The Coffinmaker’s Garden

Too gruesome. Pity. DNF

This was my first foray into the world of Stuart MacBride, and wasn't disappointed. I loved the main characters, especially the “wee lad”, Henry. Some of the bad guys were likeable too.
I'm going to go back to the start of this series later. I have a feeling I've missed a few good ‘uns.

Not a genre I would usually go for as I am a little bit put off by violence, but I found this police procedural entertaining if requiring a suspension of disbelief about the actions of some of the characters! Despite this being the third book in the series I had little trouble picking up the plot and the characters. 


Ash Henderson is an ex detective inspector who is called to help investigate murders along with police colleagues. The plot centres around an investigation where the house is falling into the sea where the bodies are buried. I found the plot gripping, with some very exciting moments of peril for the main characters. Aside from that, it had a lot of dark humour in it, though the author resisted peppering it with the f word! However, I wouldn't describe this as one for the squeamish. There's torture and child murder and some moments of violence that are pretty horrific. Ash gets away with all sorts of things too, and seems to manage seemingly superheroic feats of strength, but I get that whilst the author was going for gritty, it also needed the sense of someone able to avenge the victims without too much of a fear of retribution from authorities. I liked the way the author portrayed the other characters too, from the police to the ex cons and villains. 

I've read a few Stuart MacBride books and this one was as amazing as some of the others I've read.

This was really well written, and I loved the balance between dark/gruesome and humour. Stuart clearly has a knack for that! The descriptive writing and setting of the scenes was also excellently done (I don't think I'd have the courage to go down into a basement where the house was in danger of falling off a cliff! There were a couple of those moments in the story and they were so well written, I actually felt like I was there!)

The characters were really well written too, and I loved Ash (he's one tough cookie despite Stuart putting him through hell!), Alice, Shifty, DS Franklin (she might have started off as grumpy but she totally grew on me) and DI Malcolmson (or Mother as she's also referred as!).

I've read the second Ash Henderson book, but not the first so I'm totally going to read that.

Thank you to Pigeonhole and Stuart MacBride for the chance to read this book.