Jumping the Cracks

I haven’t come across any books by Victoria Blake before so it’s all new to me. This is her fourth novel in the Sam Falconer series and I found that it gripped me from the first page.

Sam goes back to her hometown of Oxford to set up her own personal investigations business. She meets, by chance, a man coming out of a bookies who wants her to look after a dog.

It isn’t his dog; he’s looking after it for a friend and he assures her that he will return for it sometime.

The dog is a temperamental chihuahua but, luckily, Sam’s stepfather is a dog lover so he agrees to look after it while she’s at work.

One of her first clients at the PI business is the city museum. A shrunken head has been stolen and there was no evidence of forced entry. Sam finds herself guarding the museum on the night shift with bottled witches and display cases full of shrunken heads.

Soon she’s following a bloody trail with several victims along the way.