Mostly Murders

How long would it take them to find the body?

Ad/PR/Patrocinado. Book review of Deep Cut by R.K. Lynott. Many thanks to R.K. Lynott for this ARC. Deep Cut releases today, Sep 29, 2026.

If you’ve followed the DI Ryan Hale series so far, this is an absolute must-read, as this is the book that tells us what really happened to Jamie, Ryan’s wife, who disappeared twelve years ago.

Continuing straight from where Empty Nest, book 3 in the series ended, Ryan and his team are investigating the disappearance of Sergeant Claire Farrows, and it quickly becomes clear that this case is directly connected to Jamie’s disappearance all those years ago, and that someone has a personal interest in tormenting Ryan and will go to any lengths to achieve their goal.

R. K. Lynott has a real talent for pacing her novels. Deep Cut is fast-paced enough to never risk becoming boring or repetitive, but not too fast, allowing the reader to savour the details and the occasional banter and humour between the members of Ryan’s team.

The balance between light-hearted and cozy and dark and suspenseful is once again achieved beautifully as the novel moves effortlessly from Winston the corgi’s attempted, and often successful, food thefts, and Digit and Cal’s friendly banter to chilling insights into the mind of a psychotic murderer, the heavy trauma of Jamie’s disappearance and the suffering of victims who are let down by a system allowing rich and powerful men to walk free regardless of their crimes.

If you are looking for a police procedural/crime thriller bridging the gap between cozy and dark, with a strong lead character backed by a wonderfully eccentric team with a very human feel, this is it. Ryan Hale is stubborn, determined, dangerously impulsive and driven by his own inner moral compass, always on the side of the victim and never putting rules and regulations over empathy and human decency.

I highly recommend the whole DI Ryan Hale series. If you’re new to the series, I suggest that you begin with book 1, Bury the Truth, and go through the books in order so you get a complete picture of the overarching story about Jamie and feel the full impact of the revelations of her fate in Deep Cut.

Police procedural – Crime thriller