Book Review: Their Silent Graves

Two teenage girls en route to a Halloween party through a dense woodland stumble upon something far more gruesome in what's the start of a serial killer mystery from Worcestershire-based author Carla Kovach. The perpetrator also seems to be strangely obsessed with DI Gina Harte, who is leading the investigation, sending her letters alluding to events from a past she would rather not revisit, forcing her to confront the truth head on, and dot the i's and cross the t's to get to the bottom of it all. At its core, Their Silent Graves is all about ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations and their past refusing to stay buried, instead creeping and catching up to them in mysterious ways, good and bad. As a procedural, Kovach's story and inconsistent pacing leaves a lot to be desired, but she has better success building a palpable sense of dread around mundane situations.