Innocent Guilt by Remi Kone

Innocent Guilt by Remi Kone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - in and out over 5 days

Pages - 424

Publisher - Quercus

Source - Review copy

Blurb from Goodreads

'A startling new crime writing talent!' Peter James
'Impossible to put down' Patricia Cornwell

Victim or murderer . . .
Can she discover the truth?

On a misty autumn afternoon, a woman covered in blood clutching a baseball bat walks silently into a London police station. The two officers assigned to her case are DI Leah Hutch and DS Benjamin Randle.

But the woman refuses to speak. She is not injured and the blood on the bat is not hers. What has she done? Is she the victim or the perpetrator? As Leah and Randle start their inquiry, a man is found battered to death in a nearby park. Journalist Odie Reid receives a tip off and is determined to solve the case first, trying to link this death to the woman held in custody.

Leah and Odie have history and very quickly their cat and mouse game becomes personal, leading them both to the very darkest corners of their pasts.


My Review

Opening chapter with Leah, clearly just having suffered a loss when she heads to work, she is a copper, a DI to be precise. As she gets to work, the station, a woman appears, covered in blood, clearly in shock, holding a bloody baseball bat. When she is checked over, she is uninjured so whose blood is it and where are they because it is A LOT of blood. We then get a chapter with a victim and then we meet Odie, a journalist who is enemy to Leah, why? They used to be work together, now in different careers they still have a very strained relationship. Odie is like a bloodhound, she gets a sniff of a story and nothing will get in her way.

The book is pretty good, the blood covered self presenting to the police station was a great pull, the damaged female detective dealing with a recent loss and with that of course comes family drama/trauma. Then the very tense "relationship" between Leah and Odie although to be fair Leah is very closed off to everyone and you get her back story, slowly unravelled so you do understand a bit better why she is the way she is. I really liked her partner, DS Randle, he is so understanding, patient and a real nice all rounder.

It is a busy book, the victims, the investigation, Odie investigating, Odie's family dynamics, Leah as the officer, Leah's personal life and following the aftermath of her loved ones death the opens another vein of story. A good start to a series, this is a debut from what I can see, so if it goes onto a series I will absolutely read more. Be interesting to see what else is in store for these guys and where the writer goes next, 4/5.

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