‘The Hermitage’ by LJ Ross

My Review (5 stars out of 5)

A murder at the ancient hermitage at Warkworth Castle prompts an investigation by Northumbria CID. But with no obvious motive, the team don’t have much to go on. Meanwhile, DCI Ryan and his wife are miles away in Florence, Italy, tracking notorious killer Nathan Armstrong. Enlisting the help of the Italian police, Ryan finds there’s little he can do to provoke the famous novelist into revealing anything useful, until an attack on Ryan himself appears to suggest Armstrong may not be guilty. When an unlikely link to the murder in Northumberland emerges, Ryan must work hard to connect it with Armstrong…

This is book 9 in the DCI Ryan series and this time our hero flies off to his family home in Florence on the trail of his nemesis, Nathan Armstrong. Ms Ross brings her usual talent for description to bear as Ryan takes in the beauty of the Italian architecture, including the Uffizi Gallery, where he searches to uncover a secret passageway to Armstrong’s apartment. Although this book can be read as a standalone, one of the previous novels, Dark Skies, gives the background to the murders Ryan seeks to solve, which is useful. At first, the book felt a little disjointed, bus as always, the author seamlessly joins up the dots as her hero races to catch the killer and locate evidence to nail him.

Another cracker from the Queen of Geordie Noir.

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