For some time now I have noticed that the D.I. Kim Stone series has been highly praised by my fellow book bloggers. Therefore, I decided that despite my lengthy TBR, I would read the series in its entirety, one title every month. What a wise decision I made!

D.I. Kim Stone – An acerbic, brusque, and driven young woman who works as a Detective Inspector for the West Midlands Police, the second largest police force in the country.  She is socially inept, and has been known to break the rules, as well as to disregard instructions and protocols in her search for justice. An insomniac, she is fueled by nervous energy and lots of coffee, and is beautiful, but she works hard to hide it. She is 34 years old, brilliant, hot-headed, and damaged.  As a child, she suffered horribly, and was shunted from foster home to foster home. Only once did she experience a nurturing, loving relationship – and that was very short lived….  Now, when not working, her favourite thing to do is work at restoring vintage motorbikes. Bikes are her passion, and she uses a Kawasaki Ninja as her regular form of transport.

Other than her second in command, Bryant, she is friendless. Her one real weakness is her fondness for her adopted dog, Barney. Her two nemeses are cooking (which she is spectacularly bad at), and a local journalist by the name of Tracy Frost.

Police team

• D.S. Bryant, twelve years her senior, is Kim’s partner and dearest friend. He is married and the father of daughters.
• D.S. Kevin Dawson, a good copper, but young, vain, and not yet mature.
• Constable Stacy Wood, a diligent and hard-working local girl.

D.C.I. Woodward (Woody) is Kim’s long-suffering superior. Like the rest of her team, he is loyal and stands up for her when the higher-ups would have her removed from the case. Kim gives him lots of reason to use his stress ball.

In DI Kim Stone’s third outing we find her and her team working a child abduction case. Two nine-year-old girls have been taken after their swimming lesson at a leisure centre. Kim and her team work under the enforcement of a media blackout. They use one of the wealthy parents’ home for their command post, commandeering the dining room for the purpose. They are joined by a hostage negotiator and a criminal profiler. Six people working in one room under almost intolerable pressure…  To make matters worse, the negotiator, Matt Ward, is equally as infuriating, emotionless, and driven as Kim herself.

This case is made even more difficult by the fact that the choice of the girls appears to be random, and based on a newspaper article in which a photo of the two girls was featured in addition to information about their wealthy parents.

The case bears uncanny similarities to another case thirteen months previous, in which only one girl came home…

This third novel in the series has a rather dark and grim cover which alerts the reader to the fact that once again there is some very graphic violence, so the squeamish readers should probably give this series a pass.

This was another stellar installment in what is fast becoming a favourite crime series. The only quibble I had with the novel was that the villians, one in particular (Symes), was just SO inhumane that he was almost unbelievable. If I believed anyone was that bad, I would lose faith in my fellow man altogether.

The criminal mastermind of this case, once revealed, really surprised me. I hadn’t suspected a thing…. Were there clues?  Kim Stone’s brain is much more advanced than my own.

By the time I finished this third novel in the series, I was left with the feeling once again that I wanted MORE Kim Stone. Lucky for me I purchased the entire series in order that I might read one installment every month for my “Marsons of the Month” blog series.  I look forward to reading the fourth book, “Play Dead” in April.  Oh, and in case you didn’t already guess… “Lost Girls” is highly recommended by me.

I purchased “Lost Girls” in Kindle format.

Angela Marsons discovered her love of writing at Primary School. She wrote the stories that burned inside and then stored them safely in a desk drawer.
After much urging from her partner, she began to enter short story competitions in Writer’s News resulting in a win and three short listed entries. She self-published two of her earlier works before concentrating on her true passion – Crime.
After many, many submissions she signed an eight book deal with Bookouture as their first crime author. Her D.I. Kim Stone novels have sold 3 million copies.

Angela Marsons is from Brierley Hill in the West Midlands and is a former security guard at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre. She continues to live in the Black Country with her partner and their bouncy Labrador and potty-mouthed parrot.

Follow Angela Marsons on Twitter.