After almost 20 books in the Roy Grace series by Peter James, we finally find answers to the question of what happened to our main characters first wife Sandy…

At the start of this series, Roy Grace has the shadow of his missing wife Sandy hanging over him, which was such a great background mystery to his character. We don’t know what happened to the detective’s wife, he doesn’t know, and it leads to a sense of intrigue around him, with some other characters in the book wondering if he had something to do with her going missing. I’ve always loved this set up around Roy Grace, and seeing him grow as a character, with Sandy much later being found with a son, Bruno, that Roy never knew about. In this book, we finally get the answers to this long running background story to what happened to Sandy Grace.

I was very excited to read this one, and I enjoyed it a lot. It opens on Sandy, years earlier, telling us that she’s taking on a new identity, leaving Roy and is taking a mysterious person with her… She is on the run for her life, owing a very large amount of money to an Albanian man with ties to the Triad or Chinese mafia. From the first pages, we are right into the story, no messing around, and I love that we get drama on the opening pages. I was wondering, if we know this much already, there must be a lot more to this story! And there is. This book has so many twists and turns, and so much drama. Sandy has been on quite some adventures, taking her across countries and scraping through troubles, and touching on drug dealing, gambling dens, mafioso, murder, mayhem, a cult and more. I’m trying to be a bit ambiguous, so you can enjoy the ride for yourself, but it’s quite the life story for an ordinary woman from suburban UK.

I think perhaps this may be the aspect that I felt more critical of. Sandy does not seem that smart, she does not look like a Bond girl, and yet her story takes her to the wildest places and turns her into an international woman of mystery. After so many books, her story really needed to be big and dramatic to be satisfying, and because of that, sometimes it all feels a bit far fetched or a little too convenient, maybe. It’s a lot. And sometimes the villains seemed a little cheesey or cartoonish.

Sandy is interesting as a lead character, though. I liked that the author chose to have the book from her perspective, rather than have her story be a case that Roy Grace investigates, for example. It’s great to have her tell her own story and understand her motivations. She’s actually not very likable, but the book and the things she gets up to are pretty entertaining. It’s quite the trip, and it’s great to see what she’s thinking and feeling and her choices. So I liked that. It’s quite a fast paced read, with the short, quick chapters that keep the pages turning. Things are always developing quickly. Sandy, though she is the instigator of her problems, is slightly passive on the whole. She makes decisions, but she often is pushed by or rescued by a man who she becomes dependent on. I think this works well for the character, or the type of character she is, but I did fid myself noticing this.

For fans of the series, you’ll find a lot of little things here that tie in to the main series. Like Cassian Pewes is here, and we learn more about what Bruno has gone through and his life. And also, the flip side of what it was like to be married to Roy, a different perspective on him. These parts were really fun for me, thinking back to books I’d read in the series and how this story fit into or referenced that.

I’d always wanted to know what happened to Sandy, and this book does not disappoint, for me. It’s a bit over the top sometimes, but I was always invested and entertained the whole way through. It’s a wild ride, a trip, but after such anticipation, it had to be to be satisfying. I really enjoyed reading this one and it was great to find out who Sandy really was and what happened to her. A great addition to the series, in my opinion.

Read It If: With plenty of twists and turns, this is a good crime story, but it will be enjoyed best by fans of the Roy Grace series who have waited to find out what happened to Sandy Grace.

Thank you to PGC Book for the ARC of this book for review.