have an alibi, but the killer's bent lawyer has a role in preventing the alibi from coming forward.  Something doesn't seem right to Monika.  She needs to see Woodend at his retirement home in Spain.

While Monika is in Spain, Hall finds information that puts Woodend in the frame for framing the original suspect.  However, Monika realises that it is Bannerman that has set up the frame.  She sets out to exonerate her former boss, Woodend.  Unfortunately the time frame her boss has set out for her is limited.  Will things fall into place to save Woodend's reputation and her own job?

An excellent read, hard to put down.