Death Under a Little Sky: The new debut rural crime detective thriller you won’t want to miss in 2023 (Jake Jackson, Book 1)

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Stig Abell loves detective novels above any other literature, films, plays or television. This is the first one he has actually written. Away from books, he presents the breakfast show on Times Radio, a station he helped to launch in 2020. Before that he was a regular presenter on Radio 4’s Front Row and was the editor and publisher of the Times Literary Supplement. At one time or another he has written for almost every newspaper in Britain, and one or two in America as well. He lives in London with his wife, three children and two independent-minded cats called Boo and Ninja (his children named them, obviously). Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Tense but patient, fast but thoughtful, and twisty but substantial – this is a truly excellent debut, and I want the next installment now’ Lee Child

All this green, all this prettiness, the quiet of the river.. you realise its a hard place to make a life sometimes.’ Ik wil World of Thrillers en uitgeverij HarperCollins bedanken dat ik dit boek, Dodelijke afloop van Stig Abell, mocht lezen voor een review.

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I was looking forward to this novel, I listen to The Times radio so had heard a great deal about it .

What starts as an innocent game turns sinister, when a young woman’s bones are discovered. And Jake is thrust once again into the role of detective, as he tries to unearth a dangerous killer in this most unlikely of settings. Talking about one of the characters in the book, the writer explained: “Livia, this wonderful vet who I really like and Jake ends up liking, is also a bit of a nod towards my wife.”Stephen "Stig" Paul Abell is an English journalist, newspaper editor and radio presenter. He currently co-presents the Monday to Thursday breakfast show on Times Radio with Aasmah Mir. Jake leaves his failed marriage and job as Detective for a house in the middle of nowhere. Living totally off grid offers the opportunity to renegotiate a life that hasn’t gone well so far.. Embracing the practical and mental challenges of his self imposed exile, Jake is consoled by a library of detective novels, listening to music, swimming in the lake and the wildlife.. Abell educated at Loughborough Grammar School, and went on to graduate with a double first in English from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. The plot is rather less convincingly done, in that it disappears for long stretches while we follow Jake’s progress in adapting to his new life. Obvious investigative avenues are left neglected both by Jake and, even less credibly, by the local police, who seem quite happy to leave the bulk of the job to Jake. However, the story underlying the plot is both dark and interesting. The bones, we soon learn, belonged to a young farmgirl, whose status as both foreigner and incomer left her isolated even within the general isolation. But her youth, friendliness and beauty caused her to become an object of attraction, even obsession, for several of the men in this woman-starved community. Is this why she died? Or did she inadvertently learn a secret that was dangerous to someone? Or did she, as the original inquest decided, simply slip and fall to her death? And why is someone so determined to have her death reinvestigated?

I really enjoyed Death Under A Little Sky, it is a very accomplished well written thriller and was refreshingly different to the norm. Yeah, the prose was so purple it was nearly eggplant. And speaking of which, the romantic subplot (main plot, more like) was bad. Insta-romance between paper thin characters that only served to give the author the opportunity to describe her milky breasts and his pubic hair. No, really.We have a love interest as well that bulks the book out and some very stereotypical nasty villager types. I enjoyed this one to a point. It did seem a bit confused about what it wanted to be. Starts as a mystery thriller then veers into cosy thriller, a sort of self discovery book and a romance novel. The end I thought was a bit of a let down and a bit hard to swallow.

Second in the military crime series featuring Special Agents Scott Brodie and Magnolia "Maggie" Taylor, after The Deserter (2019). The first thing you notice about this novel is the writing - loaded with description, lyrical. This was like watching a movie as the vistas around Little Sky opened up before me. I loved how the author really took his time, introducing the landscape and his central character. I enjoyed being part of Jake’s evolving routines, running and swimming in the lake, his mediation..…I wasn’t in a rush for this to become anything else and when it did it felt so organic. These initial chapters aren’t fast paced, and I loved that! Life in the middle of nowhere is everything Jake could wish for. His home is beautiful and his surroundings are stunning. While the locals are eccentric, they are also friendly, and invite him to join their annual treasure hunt. The isolated setting worked well, although it was fairly unbelievable that you could have a whole house and modern extension, with some modern fittings, without any kind of access road or lane. There seemed to be no issue with vehicles travelling across anybody’s land (and the locals are hardly amenable.)Het verhaal wordt vanuit Jake verteld. De sfeer van de woonplek wordt zeer geloofwaardig beschreven. Als lezer krijg je een kijkje in het leven en de gedachtes van Jake. De dagelijkse beslommeringen die horen bij een verhuizing en het opnieuw leren kennen van een woonplek spelen een grote rol in het verhaal. I LOVED this. I found it totally immersive, and couldn’t wait to squeeze some time from my day to return to it. The writing is very classy and the conclusion came as a surprise, which is always a treat’ Ann Cleeves It’s not long before he finds that a woman died in the small village a decade earlier under mysterious circumstances. When he brings the subject up with the locals, they close shop and don’t want to discuss it at all. Some even start to warn him off about digging up the past. Thank you, Harper Collins for an ARC of Death is under a little sky. I can’t believe this is a debut novel. At first, I thought is this actually a crime novel? As, the writing is beautiful, quite poetic in fact. This is a very experience writer. Stig Abell is a successful and well-known British journalist and this is his first venture into fiction. He has apparently been a fan of crime fiction since his pre-teen years, having followed the same trajectory as so many of us have, via Holmes, Christie, Sayers, etc., and then on to contemporary crime. I wondered if this was going to be a kind of homage to the golden age authors he clearly reveres, but although he references many of them entertainingly, his style is very much his own. And he writes like a dream, making this pure pleasure to read (despite being in the present tense) with a distinctly literary feel.