Have you heard of the novelist Joy Ellis? I discovered her and her Matt Bollard series by a happy coincidence and am now devouring her Nikki Galena Series of books.
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| Joy Ellis - Nikki Galena Series of Books |
Joy Ellis writes police murder mysteries based in England's Fenlands which provides a really atmospheric background to the novels and makes me really want to visit some of the desolate villages of the Fen and photograph them .... although there does seem to be a few too many murders occurring!
Now at the time of writing, there are 13 Nikki Galena books and I have read 8 of them with number 9 waiting for me on my Kindle. I recommend reading these books in order as you build up relationships with the members of Nikki's team and understand their backstories that way.
In the first book, we meet a pretty angry, hostile DI Nikki Galena and are introduced to her new DS Joseph Easter who she really didn't want to work with. As the book evolves we see that they actually make a great team and we also get to meet the other members of her team based in Greensborough.
I actually downloaded books 1-5 as a book set on my Kindle and I really recommend doing that as some of the threads, especially that of a certain villain continue throughout these books. If you have enough of Inspector Nik and her crew by this time you will at least rest easy knowing certain things have reached a conclusion.
Personally, I wanted to continue so I downloaded book 6, Captive on the Fens. This book introduced us to a new character and a totally unexpected twist that relates to an existing character which really led to a very neat transition of team members in the next book.
I then downloaded another set and this was for books 7-9.
I totally recommend getting book sets because you really don't want to stop at just one book with these characters. I feel like it's watching one of your favourite tv shows and you want to tune in each week to see how they're going - that's how good Joy Ellis is at creating characters.
I was able to download all of these books for free as part of my Kindle Unlimited membership which I have mentioned before and thoroughly recommend.
If you enjoy shows like Midsommer Murders and Vera and you also enjoy reading then I think you'll love this series of books by Joy Ellis. Joy Ellis is compared to Peter May, J M Dalgliesh and Ann Cleeves (the author of Vera - totally agree with this comparison) and was nominated for Crime and Thriller Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2021 for The Patient Man. This book is part of her Jackman & Evans series which is next on my list to read after I finish all of the Nikki Galena books.
Have you read any Joy Ellis books?
