They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries) by Keith Redfern

They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries) by Keith Redfern
Buy They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries) by Keith Redfern at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Crime
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: It's the second book in the Greg Mason series but it would read well as a standalone. If you then want to go back and read the first book in the series, you'll know about Greg's personal life but there are no other spoilers.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 301	Date: April 2017
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 978-1521129883
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Greg Mason's just beginning to get his confidence as an investigator to the point where he'll warn someone about how much he charges. It's a good job too because Greg and Joyce will soon have a baby and they're both delighted. Joyce will be more delighted about the baby when she gets past the morning sickness. Greg is approached by an old friend whose brother-in-law appears to have killed himself. Stuart's concerned about his sister, Lucy, who's struggling to make ends meet and her son is not thriving. Lucy, he says, is convinced that Gil would never have killed himself - it simply wasn't in his nature. The police and the coroner have accepted that the death was suicide, but Stuart's prepared to pay Greg to find out what happened on the night Gil died.

The problem is that Gil was impervious to what other people thought about him. The solar panel and wind turbine installation that he had planned alienated half the village. He regularly took out loans to fund his lavish lifestyle but was less keen on making any repayments. Then there were the women, well, 'wives' would probably be more accurate. Gil seemed to be a regular visitor to a lot of houses when the husbands were absent. If you were looking at who might have killed Gil, then there were a lot of candidates.

This wasn't Greg's only case though. He's contacted by a distraught mother whose son, Mark, has gone missing. The family is dysfunctional: Mark's father is a control freak with little thought for Mark's mental well-being. That's two difficult cases for Greg and what follows is a story of murder, smuggling, child sexual abuse and domestic violence. That sounds like a lot of problems but don't worry - it's all sensitively handled.

And it's a cracker of a story too. When I first met Greg in Responsibilities, I wasn't that impressed by him but I watched him mature as the story progressed and in They Had it Coming he's realising what it means to be a family man. Joyce might have some income after the baby's born (she's working for her father) but it will be down to Greg to be the breadwinner for the three of them. Over two books I've seen a boy turn into a man and it's well and convincingly written. I found that the men came off the page better than the women but I'm being picky as it's a couple of days since I finished reading the book and I'm still concerned about the well-being of a couple of the characters.

The plot is good. I gave up trying to work out who had done what and just enjoyed the ride, All the clues were there and I missed them - so the ending was particularly satisfying. I'd like to thank the publisher for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

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You can read more book reviews or buy They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries) by Keith Redfern at Amazon.com.

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