Varietats: Burning Secrets by Ruth Sutton

It’s the spring of 2001 and Foot & Mouth disease is raging across Cumbria.

Twelve-year-old Helen Heslop is forced to leave her family farm and move in with relatives in a nearby town because the strict quarantine means she can’t travel back and forth to school in case she inadvertently helps spread the disease.

As the authorities and the local farming communities try desperately to contain the outbreak, tensions run high and everyone’s emotions are close to the surface. And then Helen disappears.

The police search expands all over the northwest coast where farms are barricaded and farming families have been plunged into chaos - not least the Hislop family, where potentially explosive fault lines are exposed.

Under the strain tensions build inside the police team too, where local DC Maureen Pritchard is caught between old school DI Bell and new broom DS Anna Penrose.

Will Helen survive? And can life for the Heslop family ever be the same, once burning secrets are discovered and old scores settled?

This had been a claustrophobic read full of mystery and secrets, centred during the foot and mouth epidemic in UK in 2001, a child has been missing and everyone knows more than they are telling. Will the police find Helen before is too late?
I have to say that this had been a dark story, I didn't know what was the foot and mouth epidemic since I started reading this book, I was only 9 when it happened, so I didn't know the pressure, the control and fear that the epidemic will spread through the animals everyone was living. And, in this case I can not imagine the situation the family had to live, missing one daughter and the pressure to losing everything that they have... really complicated. But let me say that while you are reading the story you could feel the pressure, despair and fear in your skin.

The two female detectives of the case were quite interesting too, on one side there's DS Anna Penrose, this will be the first case she will be leading and in a new county, not an easy one... And she is not an easy woman and I am not sure if I like her direct way to act, too aggressive, doesn't seem to respect anyone.

On the other hand, we have DC Maureen Pritchard, an older detective that has to accept that is being lead for someone much younger and with less experience than her. Of course they relation it will not be easy, but if they want to discover the truth they will have to work together, easy said than done!

Ruth is a very independent person, which – like many things – is good up to a point, but can get tricky sometimes. She lives in a very beautiful place, but it’s a long way to a cinema, or a big supermarket, and if the time comes when she can’t or doesn’t want to drive, she’ll have to move as there’s no public transport. She qualifies for a bus pass, but there aren’t any buses. Her daughter and her family live quite close by, and she loves to see her two grandchildren. After decades on her own, she has a partner whom she loves. They each have their own house, 40 minutes apart, and this life style suits them both. Ruth wrote her first novel after she was 60.

In addition, Ruth has self-published a trilogy entitled Between the Mountains and the Sea; A Good Liar tells the story of Jessie who risks career and independence with a love affair, whilst her secret past draws ever closer. Forgiven is set among the coal mines and fells of the Cumberland coast.

Jessie’s struggle for happiness continues. Fallout features the nuclear disaster at Windscale, which brings a compelling stranger into Jessie’s world.

Burning Secrets by Ruth Sutton - Blog Tour