Outside Looking In

DCI Matilda Darke, Book 2

By: Michael Wood

Narrated by: Stephanie Beattie

‘DCI Matilda Darke is the perfect heroine’ Elly Griffiths

The second book in Michael Wood’s darkly compelling new crime series featuring DCI Matilda Darke. Perfect for fans of Stuart MacBride, Mark Billingham and Val McDermid.

When elderly George Rainsford goes to investigate a suspicious noise one night, the last thing he expects to find is a bloodbath. A man has been killed and a woman brutally beaten, left for dead.

The victims are Lois Craven and Kevin Hardaker – both married, but not to each other. Their spouses swear they knew nothing of the affair and, besides, they both have alibis for the attack. With nothing else to link the victims, the investigation hits a dead end.

The pressure is on for investigating officer, DCI Matilda Darke: there’s a violent killer on the loose, and it looks like her team members are the new targets. With no leads and no suspects, it’s going to take all Matilda’s wits to catch him, before he strikes again.

©2019 Michael Wood (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

‘At one point in this tense thriller, the endearing protagonist reflects that the investigation is like having “all the pieces of the jigsaw but…from different boxes”. Matilda Darke is right – and only in the final pages is the full picture revealed…’ Chris Simms

‘Crackling dialogue, dark wit and an exciting ending. Recommended if you liked Happy Valley’ Mark Edwards

‘DCI Matilda Darke is going places’ James Oswald

‘A compelling, addictive read, it’s hard to put down. I really enjoyed getting to know DCI Matilda Darke. She's strong character with real depth’ Robert Bryndza, bestselling author of THE GIRL IN THE ICE

Another Matilda Darke winner!

Happy I found this series. Both author and narrator perfectly work well together. I would recommend this one and look forward to more.

DCI Matilde Darke Still Has a Lot of Problems

In the first book in the series DCI Darke is just back to work after a disastrous kidnapping case and the death of her husband from lung cancer. Her job is hanging by a thread and she is given a cold case to solve.

Now lack of financial support for major cases is causing her to worry about her professional future again and she has lost the support that she needs to solve major crimes such as the two death of a man who was parked in a lay by with an attractive woman who had managed to draw attention to their plight by using the horn of the car to signal SOS. The woman has been shot and severely assaulted. Neither were married to each other.

Also the DCI is having paranoid thoughts which some of her friends and co-employees wonder if they are the result of her psychological problems or actual threats to herself and her team.

There's some gaps in the plot and the climax left me banging my head on my keyboard, but it's not terrible.

The performance doesn't really make things better, but it also is tolerable and doesn't make things worse.

4

Another good mystery, part of a series but stands alone just fine.
There are many story lines that might take off and run
with the plot, but the author keeps
excellent control of each until the end. I so enjoy the narrator and the unique pronunciations she gives many words like skeleton and adversary. I check slang words with a quick search - "manky" was this book's contribution to my vocab.

Good Listen!

Somewhat predictable but still a good listen! Good enough that I plan on listening to Book 3 next!

Great story

I am enjoying this series immensely. Excellent narration. My reviews are typically a yes I like it or no I don’t. Same with this one. I don’t want to give anything away. Enjoy...

Matilda Darke is even more enjoyable

This second DCI Matilda Darke novel is even more enjoyable than the first. It takes place nearly a year after her husband has died, and Matilda is coping better both personally and professionally. Her department is suffering from downsizing and she is haunted by the missing child from an unsolved kidnapping. Her present case involves the participants in an affair, one of whom is shot by an unknown assailant while the other is brutally beaten and left for dead. There's more than one connection between these people and Matilda and her team work to figure out its dimensions. Their interactions and methods keep the pages flipping. I really enjoyed seeing the characters flesh out and Matilda emerge from her widow's fog. Hope there will be more Matilda's in the series!

Love this series!!!

If you love British detective fiction, I highly recommend this series with Sheffield DCI Matilda Darke. The narrator reads it to perfection

Too grim and depressing

On one hand this is an adequately crafted police procedural- but on the other hand it is just one depressing moment after another. The lead
character is named Darke and that’s a good indication of what her life is like. There were multiple bad guys and plain old disgusting human beings doing terrible things without much to balance out the badness. I just wasn’t in the mood for something so bleak. The ending hit another low note as though the author wanted to make sure the reader wouldn’t feel good about the story. I regret listening to it - so many other better books out there.

Insulting to your audience

The stupidity of some of the characters ruined a lot of the story. A vicious man in a mask threatens you with a gun and leaves( threatening to return) and you dont tell the police, have the locks changed and act like nothing has happened? Come on! So stupid! I’m a fan, but this was very disappointing

Another damaged detective dame

Matilda is one of those people who find themselves at the bottom of a hole holding a shovel and keeps digging. Her husband dies, and she fails to recover a missing child. Both good reasons to grieve. Instead of working through it, she decides to wallow in it, working overtime to destroy herself. Sometimes, she takes one step forward and then three steps back. OK, enough with the clichés. But that's how clichés become clichés, they're perfect analogies for so many things. And that makes Matilda a cliché herself. A damaged police officer constantly getting in her own way. So damaged that she would have been fired in a real law enforcement agency, especially because she's a woman. It's become its own genre: Damaged detective dames. I'm hoping she can pull herself together (another cliché), for the next book, or it will be the last one I read.