Blog Tour: The Scandal by Mari Hannah

Mari Hannah is chair of this years Theakston's Old Peculier crime festival in Harrogate as well as being their reader in residence. This year she'll be leading the festival' Big Read. She is also a multi award winning author, and once you've read The Scandal , you'll now why.
Number three in Mari Hannah's Oliver and Stone series set in Northumbria, The Scandal is a gritty, well researched, edgy police procedural with a main protagonist with flaws as well as merits. DS Frankie Oliver, is nicely balanced by her boss and work partner DCI David Stone. Don't you just love it when the dynamics between the two lead detectives drive the plot forward? Mari Hannah is a practiced hand at the police procedural and the story trots along at a fair old pace.






The Blurb

When an young man is found stabbed to death in a side street in Newcastle city centre in the run up to Christmas, it looks like a botched robbery to DCI David Stone. But when DS Frankie Oliver arrives at the crime scene, she gets more than she bargained for.

She IDs the victim as Herald court reporter, thirty-two-year old Chris Adams she's known since they were kids. With no eyewitnesses, the MIT are stumped. They discover that when Adams went out, never to return, he was working on a scoop that would make his name. But what was the story he was investigating? And who was trying to cover it up?

As detectives battle to solve the case, they uncover a link to a missing woman that turns the investigation on its head. The exposé has put more than Adams' life in danger. And it's not over yet.

My Thoughts

The Scandal opens with a prologue chase scene that quickly has your heart beating overtime and your pulses thrumming. Fast paced, scary and infused with frissons of terror, Hannah effectively sets the scene for a complex and compelling police procedural. 

Hannah's obvious knowledge of procedure lends The Scandal an air of authenticity that skirts around the frustrating of lack of police resources etc, whilst keeping the investigation moving forward.

Frankie Oliver is a complex character and, being new to the series, I was hooked by hints of a fascinating backstory. This didn't stand in the way of my enjoyment of the novel which can easily be read as a standalone, but rather piqued my interest so much that I'll definitely go back to catch up on the first two in the series.  

I always find it refreshing to read crime fiction based in the North of the country and Hannah skillfully draws the Northern landscape with flair and accuracy. The plot was complex and fascinating and I found myself pondering many questions as I read, not least of which was how did the mysterious Nancy form the prologue connect to the current murder victim Chris Adams? 

In short The Scandal is tantalisingly intriguing, well plotted and the characters are well drawn. 

Follow the rest of The Scandal Blog Tour here.