Blog Tour Review, The Girl’s Last Cry

published July 11, 2023

Amazon | Goodreads

About the Book: 

The girl lies on the dark ground, one arm flung out as if she is still looking for someone to help her. But her wide eyes are staring upwards, and Lexi knows that it is too late…

Detective Lexi Bennett is walking through the quiet Canterbury streets when she hears screaming. Rushing towards the sound, she finds the body of a teenage girl lying beneath one of the city’s ancient towers. Lexi looks up at the cold grey stone, and vows that she will find answers. Did the girl jump or fall… or was she pushed?

Olivia’s distraught parents say their daughter was a talented musician with everything to live for. Lexi’s nephew, Sam, who knew Olivia, tearfully insists that she would never have taken her own life. But when a note is found, Lexi reluctantly wraps up the case.

Then another teenager is found dead on a deserted path beneath a cliff. Lexi is certain there’s a link, especially when she learns that the boy was a musician too. His note uses the same phrases as Olivia’s, and when a second person’s footprints are found at the scene, Lexi realises she is on the track of a master manipulator… and ruthless killer.

With her boss still unconvinced that the deaths are murders, Lexi races to find proof to back up her hunch, and to understand what lies behind these evil attacks on vulnerable children.

And then she gets a call that fills her with dread. Her nephew Sam is missing.

Can Lexi outsmart a truly brutal monster, or will her own family pay the price?

A totally gripping crime thriller that will have you reading late into the night. Fans of Karin Slaughter, Rachel McLean and J M Dalgliesh will love The Girl’s Last Cry.

My Review

Something I find interesting about the books in this crimes series versus other series I read, Lexie is more of a lone wolf, even when working with her team.  She’s much more likely to investigate on her own then to wait for back up.  If you read my review of the last book, then you know Lexie is a Brit in England, yeah I know, not original, but she spent years training at Quantico.  That gives her a fresh perspective compared to the others in the department.

So far I’ve read the two books out and both books were personal to Lexie.  She is a profiler and solves crimes, but in this one she is the first detective on scene of a presumed teenage suicide, and she is protective of the case until she can rule out foul play.  Much to the chagrin of her boss.  Lexie is incredibly methodical as she works to solve the case.  More so than in other series I’ve read.  While the detective has to play a part in solving things, Lexie doesn’t have a work life balance so the case is always the focus.

There is a little bit of the dark web in this one and I take offense at them making fun that us “older” people can’t possibly know how to use it (as I struggle to keep the font the same size in my blog post).  The reader is privy very early on that the cases aren’t truly suicides as there are dark web chats between the victims and a not so nice person pushing suicide.  There are quite a few red herrings that kept me guessing and I did not figure out how did it.

It’s a slightly different twist on the crime procedural.

Author Bio

In 2016, I entered and won Bloody Scotland’s Pitch Perfect competition. This secured me an agent and a three-book publishing deal with Orion for my police procedural series set in the world of tattoos and tattooing. My first novel, The Tattoo Thief, was translated into 15 languages, was a No 1 bestseller in Italy and is the first instalment of the internationally acclaimed Tattoo Thief trilogy. I also write in collaboration with my brother Nick Higgins – Canelo has published our action thriller series set in Afghanistan, Death In Kabul and Death in Helmand. Now I’m embarking on a fresh crime series with Bookouture. It’s set in Canterbury, featuring DI Lexi Bennett, newly appointed to lead the Major Incident Team after a spell working with the FBI’s specialist serial killer unit.