Review - Blue On Blue by Dal Maclean

Detective Inspector Will Foster is attending the extravagant engagement party for his colleague DI James and his fiance Ben thrown by James’ rich father, when Will is called away to attend the scene of a murder. A sex worker has been killed execution style. It’s hard enough to find leads in the shadowy world of sex workers, but when the DNA evidence comes back, it throws up a whole new set of questions. To add to Will’s stress, he thinks his boyfriend Tom is pulling away, preparing to leave him, again. The bodies pile up, and Will can’t be sure who he can trust with what he uncovers.

“Blue on Blue” takes place in the same murder squad as Bitter Legacy and features several of the same secondary characters. At first, it seems like a stand-alone book set in the same world. However, about a third of the way through, the evidence mounts up to link everything with the case that James worked on in the first book. Although it’s not stated in any way on the cover or summaries on book sites, this is actually part of a closely linked series. If you haven’t read both “Bitter Legacy” and Object of Desire before this book, you’ll be totally clueless about events referred to in “Blue on Blue.”

This story is told entirely from Will’s point of view. Like James, Will is an honest police officer who really believes in doing the right thing, giving victims justice. The murder case he’s working gives Will cause to doubt the people on his team he thought he could trust. His trust issues extend to Will’s personal life as well. He and Tom got back together after a nasty breakup, and Will can’t help feeling history is about to repeat itself with the supermodel deciding he can do better.

The mystery that kicks off with the murder of the sex worker drives the plot. It quickly becomes clear that one of London’s major crime bosses is connected to the killing, but there are still some surprises along the way. It’s not so much a case of whodunit, but how Will and James will survive knowing what they’ve found out while trying to get justice for a dead woman.

“Blue On Blue” is available from Smashwords or Amazon (commissionable link).