While the fourth in the DI Nick Dixon series, Swansong is my first outing with this detective.

I needed to suspend reality just a bit to stay on board with this story at the beginning. Nick makes a huge leap early on in the book, linking the murder of Isobel Swan to the mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend 17 years earlier. There really was no evidence to connect the crimes, other than the two girls looked virtually identical and they both were sixth years in similar boarding schools.

Once you accept this premise, the book is a fast-paced page turner. Dixon’s past merges nicely with the present case as he goes undercover in the boarding school as a trainee teacher getting two weeks of work experience before the term ends. (Being an American, I wondered does a two week stint at a boarding school in England really count towards teaching experience?)

Looking back, I’m not sure if enough clues were dropped for the armchair detective to correctly deduce the murderer, but still a fun ride.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review from my blog, Hidden Staircase.

Great read delving into the past of Nick Dixon’s life and combining it with a current case.

Loads of ebbs and flows and in the end it was the person I least expected. Adamant it was someone else and took a major turn at the end.

Really enjoying this series now

This one redeems the last one and makes the entire series more worthwhile. Good read.

Good reading, I enjoyed it.. it was very coherent for a crime novel and kept up with excellent storylines like the earlier author novels in the DI Nick Dixon series. The narration passages were a little long compared to earlier interactions which were more engaging due to higher level of dialogue. All in all a well written novel and a good read for the suspense genre lover.

Nick Dixon continues to be entertaining and I'm enjoying the character development and his relationship with Jane

Another enjoyable addition to this fast paced crime series.

With this outing we even got to get a little more personal with Dixon and feel some raw emotion. I have resigned myself to not expecting a great deal of character growth in this form of narrative, so this was definitely a pleasant surprise.

Although I enjoyed the story line, some of the aspects, I felt, were too obvious, or perhaps too expected, a little too early on the storyline. (Spoiler Alert). In particular Jane's abduction (although played out very well) was almost as expected Monty going for a walk. And I also felt that the killer was revealed too early, but that's probably more a personal observation.

There were definitely a lot more finer details to the storyline that I enjoyed, and even felt myself re-reading a few scenes after later facts had revealed themselves. Purely to enjoy what I had previously overlooked.

All in all a great read!

It's a bit weird to see Dixon angsty - it was justified, but it did throw me off a bit since he seems rather unflappable and I-don't-have-an-angsty-past kind of character.

Spoiler

Poor Jane! I guess Boyd thought he had tortured Dixon enough that it's Jane's turn.

I was really wondering if it was Phillips - seemed a bit too chummy, which could have been a pretense to get closer to Dixon for info. Father Anthony was totally not on my radar! What a twist.