Five Silver Spoons
Sam Steele
352 pages
Allison & Busby
Published April 23rd, 2026
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Amazon | GoodReads
Five Silver Spoons is the first instalment of a new police procedural series about Hope Fenton, a London CID detective with a tragic past, by an author who is new to me. I was invited to read an Advance Review Copy by the publisher, and while I’m trying to resist new ARCs while I catch up with my backlog, this sounded intriguing, so overall I’m glad I accepted. I’ve been avoiding serial killer plots for years, because of how formulaic they tend to be, but I liked that this gave us the motive and intended victims from the start, with the suspense being about who would survive and would the killer be caught in time.
DI Fenton is a mess – after losing her six year old son eight years earlier, her marriage to forensic scientist Adam ended, and she’s just about holding on to her career after some embarrassing self-destructive affairs, but she needs a win. When a former rock star and a lecturer are found dead with silver spoons in their mouths, Hope discover that the men were friends at Cambridge – but the rest of their arrogant entitled group deny any suggestion that they have done anything wrong. The killer is the man they buried alive after a drunken hit & run, but to admit it will ruin their careers. Now they’re being hunted down, and their privilege can’t save them – but can Hope?
This was a well written crime thriller with multiple interwoven subplots, including the mystery of what happened to Hope’s son, why did her father, a venerated detective, retire so suddenly, and who are the other people keeping an eye on the potential victims. There are few likeable characters and it was quite long for a procedural/mystery, with a fair bit of repetition. All the angst about the demise of Hope & Adam’s marriage got a bit tedious, and it does end on a significant cliffhanger, but I’m now invested enough that I will eagerly be awaiting book two.
Thanks to NetGalley and Allison & Busby for the ARC.
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