Cut Short by Leigh Russell

"She died maybe a day before she entered the water. And she was thrown in the water naked," Millard repeated.
~~Page 233

Title: Cut Short
Author: Leigh Russell
ISBN: 978-1842433546
Publisher: No Exit/2009
Pages: 352

DI Geraldine Steel has been recently promoted and arrives in the town of Woolsmarsh with a lot of baggage. As soon as she arrives, she is called to investigate in Lyceum Park where a body has just been found in the bushes. The victim is Angela Waters, a woman in her early 20′s with long blond hair.  She gets headlong into the case and it soon becomes obvious that the first strangled victim will not be the last, so it's a race against time.  

Geraldine Steel, is part of a team and not the leader. DI Steel does not enjoy a simple domestic life but has various problems of her own. DI Steel is assigned to listen to the messages from the public responding to the appeal.  Nothing offered appears to have any relevance to the murder.  To add to Geraldine’s problems,  she is being stalked by someone whose appearance is vaguely familiar.  She is on the fast promotion track, a route that encourages jealousy and resentment.  She is too new to the town and to the Murder Investigation Unit to know if the stalker is someone from her personal life or someone who wants to unsettle her in her professional life.

This is not a really a whodunnit. We get to know the killer as he hides the body of the first victim and we are let inside his head, which isn't a good place to be. 

The strengths of this novel lie in the author's powerful ability to get you up into the story and produce a cast of cameo characters that feel so real.  The chapters are short and we may not dwell upon each victim's family or each witness's circumstances, but what we get is enough to feel the reality of a police investigation.