Blood Stained by Rebecca Bradley

Blood Stained is the first book in D.I Claudia Nunn series by Rebecca Bradley.

From the rating, it is pretty evident Blood Stained has been a disappointing read for me. I did not like the book as much as I wanted to. The story starts on an interesting note. We have DI Claudia interview a fellow police officer – DS Dominic Harrison. Dominic’s wife Ruth has gone missing. We also have a little bit of Ruth’s side of the story – the first chapter, to be precise. Ruth is attacked and she fights back. The next scene is at the police station where Dominic and Claudia currently are.

We then have a flashback from Dominic’s case – The Sheffield Strangler. A serial killer is on prowl. He’s been brutally murdering single women – in the age bracket of early to mid forties. The victims are single mothers, divorced and had recently met a mystery man on a dating app. Dominic is assigned to the case and he has no clue that might lead him to the killer.

As officers of the law, one would expect the police to dig deeper into the case and not overlook certain factors. This might seem a little spoiler-ish: Dominic and his team overlooked the fact the killer was targeting women who were single mothers. This was pretty straightforward from victim #1 and yet the officers did not make a connection!

Halfway through the story, we have a twist – something to do with Claudia and Dominic. I believe this was supposed to be a jaw-dropping twist but it didn’t work for me. I was annoyed that we readers were not made aware of the ‘connection’ between the accused and the investigation officer until halfway through the story.

This also means the missing person (Ruth, in this case) is also connected to Claudia. Of all the mystery novels I have read so far, if the investigation officer is related to the victim, they are taken off the case – at least they are not officially on the case; what they do in their own free time is their business. But in this book, we see Claudia taking the lead on the case.

Overall, this book was full of highs and lows. I liked the twist at the end – something to do with Ruth’s disappearance. At the same time, the identity of the serial killer was no shocker. I had identified them long before the detectives in the story could.

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I received a copy of the book from the publishers (Joffe Books) in exchange for an honest and unbiased opinion.

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