No Other Darkness

No Other Darkness is the second gripping novel to star DI Marnie Rome and her redoubtable team of DS Noah Jake, DS Ron Carling and DC Debbie Tanner. Sarah Hilary’s debut novel was Someone Else’s Skin which was a Richard and Judy selection last autumn. No Other Darkness makes a powerful and moving successor.

Two small boys are waiting for their mother, one stoical the other in tears, and both hungry and frightened. Nothing that unusual – save that these two children are entombed in the darkness of an underground bunker without any windows or way out. Help never arrives. Five years later Marnie Rome is called to what is now a housing estate where the children’s bodies have been discovered in the bunker. The horror of what she found there affects her deeply and she embarks on a mission that is personal as well as professional to track down their murderer. The trail leads her in unexpected directions which take their emotional toll on her as she fights her way through the darkness to unravel a story that has not ended with the children in the bunker. Far from it.

Straightforwardly and clearly written, the novel not only packs a strong punch in its plot and the way in which it develops but brings the police investigation and the team so vividly to life that the next novel becomes mandatory if only to find out how the members of the team are faring – especially Marnie Rome.