I fell in love with the fabulous Goth, Senior Mortuary Technician Cassie Raven in Body Language (Cassie Raven #1) and I haven’t looked back since. Goth and body whisperer, she is everything I look for in a compelling character driven narrative. Cassie Raven has a unique voice; she is a young woman with her own individual style who does not easily fit into the standard societal image of a mortician. But she is intelligent, intuitive and most of all she cares about her job and the people who are under her care. I’d recommend that you read these books from the beginning because there is quite a bit of backstory and with only three books so far, you don’t have a lot of catching up to do! In Case Sensitive, Cassie is a bit off kilter. She’s so used to getting a sense of what happened from her bodies that when that special feeling disappears, she feels she’s lost the essence of why this job is so important to her. She’s also finding the arrival of her father in her life a bit of a strain. He and her grandmother spend hours talking about her mother and for Cassie it’s all just a bit too much after more than 20 years thinking her father was dead. Cassie is getting depressed and is feeling it may be time to chuck it all in. Then one night as she settled down in her home, a canal boat in Camden, a dead body startles her by bumping across her bows. That’s the start of an investigation that draws Cassie in. Though to begin with this body of a man has nothing to say to her, she can see that something isn’t quite right. This body is decaying faster than is normal and it’s not until she regains her connection with the dead that she begins to realise why that might be. Meanwhile D.S. Phyllida Flyte has moved from CID into a new Major Crimes Unit team and isn’t much enjoying being the only female officer on a team of seven male officers who have not gone out of their way to break up the boys’ club atmosphere that prevails in their unit. When she’s sent to cover for CID on the case of the body that Cassie found, she realises that she’s unaccountably interested in running into Cassie again. What I enjoy about this series, apart from the fabulous characters and the way that their relationships develop, is the way in which A.K. Turner’s research feeds into a series of fascinating case studies where cause of death is never as simple as it looks and Cassie’s intuition often leads to an interesting if unusual forensic answers, even when the death is not suspicious. Then there’s Cassie and Phyllida’s relationships – with others and between them. The timing is never quite right between these two to see if there is a spark between them, and in this book, Phyllida also has some deep rooted matters that she needs to deal with before she can move forward. In Case Sensitive, Phyllida has to deal with some very current issues facing the Met Police and she finds it hard to know just who to trust. Faced with the dilemma of fitting into a new team and simultaneously trying to uphold her own high professional standards, Phyllida will have to decide how she handles the information she receives and just who she can rely on. Her decisions will have far reaching consequences and she and Cassie will have to work together to right more than one terrible injustice and solve two murders. Verdict: I love this series and Case Sensitive is another hugely enjoyable addition. Great characters, fantastic research and true to life cases all work together to make this a must read book in an unmissable series.

‘Deadly secrets are rising from the depths’ - cover tag line. My thanks to Bonnier Books U.K./Zaffre for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Case Sensitive’ by A.K. Turner. This is Book 3 in her series of forensic crime thrillers featuring Goth mortuary assistant, Cassandra (Cassie) Raven. While background is provided, I would advise that the books are best read in order. Aside from being the best way to experience the development of a number of its key characters, there are a few ongoing storylines. Due to this I won’t say much about the plot in order to avoid spoilers for the previous books, ‘Body Language’ and ‘Life Sentence’. Just a few details for context. Cassie has seen many dead bodies during the course of her career, but it’s a new experience when the body of a drowned man knocks against the hull of her canalboat. Cassie finds that the case of the unidentified man is getting under her skin even though the police consider it a simple case of a drunken fall. She reaches out to Detective Inspector Phyllida Flyte, who she had worked with previously. Together they will start to dredge up secrets from the past . . . Throughout the novel Turner moves between the perspectives of Cassie and Flyte. While I took to Cassie immediately as a character, it has taken longer for me to warm to Flyte; of whom Cassie said when contemplating the possibility of dating her that ‘Phyllida Flyte was clearly so deep in the closet she could see Narnia.’ Overall, I found ‘Case Sensitive’ an engaging read that gave me plenty of ‘edge of the seat’ moments. I have enjoyed all of the books in the series and feel that it is going from strength to strength. I will note that some of the details are a bit grisly but that’s to be expected in forensic crime fiction, especially one that focuses on autopsies. I always appreciate that Turner conveys Cassie’s deep respect for the dead and her desire to give them a voice. I have been enthusiastically recommending this series to my friends who enjoy crime fiction and can hardly wait for Book 4. It’s clear from the accolades from various authors that I am not alone in loving the Cassie Raven books.

This is an interesting book. I hadn’t read the previous books, but like the look of the cover and blurb. I enjoyed the story and pace of the book. This book is about the relationships of the characters as much as anything. Butbalso touches on getting joy from your job, dealing with the dead respectively, and a police murder investigation. Lots of researching has been undertaken by the author which adds real authenticity. Thank you to Bonnier Books and NetGalley for the ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

Coming a bit late to this series I can see already I'll have fun catching up with books 1 and 2. Cassie Raven is a mortuary technician with a very special talent - she can hear whispers from the dead. Or she used to be able to, at the start of this book her ability has apparently dried up, leaving her struggling rather with her profession as well as with personal issues (her relationship with her father, and whether or not she should be dating one of the pathologists from the morgue). Set in Camden Town, where Cassie lives in a boat on the canal, the story is high on atmosphere. This is a slightly rowdy part of London, the centre for a thriving alternative scene but also with pockets of deep poverty, and ongoing gentrification. Turner makes good use of this, peopling the story with intriguing characters and settings for what is basically the eruption of a decade-old murder mystery into the present day. And it's a solidly based detective mystery - while there is a hint of the supernatural, this isn't allowed to overshadow the story: Cassie spends much of the book doubting that her ability ever was real, and even when it does work, it only gives her hint about what happened - as I said, the detective work here is at the centre of things and the truth will be revealed through rigorous sleuthing. While that is not all by the police, Cassie does have a partner there in unravelling things - DS Phyllida Flyte, also I think a returning character to this series. The chapters are alternately written form Felt's and Cassie's point of view, so allowing us to see what each woman is thinking about the other - useful because while they spar pretty dramatically with one another there is a definite will-they, won't-they element between the contrasting pair. Flyte is an interesting and well-drawn character, an incomer form leafy Winchester to North London and to the Met and - because of this and because she's a woman - something of an outsider in the cliquey Major Crime team. Many of the undercurrents of this book are about how she deals with that and the threats and problems to be suffered in a far from reconstructed section of the Met Police - something countless recent real events support. Flyte also has her own problems, she's mourning a stillborn child and has a frosty relationship with her mum and with her ex. Like Cassie, she, too, faces romantic dilemmas: there;'s a definite sense that both women are trying to find away forward. The crime plot at the heart of the book is twisty and well done, with surprises to the very end. There are, of course, Secrets to be revealed but they aren't always what you'd expect. I enjoyed the balance between the two sides - professional and personal - here and, like real life, loses ends are left on both fronts. I look forward to seeing where they will lead Cassie and Phyllida in future books.

This is the third outing for the goth mortuary technician Cassie Raven, a breath of fresh air in the world of crime novels. Cassie was a teenage rebel who has lived in squats, dabbled with drink and drugs and dropped out of formal education until she finds a mentor who encourages her to go to evening classes, leading to her much-loved job assisting with post mortems. Her affinity with the dead extends not just to the dignity she accords them and her sympathetic dealings with the loved ones left behind, but to a spiritual connection that means she sometimes hears them “speak” briefly to her about the causes of death. Her past means that she is at ease with the most impoverished and overlooked members of the community, who often have information ignored by formal investigations. In this book, Cassie is living in a houseboat on the canal in Camden when a knocking noise at the hull alerts her to the presence of a man’s body in the water, which isn’t quickly identified and seems to have decayed more than expected in the time. She begins to explore what might have happened, with the help of the dedicated but conventional police officer Phyllida Flyte, and together they begin to piece together the mystery of what happened. Both Cassie and Phyllida are interesting characters, and we find out more of their back stories here. I particularly enjoyed the thread featuring Cassie’s attempts to reconnect with a family member, and the lack of a slick “happy ending” for them that a less skilled writer might have embraced. She is authentic and nuanced, and I can’t help liking her. Phyllida is less convincing, and I found myself getting a bit irritated by their sexual frisson which is obviously going to continue in a “ will they, won’t they” manner through the series. That is just nit-picking though, because overall this was an intriguing and intelligent mystery that kept me reading, and I look forward to Cassie’s future cases.