The Whitby Murders features DCI Jim Oldroyd, who is the main police detective in all the Yorkshire Muder Mystery series by J. R. Ellis. I reviewed #4 in the series, The Royal Baths Murder, in 2019. The audiobook is again performed by Michael Page, who hams it up a little, which works well. 

The novel starts out in the northern UK town of Whitby, during their Goth Weekend. There’s a murder in a role playing game in an “escape room.” It’s a group of younger people, trying to solve a puzzle before “Dracula” catches them. Fortunately the vampire references are kept to a minimum. 

One of the group is Louise Oldroyd, daughter of Jim. During the game, it seems that a boyfriend killed his girlfriend in a fit of anger, but Louise can’t believe that makes any sense, and she presses her father to investigate further. 

Jim is protective of his daughter, and is keen to get involved. He agrees that the story doesn’t add up, and when he does some digging, he finds all sorts of oddities. 

The novel has quite a few twists in it, and we get a good mixture of police procedural and personal elements. It doesn’t require a great deal of attention, but it is satisfying. There is a depiction of homicidal derangement which is rather unconvincing though. 

Christian Perring is editor of Metapsychology Online.

Categories: Fiction

Keywords: detective fiction, murder mystery