I really loved this installment of the DC Morgan series. Mackintosh was firing on all cylinders. Also the first few pages of the book show the location of the house, families who live there and I was happy as a clam feeling like I was getting a modern Agatha Christie. We also get to see Ffion and Leo fully together in this one and everyone knows. I liked that their relationship is out in the open and it’s a big part of the story (Ffion finally meeting Leo’s son) and Leo getting Ffion more comfortable with the idea of being together long-term.
Other People’s Houses has Ffion investigating how a woman ended up dead in a kayak in Wales. Leo is involved with a case investigating robberies in Cheshire at a high end area called The Hill. Both of the cases has Ffion and Leo doing a great job of interviewing a robust cast of characters, but also dealing with some things politically at work as well. Ffion and George (we met in the last book) seem to be working better together, but there are still some issues going on there. Leo is bored with the burglary cases, and finds himself getting interested in a cold case being re-looked at since Ffion is a fan of a podcast looking at the same case.
With Ffion and Leo figuring out their relationship and dealing with their respective cases you would think the book would be slow but it was not. We get insight into both Ffion and Leo per usual, but Mackintosh also gives us the POV of Leo’s ex wife Allie (and all of her glorious mess) as well as some excerpts from a true crime podcast re-investigating a cold case murder of two people decades ago. I loved Ffion though at times you do want to tell her to just talk to Leo for crying out loud cause she will make your head hurt. I also loved that we still have smelly and untrainable Dave the dog in this one too.
I loved the setting of the book and the characters we get to meet living in houses that many of us would drool over.
The ending was a surprise and I liked how it wrapped things up and even showed how a next book could work. Considering that I figured very early on who done it in the last book in the series, I did think how all was revealed in this one was brilliantly done.
