"The Secret Place" is a murder mystery. It sees the murder of a 16-year-old boy, Chris Harper, who is found in the grounds of "St Kilda's, girl's school, secondary, private, leafy, suburb. Nuns."
The murder has gone unsolved for a year. Enter Detective Stephen Moran. He works in Cold Cases, "a dingy dead end". He wants his chance at bigger things and gets it when a St Kilda's girl brings him something new to the case. Holly brings him a card similar to that on the book cover, one that says "I know who killed him" together with a new picture of Chris Harper on it. The card was found in the secret place, the name of a pin-board in the school where girls can privately share their secrets in a safe way to get them off of their chest, although the secret place could also be referring to an enclosed place where four of the girls, who are amongst the main suspects, hang out together in the school grounds, the very same site where the murder took place.
The card sparks Detective Moran into action. He teams up with the lead on the original case, Detective Antoinette Conway, a no-nonsense, tough-nosed murder detective without a partner and without a successful solve to her name. She needs this as much as him.
Thus the case is brought back to life again with the book telling the story through alternate chapters following the real-time events at St Kilda's as they happened in the lead up to the murder and beyond, and the current day investigation interspersed between.
The book is gripping and the case gets solved, albeit with a slight supernatural element being conveniently introduced to help it along. Thoroughly enjoyable read.
(I got this book through a Goodreads First Read competition. This review is my honest opinion of the book.)
Publication date: 28th August 2014
Amazon UK link: The Secret Place
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