Being my birthday recently, I was gifted a stack of wonderful new books. I don’t often get to buy books new, I tend to get them “like new” or good on Amazon. But there’s something delicious about a new book with the way it smells and that the pages are all perfectly white and pristine.

I also don’t often read end up reading bestseller type crime books, but I do really enjoy them when I get my hands on them, and this one is really good.

The beautiful mansion at 7 Ocean Drive in the sleepy seaside town on Bridgehampton was once the scene of grisly murder. When Detective Jenna Murphy finds herself on the police force in Bridgehampton, fleeing a bad experience with corruption in the NYPD ranks, an outbreak of murders occur, starting a double homicide in the old “murder house”. But when a suspect is arrested and more murders occur, Jenna is driven to investigate what might be a cover up, involving her own family.

The book has loads of twists and turns, with nicely rounded characters and enough gruesome deaths (without too many detailed descriptions, thankfully!) to keep anyone happy. I read it in two sittings, with loads of cups of tea, really enjoying where it was going and not quite guessing who did it til closer to the end. I had the impression that it was a story about a murder house, a building famous for the grisly fates of it’s occupants, but that’s a lesser part of it. It’s more a detective story, a who dunnit, involving the past and the long lines of family that live in small towns. I really got a kick out of it.

Read It If: you love your bestseller crime thrillers, or if you’ve ever wondered whether that empty, run down house on your street was haunted…