Review Arc "Wolf at the Door" by Sarah Hawkswood

  

Wolf at the Door by Sarah Hawkswood

    For Purchase on Aug. 19th, 2021!!!

"All Hallow's Eve, 1144. The savaged body of Durand Wuduweard, the solitary and unpopular keeper of the King's Forest of Feckenham, is discovered beside his hearth, his corpse rendered barely identifiable by sharp teeth.


Whispers of a wolf on the prowl grow louder and Sheriff William de Beauchamp's men, Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll, are tasked with cutting through the clamour. They must uncover who killed Durand and why while beset by superstitious villagers, raids upon manors and further grim deaths. Out of the shadows of the forest, where will the wolf's fangs strike next? " - Synopsis from GoodReads.

This is book #9 in the Bradecote and Catchpoll Investigation series. 

Alright, right off the bat, I'm going to say, I have not read the previous works in this series. So all characters and any plots from previous works was not known to me while reading this. That being said, it did not seem to cause any real issues as most of the story fills you in while not overly info dumping and slowing the progress of this particular book. 

I  did find Catchpoll and Bradecote very intriguing. The two kept morphing in my mind as I read. Catchpoll seems to be the grubby yet faithful detective to his younger superior and while I can't quite put my finger on the comparison of the two, I do feel as though they seem to give me some type of familarity. Like "Oh, that sounds like someone I know but I just can't put my finger on it!" - in terms of trying to build the characters in my head. Walkelin was also very endearing as well and I do find the character development with him being the young lawman still green around the gills that comes into his own a good move. Like a splash of Elementary, a splash of Sherlock (BBC), and dash it with Gotham. 

There were moments where it did seem to drag out and other times where the story felt like it was stallign out but around the 65% mark, I noticed the uptick to the dreaded climate of bad things getting worse. And oh did they - (no spoilers) it did hurt the heartstrings near the end. Having not read the author's work before, I feel that now I'm inspired to go about fixing that by reading the rest of this series. Definiately a good read. It can be dark, even when there is humor laced in. 

Rating: 4 Stars! 🌟🌟🌟🌟

(Also posted on GR and Netgalley)

Thank you to the author, the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to review this!