A Patient Fury: Sarah Ward (DC Childs mystery) - Hardcover

Family loyalties weave an intricate plot in this novel. Sarah Ward plays her hand subtly, never going over the top with her descriptions, and sensitively handling some tough subjects. The characters are fascinating, rounded and believable, and every time you think you have the plot sorted, it slips through your fingers like water. (Barbara Copperthwaite)

An utter triumph (Crimeworm)

The mystery of who did what to whom is kept from the reader until the very last page, in what I'd call a typical Karin Fossum ending, you are left satisfied and yet wanting more. I always enjoy my time in Bampton and I can't wait to find out what happens next with our Bampton police squad. (Eurocrime)

Like Ann Cleeves, Ward infuses a degree of Scandinavian chilliness into her resolutely English scenarios, and has a gift for the macabre image - such as a burning body, strung from a ceiling, which turns slowly to face those who have discovered it.. (Barry Forshaw Guardian)

A quietly powerful rural procedural develops that delves deep into the most disturbed niches of the psyche (The Times Crime Club)

The Derbyshire countryside is beautifully evoked as the plot unfolds, revealing that the victims' past had a large part to play in their fate and that old jealousies can cast long shadows.
A crime reviewer herself, Ward's confidence is growing, making Childs a modern police heroine to cherish

(Geoffrey Wansell Daily Mail)

Crime fans are spoiled for choice these days. But sometimes, what a devoted crime reader wants isn't anything too fancy. Sometimes, what we want is a good, solid police procedural, preferably set somewhere interesting, preferably with a troubled, renegade investigator who refuses to listen when their boss tells them to leave an avenue of investigation alone. And in Sarah Ward's A Patient Fury, that's exactly what we get (Observer 'Thriller of the Month')

When Detective Constable Connie Childs is dragged from her bed to the fire-wrecked property on Cross Farm Lane she knows as she steps from the car that this house contains death. Three bodies discovered - a family obliterated - their deaths all seem to point to one conclusion: One mother, one murderer. But D.C. Childs, determined as ever to discover the truth behind the tragedy, realises it is the fourth body - the one they cannot find - that holds the key to the mystery at Cross Farm Lane. What Connie Childs fails to spot is that her determination to unmask the real murderer might cost her more than her health - this time she could lose the thing she cares about most: her career.