Bleeding Heart Yard, a review by Joanna

Harbinder has moved to West London following her promotion to Detective Inspector, and her first case with a new team involves the death of a prominent Tory politician at a school reunion. Her suspects include the man’s former friends, all part of a popular clique known as The Group, one of whom just happens to be Cassie, Harbinder’s Detective Sergeant – who has been keeping a terrible secret for twenty years…

I like the nostalgia of a school reunion plot line – and Manor Park Comprehensive, though fictional, is set very close to where I went to school, so I enjoyed all the geographic references. Having a cast of celebrity suspects, and the flashbacks to their teen years, had me engaged from the start, and contrasted nicely with Harbinder’s down to earth murder investigation team and comic relief flatmates. I wasn’t sure how the Bleeding Heart Yard of the title would fit in, with its gory backstory, but when it does the mystery deepens further – I was interested to learn from the afterword that it is a real place.

The story is told from Cassie and Anna’s third person past perspective, and Harbinder’s in third person present. It’s set in 2019, presumably to avoid having to incorporate Covid into the plot. I didn’t like the jumping timelines, where events happen, then we go back half a day to get the build-up to those events from someone else’s POV. Apart from this minor quibble, I thoroughly enjoyed this and flew through it in a day, wanting to know both whodunnit and how it would all turn out. I did suspect the killer’s identity but only because they seemed the least likely culprit! (You can tell I read too much crime fiction.) 4.5 rounded up for good writing and a satisfying ending.

Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus for the ARC.