Body of Lies by Sarah Bailey

Publisher's Synopsis

A car crash victim clings to life and is rushed to hospital but can't be saved. Hours later, her corpse is stolen from the morgue. No one knows who the dead woman was or why her body was taken.

Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is back in her hometown of Smithson on maternity leave when the bizarre incident occurs. She is intrigued by the case but reluctant to get involved, despite the urging of her journalist friend Candy Fyfe. But in the days after the body goes missing, the town is rocked by another shocking crime and Gemma can't resist joining the investigation.

Candy and Gemma follow the clues the dead woman left behind. As they attempt to discover the identity of the missing woman, Gemma uncovers devastating secrets about the people she thought she knew best. The closer Gemma gets to the truth, the more danger she is in. She desperately needs to confide in someone—but is there anyone she can trust?

My Review of Body of Lies by Sarah Bailey

The new Gemma Woodstock police procedural, the 4th in the series, begins as Gemma’s off work on maternity leave after the birth of daughter Scarlett. But while she’s supposed to be taking it easy, events conspire to draw her back to work and into a strange mystery that has everyone perplexed. 

A high speed car accident outside the town of Smithson results in a woman brought into the hospital in a critical condition. After she succumbs to her injuries her body is placed in the morgue pending further examination.

But before the examination can take place the hospital experiences a power failure that precedes a fire alarm. Gemma happens to be at the hospital at the time, visiting her father who has had a heart attack. Just as she’s trying to work out what’s happened, another alarm is raised - the body in the morgue has been taken.

Officially, Gemma is on leave, but she can’t stop herself from being drawn into the investigation, much to the annoyance of the detective in charge, DS Julian Everett. Given that the unit is currently short-staffed, her boss, Chief Inspector Ken Jones, a man she has worked with for years and only refers to as Jonesy, gives her the green light to investigate in parallel to the official team’s work. An odd arrangement and one that you can tell is sure to cause ructions.

And this is the thing with the Gemma Woodstock character, you’re either gonna love her or hate her. I found her to be exasperating. Overly judgemental, resentful and willingly abrasive towards her colleagues, she’s the opposite of a team player and, in highly hypocritical fashion, derides others when she senses it in them. As needy and insecure as she comes across in the course of this book, her behaviour has actually improved from the way she’s acted in the earlier three books. It’s a good thing she’s got a strong instinct for getting to the bottom of crimes.

Along with her reporter friend Candy Fyfe, Gemma manages to squirm her way to a position where she can pick up vital information about the case. Together they start to put a few pieces together, interview a few people and try to come up with an idea of who the woman might have been and why she was driving so dangerously. And then another person is found dead and that’s when the case really starts to take off - as does the friction between Gemma and Everett.

Now, normally I can’t stand police procedurals where the investigation is hampered by the in-fighting amongst the law enforcement officers. And, to be sure, there’s a lot of that going on here. But the fact is, the insecurities of Gemma, the aloof dismissiveness of Everett and the timid behaviour of Minnie, a constable working the case, all play an important role in the outcome of this mystery. It’s all quite well put together, creates an emotional response for the reader to latch onto and has some implications for the nature of the crimes being investigated.

The murder plot itself is quite a tangled one, complicated by more than one astounding twist as well as the occasional blindside that had just about everyone reeling. With hints of a possible cult involvement, high level scientific genetic research and constant reminders of tragic past events, there’s rich fodder for this case to go in any direction.

I must say I had quite a lot of trouble working out the size of the (fictional) town of Smithson, New South Wales. Sometimes it seemed as though it was a small country town, while other times I had the impression it’s quite a sizable city. It seemed to be a short trip to get out onto deserted country roads while also proving to be a struggle to get through congested streets within town. Not only that I sensed that the Smithson Police Force, complete with a forensic team, was quite large for a country town. I just had difficulty positioning the place in my head and, consequently, I felt there was no sense of place.

When Body of Lies put the in-fighting away (and I got over the geographical bias of Smithson) and got down to the business of solving the crimes that were presented to the Smithson police, the story flowed more evenly. From a slow, plodding start, the pace picked up to deliver an exciting climax which answered many questions but still left me scratching my head a little.