Today I’m delighted to be taking part in the blog tour for The Wives Of Crimson Avenue. My review is written with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the tour.

Blurb:

Ladies. Are you a perfect wife wanting to live in suburban utopia?
Then Crimson Avenue is for you!
Come and join other like-minded women in our idyllic community.
We might even let you into our little secret…

When a striking young woman turns up to Adele Love’s antique shop acting suspiciously and gives her a cryptic message …

Tell Sam that they know…

On leaving the shop, to Adele’s horror, the woman is bundled into a white van and abducted.

Beginning a search for the missing woman, DI Vincent Sullivan and DS Josephine Jenkins conduct their house-to-house investigations, which lead them into a sinister world of diamond smuggling and drugs, all happening behind the perfect façade of Crimson Avenue.

As the pressure mounts with the severity of the crimes committed, the wives close ranks and deny all knowledge.

But just as cracks begin to appear and the women start to turn on each other, they realise there’s also the small problem of Adele’s secret, which could get them all killed…

Review:

The Wives Of Crimson Avenue has everything you would expect in a police procedural novel and I really enjoyed getting to the bottom of the mystery. There are questions, secrets and red herrings from the beginning and I really wanted to know what would happen. It’s quite fast paced which makes it easy to read and become involved with the story. 

Our central characters are, as suggested by the title, the wives of Crimson Avenue: Adele, Erin, Rachel and Mary Anne. They’re not always likeable and their partners, those who we see in the novel, are even less likeable. However, Ryan has done a brilliant job of describing their neighbourhood and their lives and the way they like to gossip with each other. This is something I found very recognisable from every day life, so I felt as though I was part of the gossip and I really wanted to know the secrets. 

The detectives in The Wives Of Crimson Avenue are DI Vince Sullivan and DS Josephine Jenkins. I liked the straightforward approach that they both adopt and the way that they work well together. They both clearly have interesting stories to tell and I look forward to learning more in the next instalment. 

As the novel reaches its ending, nerves become much more frayed and the tension is much higher. I was on the edge of my seat to see how everything would be resolved. 

The Wives Of Crimson Avenue is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: