Blood Will Out by Jill Downie

If ever a book cover failed to match the book, the cover for this book provides a perfect example.  What--you thought this was a book about vampires?

Not so.  Although there is an author writing a play about vampires, vampires are not the subject of the book.  

Blood Will Out: a Moretti and Falla  Mystery is a mystery set in Guernsey in the Channel Islands and is the third in this mystery series.

Detective Inspector Ed Moretti and Detective Sergeant Liz Falla are partners whose differing personalities mesh in a way that allows them to work well together.  When an island hermit is found dead in an apparent suicide, Moretti notes some inconsistencies; the death is either an assisted suicide (as the hermit could not have managed it on his own) or a murder.

In the meantime, there is a brouhaha about the author, Hugo Shawcross, who is writing a play about vampires and offends a member of the theatrical group that plans to stage the show.  When Shawcross is attacked and barely survives, an attempted murder investigation begins that involves some of the island's most prestigious families.

Interesting characters, long buried secrets, and a great setting.  I will gladly read the first two in this series.

Read in March; review scheduled for August.

NetGalley/Dundurn

Mystery.  Aug.  25, 2014.  print version:  400 pages.