Rachel´s Random Resources: A Story to Strangle For by E.V.Hunter

 ´The deeper we delve into this case, the wilder it gets´.

I love books featuring communications experts and journalists, because it resonates so much with my own professional experiences. I know for sure that a book, especially a murder mystery, casting such professionals guarantees a lot of intellectual challenges and fun. 

With still a couple of months ahead to be spent in semi-darkness and cold, and few days into the New Year after long vacations, what can be better than getting back to the reading corner with a cosy mystery. A Story to Strangle For by E.V. Hunter kept me busy the last Monday morning for few intellectually eventful hours and it was exactly what I needed to start the week right.

Going through a rough personal and professional episode, Alexi Ellis is decided to get back her reputation and start anew. But as in life, it´s sometimes harder than expected. She has a plan which on paper looks perfect: organising a writing course for journalists. An idea that may save her reputation and take her beloved Hopegood Hall in Lambourn. However, disaster struck again, as one of the participants is found dead, and the only one that saw this person for the last time is no other than poor Alexi. Thus, finding the culprit as soon as possible is more than a matter of reputation: it may involve saving her freedom as well.

Alexi Ellis is the kind of characters I would love to meet in real life too. Creative, bold, courageous, acting perfectly under duress and first and foremost a journalist. The ways in which she leads the investigations is smart, and got completely caught off guard until the end, although I was offered enough hints to have a guess or two.

E.V.Hunter succeeded to manage a complex story which take diverse turns, covering a very big variety of subjects, including abuse and trauma, abusive relationship, criminal behavior. The whole setting is very wild, as it seems that everyone and their pets do hide something from the rest of the world. An intricate net of secrets that in crime novels as in real life it may cost lives and reputations.

A Story to Strangle For is a standalone, but it is part of the fourth in the Hopgood Hall Murder Mysteries Series, which is a good news, because it seems I may have some good mysteries waiting for me for the next dark cold weeks to come.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own