Mirror Lake is a picturesque place that lies on the border between Wales and England. Famed Welsh singer Rhys Lloyd – was there ever a more Welsh name? – has joined hands with investor Jonty to build a luxury development on the English side. Five tall, luxurious lodges rise up from the shore, irking the townspeople of Cwm Coed, which lies on the Welsh side. The development’s inhabitants are both implausibly wealthy as well as English; two good reasons to hate them. To try and build bridges, the lodge owners have thrown a lavish New Year’s party, which goes about as well as planned: everyone gets stupidly drunk, and by the end of the night, Rhys’s corpse is found floating in the lake. Welsh officer Ffion and English cop Leo try to find out who killed him, and why, but soon discover that almost everyone had a reason to want Rhys dead.
My expectations for this novel were fairly low; I’ve read one of Mackintosh’s books before, and it managed to be both bland and over the top at the same time (high drama can be really tedious if it’s not handled right). Fortunately, I ended up enjoying this book more than I thought I would. Many authors think the best way to avoid a predictable ending is by making it as outlandish as possible, and Mackintosh avoids these pitfalls; the whodunnit feels believable, though in fairness it is one of those books where there are several endings, and they drag a little.
We see the story in flashback through the eyes of almost everyone involved in the story, which can be a little confusing; thankfully, there’s a helpful map at the start of the book. The current-day events are from the perspective of Ffion and Leo, who meet in a pub on New Year’s Eve, have a tryst, and then walk into each other at the police station the next morning. It is supremely awkward and it adds a fun little twist; they can’t make up their minds on whether they like each other or not. The only think I didn’t like about it is a clumsily executed side plot about Leo’s custody issues; I know cops aren’t exactly legal scholars, but I refuse to believe a police officer would be that naive. But that’s a minor quibble; his character could have had more depth than he does now, but he manages to not be annoying and that’s more than most authors achieve.
Ffion, on the other hand, is a bit of a spitfire; she largely works on her own, unsupervised, because Wales is sparsely populated and her boss works an hour’s drive away. I wasn’t sure about the high drama of her back story; it felt a bit over the top at times, and frankly I felt it didn’t fit the rest of the novel. It could have been handled in a more subdued way; that would fit the character a lot better. Barring that, Ffion has got moxie. This book is part one in a two-part series (considering these books are fairly new, I expect more have been planned) and I liked her enough to want to read the next installment, particularly now that the drama has gotten out of the way.
Mackintosh does a fair job of portraying the characters that occupy the town and the lodge; some, like influencer Ashley, are flat pastiches, but most of them are interesting without being caricatures. It lacks the subtlety of authors like Tana French or Jane Harper, but all in all this is a fun murder mystery with a solid plot, decent characters, and a slightly sardonic undertone that I enjoyed very much.