The Fall by Rachael Blok Blog Tour

 I love a good crime novel.

The enjoyment of trying to solve a mystery, uncovering the answer to who done it.

And that's exactly what I got with Rachael Blok's latest novel The Fall.

The wind is cold this high up. The man shouts out, but nobody hears. The cathedral roof has caught his fall, but it will not hold him for long. The night is dark. And it is such a long way down...

On Good Friday, the verger of St Albans cathedral was supposed to be preparing the Easter service. Instead he discovers a man lying dead, fallen from the famous fifty-foot-high spire. Did he jump, or was he pushed?

For DCI Maarten Jansen, it's a simple case of suspected suicide. Until a stranger, Willow, who witnessed the jump, prompts a deeper investigation into a long-buried past, involving a mental hospital, a pregnant woman, and fifty years of silence. As Willow's own family history entwines with the case, Jaansen starts to wonder how everything is connected.

Unexpectedly mysterious.

That is how I'd describe The Fall.

Willow Eliot has just this moment arrived in St Albans at its cathedral, late to set up an exhibition. However her overtired self is completely shocked when she sees a man appear to fall from the cathedral’s tower. 

DCI Maarten Jansen seems content in accepting it as suicide but after a conversation with Willow, a more in-depth investigation begins and with it secrets that were buried years ago start to be uncovered. 

Told from numerous points of view, the author has done a fantastic job of piecing together an unsolved puzzle.

A genius plot with a vast amount of twists and turns that continued to keep me guessing.

Unexplained deaths, missing family members and memories that span past and present provide a story that is well written, I found the police procedures used to be well done, detailed and realistic. The pace was slow to begin with but I felt this added a real tension but after the half way point it picked up and became quite a speedy read. 

There is thorough character development as we are provided insight into both past and present. Each person cast seemed to have a purpose within the story. There were many unknown connections and I felt that it gave the book an extra layer as such.

I was kept speculating just who was guilty of what until the very end. I'll admit after a while, there were certain parts that I figured out but not enough to stop it from being engaging.

A brilliantly woven crime thriller.