Detective Ian Petersen is a newly married man. His marriage also seems to already be going down the tubes. His wife, Bev, has no understanding of the sort of work that he does and is resentful of any extra time that he must spend away from her while solving important criminal cases. His latest case involves the murder of a woman who has been stabbed to death late at night close to a park and it couldn't have come at a worse time for Ian and his marriage.

There's no explanation for the woman's death. When her next of kin is tracked down, it seems as if her husband may just be the prime suspect. After all, there are plenty of witnesses to the husband's constant yelling and berating of his wife. Their teenage son has been trying for years to get his mother to leave his father. Now, it appears that she waited too long.

While Ian is investigating the murder, more bodies start to pile up in connection with the case. Not only does this make it more difficult to get to the bottom of things, but the extra time that he has to put into working on it is only making matters at home much worse. Bev doesn't appreciate being put on the back burner for his job and things are looking bleak on the home front.

While the husband of the first murder victim still seems like a viable suspect to Ian, the subsequent murders make very little sense to him as to why the husband would commit them. It is a puzzle that takes him down a rather confusing and bleak road.

The murderer will be caught but there's a secret that Ian doesn't know. This secret means that there will be even more murders in the future.

COLD SACRIFICE is an excellent whodunit that grabs the reader's attention and holds it in place until the final page when the shocking and unsettling ending is revealed. I loved the way investigative procedures were used as well as getting to go inside the lives of the various people involved. These lives are not always pleasant but they are very realistically portrayed so that I felt as if I were right there in the middle of the pouring rain, the smoky interior of a strip club, the police department and any other setting Leigh Russell decided to take her readers. I highly anticipate her next book!

Book Summary

When three dead bodies are discovered in Detective Ian Peterson's hometown of Kent, it becomes clear that a vicious killer is on the loose. And without his trusted colleague, Detective Geraldine Steel, by his side, Ian's left to take the lead on a complex murder case with few clues.

The first victim is a middle-aged woman named Martha, brutally stabbed to death in the local park. Her husband, who did not report her missing, is the prime suspect until a young prostitute, Della, reveals his whereabouts the night Martha was murdered. But then she is strangled to death in her apartment. While the police are frantically gathering evidence and looking for a connection, a second prostitute is suffocated.

With nothing but the timing of the murders to tie the three women to one another, Ian and his new partner, Polly Mortimer, struggle to make sense of the case and find the elusive killer before he strikes again. But by the time Ian realizes the truth, it may be too late to save Polly.