The Blackbird - Tim Weaver

Reading Challenge Category: Free ARC from NetGalley

Official Blurb:

AN IMPOSSIBLE DISAPPEARANCE
Just before the crash, Cate and Aiden Gascoigne are recorded on CCTV.
The couple are laughing, happy.
Then their car plunges into a ninety-foot ravine.
Within seconds, the vehicle is an inferno - and the Gascoignes are trapped inside. But when fire crews arrive, they find something impossible.
The vehicle is empty.
Cate and Aiden have vanished.
A NOTORIOUS MURDER
Missing persons investigator David Raker is hired by Cate's family to find out what happened.
But this is a mystery that won't easily give up its secrets.
As Raker links Cate and Aiden's disappearance to an unsolved thirty-year-old murder, he doesn't realise he's set something terrible in motion . . .
WHAT CONNECTS THEM IS TERRIFYING
. . . and it will bring him and his ally, former detective Colm Healy, into the crosshairs of a killer like no other.

My Thoughts:

It’s been a while since I read the last book in this series, but it didn’t matter as I fell straight into this one and was comfortably reading before I knew it. There are a few references to the past, but it could be read as a standalone, and you wouldn’t feel like you were missing out on anything.
David Raker is investigating the disappearance of Cate and Aiden Gascoigne. What appears to be an impossible task turns out to be a perilous journey for everyone Raker cares about. Raker is a very straightforward character, he’s extremely good at his job, and he includes us, the reader, in every aspect of the investigation. You really feel as if you are along for the ride with him. The focus throughout the book is what is happening and the case he is looking into. Time isn’t wasted on what Raker looks like, not too much on his personal life, and it is what makes the books so clinical, but in a good way. You aren’t distracted by irrelevant information; you are on the case and running for your life alongside Raker.
I loved how all the intricacies of the story started to weave themselves together for the big reveal. It was all cleverly done and made for fascinating reading. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what would be the outcome or what had happened to everyone, but I was gripped when it all was exposed.
A fantastic read, and I really must find time to go back to book one and read the first ten books in the series. I’ve only read the eleventh, and this the twelfth book, so there is still so much of this character to enjoy.