Boy in the Well (DI Westphall 2) by Douglas Lindsay
| Boy in the Well (DI Westphall 2) by Douglas Lindsay | |
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| Category: Crime | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: The second book in the series reads perfectly well as a standalone. There is a supernatural element, which is handled well, but is not to my taste and this affected my rating and review. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 384/11h18m | Date: May 2019 |
| Publisher: Mulholland Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1473696945 | |
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The body of a nine-year-old boy was found at the bottom of a well which had been sealed for two hundred years - but the boy had only been dead for less than two days and there was no sign of how the body had got into the well. The owners of the property are adamant that the well was sealed when they went to open it, but DI Ben Westphall would be entitled to have his doubts. Belle McIntosh holds some strange views, particularly about the way that the government is controlling everyone through drugs which are added to the water supply which led to her wanting to reinstate the well. Her wife, Catriona Napier, is more moderate, but doesn't seem to have a lot of knowledge about what's going on on the farm.
The main problem for Westphall and his team is discovering the identity of the boy. Surely, any parent whose nine-year old had been missing for a couple of days would have notified the police? It would certainly have made the local news, if not the national, and the police would he heavily involved. But there's no child missing who answers the description of the rather weak looking boy, either locally or throughout the United Kingdom. Then there's the next conundrum. How did the body get into the well? There's nothing in the forensic examinations to suggest that the well had been tampered with before it was opened and nothing on the body to suggest how the entry was effected.
I first met Ben Westphall in Song of the Dead and I'd forgotten how infuriated I got when the supernatural element surfaced. It's prevalent in Boy in the Well too, although it was rather more delicately handled. Westphall has conversations with a dead pathologist on a regular basis and there are other occasions when a death foretold is used as a plot device. It isn't normally to my taste but the plot in Boy in Well is particularly good and this kept the pages turning into the early hours of the morning.
Would I read the next book in the series? I'm not certain. If you don't mind the supernatural element it might be right up your street, in which case I'd suggest that you start with the [[Song of the Dead (DI Westphall) by Douglas Lindsay|first book in the series.
I'd like to thank the publishers for making the book available to the Bookbag.
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