Note: Thank you to NetGalley, Storm Publishing, and author Rachel Abbott for the advanced reader copy of this book. This review will also be posted on NetGalley. What follows is my unbiased review of the book.

I hadn’t read the three previous books in Rachel Abbott’s series about Cornwakk, U.K. Detective Stephanie King. I always feel a little hesitant when picking up a series in the middle, worrying that there will be things I don’t understand due to not having read earlier books in the series. I’m pleased to report that’s not the case with The Last Time I Saw Him. While there are a few things going on in Stephanie’s personal life that I might not be able to grasp fully, the story overall stands nicely on its own.

Stephanie is enjoying a weekend away with her mother at a posh boutique hotel. Due to her occupation as a detective, she enjoys observing people. More than once during dinner, her mother has to get her attention as she’s preoccupied with the other people in the hotel’s restaurant. When one of the guests is found murdered, it’s Stephanie’s observations from the weekend before that lead to more suspicions.

Ellis Cobain is a very wealthy man with a public persona as a philanthropist. However, behind the scenes, he is quite different. His first wife committed suicide. His second wife is staying with him at the hotel, but has so little self-confidence and such a poor self-image she is cowed by him. However, she is raising his three children from his first marriage and has grown to love them so she refuses to leave him despite his emotional abuse.

Juliette and Russell have taken a week away together to work on their relationship. Russell is a lawyer for a record company who is there to sign a singer to a contract with his label. Juliette has been hiding a secret from her husband which has fractured their relationship. When she thought her husband was falling out of love with her, she had an affair with Ellis Cobain, and now her life seems irrevocably intertwined with him and he doesn’t want to let her go. Nadia, the lounge singer, thinks this weekend might be her big break until she spots Ellis in the audience. They have a past together as well.

All three women seem to have a lot to lose. When Ellis turns up dead, it’s a matter of which one did it. As the events leading up to and after his murder are investigated and revealed, it’s not a cut-and-dried case for the investigators.

The Last Time I Saw Him was a really good psychological thriller that kept me guessing until the end. There were several times I thought I had it figured out, only for the investigation to take a very different turn. The characters are fleshed out very well. The three women all have a reason to want Ellis dead. At the same time, their personality traits make it hard to see them as murderers, even the one who seems to want it the most.

There’s not much character development of the investigative team. Stephanie is working with her husband, DCI Gus Brodie, on the case but there’s not much time for their relationship while investigating the murder. The other investigators are mostly in the background as the focus is on the three main suspects. Perhaps they have been developed more in earlier books, but I can’t be sure. I didn’t feel like anything was missing not knowing any background, though.

My biggest complaint is the setting itself. The murder actually takes place on Ellis’ yacht, anchored off the beachfront of this posh boutique hotel, yet the investigators take over the hotel for the investigation and there are no complaints about it. I would think other guests would complain about not having access to certain places, the owners might complain about how much this is costing them in revenue, and the staff having to cater to the detectives. It’s said more than once that the investigative team is being given coffee and food, but no mention of who is picking up the bill. Since the murder happened on the yacht, I can’t see them just going along with all of the detectives’ directions for the next week. Maybe that’s the American in me, though, and it’s much different in the U.K.

I did enjoy The Last Time I Saw Him and couldn’t wait to see how it ended. I was very surprised by the tragic way it ended. I would go back and read earlier books in the series as I think these are good characters and the author knows how to pen a psychological thriller with interesting characters.