Review: The Lost Sister (Detective Arla Baker #1) by M.L. Rose

Print Length: 297 pages

Publisher: (September 4, 2018)

From Goodreads.com: For 15 years, Detective Chief Inspector Arla Baker has hunted for Nicole, her lost sister...

Today, a woman lies with her throat slit open in Clapham Common Park. There are three black triangles drawn on her body. DCI Arla Baker is called in to investigate.
Soon there is another body, killed in identical fashion, in the same location.

Arla knows a vicious serial killer is stalking the streets. But what does the killer know about Nicole? For Clapham Common is where Nicole disappeared fifteen years ago. Arla refuses to accept Nicole is dead. She will not rest till she finds her sister.

As another body appears, it’s clear that the killer is hungry for more blood.
And Arla is not the one hunting this crazed psychopath.
Arla is the hunted.

As deep secrets of the past begin to unravel, so does Arla’s grip on reality. It’s not just her career on the line.
It’s her life.

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My Rating: 3 stars out of 5

This story has the potential to be a gripping best-seller, if only it had a new (or perhaps better), editor. There were a lot of instances where words were misspelled or information not relevant to the case being repeated numerous times while important evidence was only mentioned once - when it applied to both cases they were working on. I'm also not entirely sure what was up with Arla's partner and the fact that he managed to have a key to most every property they needed to get into. 

Arla has made it very hard to like her. Yes, she was a character with a dark past, and internal scars, but the way that she often went off half-cocked to follow "a hunch" was a bit too much for me as a reader. It was understandable why her department was concerned about her and considered her a maverick considering she had an obvious temper and very little tact or subtlety when it came to dealing with important people (even if they were suspects). 

The story itself was very engaging and easy to follow with several surprising twists that I did not see coming. From the wide array of characters (and suspects) that our dogged police had to work through, to the decades-old case of Arla's missing sister, the author managed to perfectly weave these two stories together so that past and present blended together seamlessly. 

Overall, I'm sure this novel will appeal to those who enjoy police procedurals that deal with corruption and are full of surprises. I would read another in this series.

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                                 The Lost Sister is available from Amazon.com