It took quite some time before anyone realised that Marilyn Smith was dead. Not popular at her workplace, the local doctor’s surgery, nobody seemed to care when she didn’t show up. It was only the howling of her dog, an Alsatian called Ben, that lead to the discovery of her body, spreadeagled on her bed, dressed for a liaison that didn’t happen. In fact, there isn’t any trace of anyone else being in the house – after all, how could they have got in without disturbing Ben?

DI Joanna Piercy is newly promoted to Detective Inspector in the moorland town of Leek, a promotion that isn’t popular amongst her colleagues. Convinced that Marilyn was murdered, despite no cause of death being found, Joanna is convinced she was murdered – but how do you catch a killer when there is no evidence that a crime was even committed?

So, perusers of Amazon’s Kindle store may well be familiar with Joffe Books who publish a lot of crime fiction. One thing they do is find back catalogues of authors and republish them, sometimes retitling the books to form a theme. So, for example, the fifteen Joanna Piercy books, originally published between 1994 and 2021, have all been renamed with as “SOMETHING The Moors”. It’s a bit of an odd title, to be honest, because while the setting of the town of Leek is indeed near the moors, don’t be expecting Heathcliff-esque escapade. It’s very much a police procedural that doesn’t feature moors at all. Who knows, maybe the other fourteen books feature moorland adventures? But let’s not judge a book by its cover… especially as the e-collection of all fifteen books cost me 99p, so this single book cost me a grand total of 6.5p.

There’s a couple of reasons why I read it. First of all, I spotted Priscilla’s most recent title on NetGalley for review, but as that was from a different long-running series, I thought I’d go back to the start of her writing. And also, this is hardly the only time I’ve spent 99p on an e-collection… it’s about time I read one of them.

[Note, if you’re more observant that I am, you might notice that my previous review was also from such a collection. Hey, work’s really busy at the moment and I’m old and forgetful…]

Initially, I did wonder about this, as it did seem to be striking quite a few cliché buttons. New job, unpopular female chief cop, angry male sergeant who will inevitably learn to get on with his new boss, having to work with a colleague who she’s just finished a relationship with… you could win a police procedural bingo card with this set-up. But you know what? It works. I often judge a book on how I read it, and this was definitely one where I wanted to know what happened next. I was carrying my Kindle around, grabbing a chapter whenever I had a spare moment. The writing drew me in and while there was nothing revolutionary going on, this had me gripped.

It’s all a bit odd. The murder method may have been fairly original when it written, but I’ve seen it quite a lot. The method of getting past the dog is what can only be described as a cheat – the murderer needs to explain it to Piercy and it takes a lot of extrapolation from what we’ve been told to guess – and the murderer themselves, while not a friend of Captain Obvious, is pretty guessable. There’s quite a lot that should annoy me, but my main thought is when I’m going to read the next one. I really can’t put my finger on why, but this is an enjoyable read. Oh, and it’s cheaper to buy the ebook collection of 15 titles than buying it by itself… Just saying…