The Light Remains by Rhys Dylan
Publisher: Wyrmwood Books
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
Rating: 3 stars
Reviewed by FernThe games people play…
When a revered sports legend falls victim to a brutal home invasion, a nation is shaken to its core. Outrage swells and the press and powers that be demand answers.
DCI Evan Warlow, fresh from a well-earned vacation, is thrown into the cauldron to lead the investigation. But the victim, despite his iconic status, has secrets of his own.
Amidst the chaos of jealousy and rivalry that swirls around the case, a darker underbelly emerges. The pursuit of truth transforms into a gripping hunt, but whose truth is the team hunting?
Something else lurks in the labyrinth of deception. Something vile and twisted that could strike again at any moment… unless it’s found.
A nationally loved retired sports hero is brutally hurt during a home invasion. When he dies from those wounds the aggregated burglary case is turned over to homicide – and DCI Warlow and his team. Pressured from the public as well as their own managers, Warlow and his team do their best as they do for every case. Can they unravel all the threads and find out who could do such a seemingly senseless crime?
I have been greatly enjoying this Welsh based police procedural series. I feel this book can absolutely be read alone – though the team has quite a strong history together now and readers who prefer to read their stories in order might want to go back and start at the beginning. Everything is very well explained in this book I feel, and certainly I think the crime and plotline is very well encapsulated here and no prior reading is strictly necessary.
While many of the books in this series have a slightly gritter feel to them I do feel this book is more about the smaller towns in Wales and the tight knit communities. I enjoyed how there was a few different threads in this plotline, and they were all given a good weight and for quite some time I found myself piecing everything together along with the team. Any one of these threads could have borne fruit and been part of the murder mystery so I feel the author did a really good job of juggling a number of balls in the air but also making them all quite realistic and very well balanced together.
A strong police procedural style of murder mystery, made even better to my mind for being based in Wales which I still find quite an interesting and different setting, making this a standout read.