Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths

A propulsive new thriller set in London featuring Detective Harbinder Kaur from the author of the No 1 bestselling Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries. A murderer hides in plain sight - in the police. DS Cassie Fitzgerald has a secret - but it's one she's deleted from her memory. In the 1990s when she was at school, she and her friends killed a fellow pupil. Thirty years later, Cassie is happily married and loves her job as a police officer. One day her husband persuades her to go to a school reunion and another ex-pupil, Garfield Rice, is found dead, supposedly from a drug overdose. As Garfield was an eminent MP and the investigation is high profile, it's headed by Cassie's new boss, DI Harbinder Kaur. The trouble is, Cassie can't shake the feeling that one of her old friends has killed again. Is Cassie right, or was Garfield murdered by one of his political cronies? It's in Cassie's interest to skew the investigation so that it looks like the latter and she seems to be succeeding. Until someone else is killed...

The blurb made me think that Cassie was actively trying to manipulate the investigation which would make for an interesting story. But that's not at all what happens. So ignore the blurb.

There's something about the "old classmates with a dark, common secret meet at a reunion many years later, and secrets start bubbling to the surface" trope that always leaves me with the assumption that I can't trust anyone. None of them. Not even myself. I really love unreliable narrators because it makes it difficult for me to "figure it all out" too early.

I did enjoy that part of Bleeding Heart Yard, but I also did have a hunch very early on that, sadly, turned out to be correct. Which means I "figured it all out" way too soon. In lieu of that the ending was disappointing. But I really do have an insanely correct hunch with these things, and I won't assume many people will figure this one out. Don't let my experience here hold you back.

Bonus points for a lesbian MC (Harbinder Kaur). There aren't many in this genre.