Dark Murder (DI Grecco #1)

Spoiler Alert – This is a review of the book – “Dark Murder” by Helen H. Durrant. This review consists of many spoilers about this book and tries to summarise it.

Disclaimer – This book should only be read by 13+ as it contains vivid descriptions of brutal murders and also has language that might be considered inappropriate by some. Viewers discretion is advised.

Hey Guys! I am back with another review for you guys. I don’t know why, but recently I have been quite interested in reading murder mysteries. I found this book from a series called the Detective Grecco Series, and I enjoyed it a lot! Before moving on to the summary, you should know that I have read all the Sherlock Holmes books, so this book didn’t fill me with adrenaline. I would consider this book as a crime thriller more than a murder mystery. But if you want to start reading crime thrillers, I suggest that you start with this as it is pretty interesting.

A detective called Stephen Grecco moves to the town of Oldston and becomes a DI in the Oldston CID. He is very good at his job and has a lot of experience in the crime industry. Unfortunately, his team isn’t as no-nonsense as him and according to him “need improvement”. He feels that they have a lot of potential but don’t take their job seriously.

A woman is found murdered on the canal banks with her eyes removed with a potato peeler. DI Grecco is on the case! Her name is Brenda Hirst and works in a travel company called Webb’s Travel. After doing some snooping, they found out that she was in a relationship with a rich car dealer who saw her last before her death. Another woman, Rose Donnely goes missing at the same time. Grecco feels that these both are connected somehow.

After a few days, they find a watch that belonged to Brenda Hirst with a local criminal called Geegee. He says that he found it on the canal bank and that he didn’t see anything else except a purse there. Sergeant Quickenden who knows Geegee says that Geegee only does small drug smuggling and robberies and would never get himself mixed up in murder. At this point, the two suspects are Geegee and Alex Reader, the car dealer.

With some work and a lot of plain old luck, they come across a neighbour of Rose Donnelly who says that Geegee and Rose actually were in a relationship and even had a kid, whom they treated badly. This child, Liam, has been missing from when he was very small. A new character enters the story at this point. He is a shady 19-year-old who is seen hanging out with Geegee at the local pub.

Here the suspicion on Geegee increases a lot because he denies knowing anything about Rose and even says that he doesn’t know who she is! DI Grecco’s intuitions turn out to be right when they find Rose Donnelly on the same canal bank with her eyes removed, and internals hanging out (this scene was pretty disgusting and the descriptions of the author made it more vivid) with a potato peeler besides her. The potato peeler has Brenda’s and Rose’s blood on it and has Geegee’s DNA on it. Because of this, Geegee is arrested and interviewed, where he says that he doesn’t know anything about this murder.

After this, the suspicion shifts onto the child sired by Geegee, Liam who wasn’t treated properly by both Rose and Geegee. Liam is nowhere to be found. Once again going to bring Geegee in, they find that Geegee is murdered and his eyes are removed.

After bringing the reader’s hopes to zero, the author presents us with a Eureka moments so often see in such stories. Here DI Grecco figures out who the murderer really was.

When the police surround the criminal’s office and move in, they find him working on something. He turns around and knows that he is busted. He calmly accepts that he killed all 3 of the victims and even shows Grecco their eyes, saying that he likes to collect trophies. When asked why he murdered them, he gives a pretty interesting answer. Want to know why and who that killer is? Go and buy the book “Dark Murder” by Helen H. Durrant, it will be worth every penny.

So that was the summary of the first book in the DI Grecco series and to be honest I kind of am annoyed by the vivid details the author has put in. I started the second book Dark Houses, which started with a woman burned and a hole made in her heart. This gave me goosebumps and I decided to complete this series after a few years like when I am 18 or something. Tell me down in the comments whether you like such murder summaries or should I stick to a little sane content.

If you liked this review, then consider subscribing to get notifications each time I post something new and comment down below, because I love to hear from you guys! Till then bye and I will see you in the next one. Peace.