There was a mix of characters.. you're usual country folk, the single mum and her daughter.. the criminal tough guys and of course.. the young retired detective [Jake] who has never experienced country life before. I really enjoyed getting to know him, and I hope we will be seeing our off the books detective more in the future. To say there wasn't a huge number of characters, the author did a great job at bringing them life and fulfilling the realistic sense of community you get in a small village. Talking about putting together his first fiction crime novel, Stig - who co-presents the Monday to Thursday breakfast show on Times Radio with Aasmah Mir - explained: “I wrote the whole thing before considering publishing it, just for the joy of it really. I wrote 2000 words a day, every lunchtime and afternoon. I wrote it after I finished the radio.

In September 2001, Abell joined the Press Complaints Commission as a complaints officer; he completed other roles at the PCC including press officer, assistant director and deputy director before being appointed Director of the PCC on 19 December 2010. In August 2013, Abell joined The Sun as managing editor, his role until the end of April 2016. It is quite a journey to get to his new home and finds that there is no shower or bathroom but the nearby lake to wash in and the only entertainment he has is the several bookcases of books mainly crime novels and classical music to entertain him. But he grows accustomed to his surroundings and the new way of life. However I would be interested to read another novel by the author, to see how his writing develops in the future. When the bones of a young woman turn up during a treasure hunt, it is among these people that Jake will have to seek for answers. Strangers at first, he and the reader will gradually come to know them, to see their connections to each other – the loves and jealousies, the kindnesses and brutalities, the secrets and the fears. The depth of the characterisation is wonderful, layer built on layer. Many of the characters are eccentric, but none are caricatured – I found each one credible in his or her own life, seeing how the claustrophobia of isolation affects both individuals and community.

From August 2014, the show was co-presented by Abell and LBC's Petrie Hosken. In January 2015, he was given his own show from 8 am to 10 am on Sundays. From April 2016, Abell moved to the afternoon slot on Sundays of 3 pm to 6 pm. I really enjoyed Death Under A Little Sky, it is a very accomplished well written thriller and was refreshingly different to the norm.

The village has very little. A general store, which doubles as a bar. A church, but no vicar. No school and not much of anything else, while Jake's new house has a magnificent library and a lake, but no bathroom or washing machine. Gradually, he begins to get to know his surroundings and the few locals. Livia, the local vet, Dr Peter, an elderly biologist, Sarah at 'The Jolly Nook,' and a host of vaguely hostile, insular locals, mainly consisting of recalcitrant matrons and aggressive farmhands. In March 2014, Abell started co-presenting a show on LBC Radio alongside Sky News television presenter Kay Burley from 8am to 11am on Sundays. Burley was the main presenter while Abell reviewed the papers and added political comment. It’s told in the third person but almost entirely from Jake’s perspective. There is a prologue that is dark, atmospheric and intriguing, and I was immediately hooked. As a woman stands atop a flight of crumbling stairs, the reader is swept round the neighbourhood, peering through the windows at the various inhabitants… Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Yeah, the prose was so purple it was nearly eggplant. And speaking of which, the romantic subplot (main plot, more like) was bad. Insta-romance between paper thin characters that only served to give the author the opportunity to describe her milky breasts and his pubic hair. No, really.Jake himself is at the centre and in a sense the whole book is a character study of him, seeing how he retreats gratefully from a world that has become difficult for him, embracing the isolation absolutely but also wondering if this is a temporary healing process or how he wants to live for ever. He is damaged, but so much more authentically than the drunken angst-ridden detectives who bore their way through contemporary crime fiction. Introspective and aware of his own emotional state, he is also empathetic and kind, and those qualities mean that he gradually starts making tentative connections of his own. And he finds in himself a love of nature, of the joy of growing his own food and making things from wood, and of watching the weather and the seasons; all of which Abell writes about beautifully.

I do think this was more of a cosy thriller compared to the more edge of your seat thriller. However, that didn't take away my enjoyment of the book.

Jake who is recently separated leaves the bright lights and bustle of London to move into his late Uncles house in the country. An ex detective, Jake wants a quiet life away from the stress of the job and to re-evaluate his life after his marriage has failed. And it’s just a giant, beautiful farmhouse with a lake that he can swim in, and land he can run around. He can do a five-mile run every day, always on his own land. And he then gets drawn into a little community where a crime happens, and he tries to solve it. But quite a lot of it is all about, ‘What would it be like if you could give it all up, get away from the technology, close your door for once, rather than leaving it open?’ And that's the heart of the novel.” I LOVED this. I found it totally immersive, and couldn’t wait to squeeze some time from my day to return to it. The writing is very classy and the conclusion came as a surprise, which is always a treat’ Ann Cleeves But then, what starts as a fun village treasure hunt turns deadly, when a young woman’s bones are discovered. And Jake is thrust once again into the role of detective, as he tries to unearth a dangerous killer in this most unlikely of settings Het nieuwe leven bevalt Jake prima en hij weet zich goed te vermaken zonder alle luxe van zijn leven in London. Dit zorgzame leven verandert alsl hij tijdens een jaarlijkse speurtocht een tas met menselijk botten vindt.

The plot is rather less convincingly done, in that it disappears for long stretches while we follow Jake’s progress in adapting to his new life. Obvious investigative avenues are left neglected both by Jake and, even less credibly, by the local police, who seem quite happy to leave the bulk of the job to Jake. However, the story underlying the plot is both dark and interesting. The bones, we soon learn, belonged to a young farmgirl, whose status as both foreigner and incomer left her isolated even within the general isolation. But her youth, friendliness and beauty caused her to become an object of attraction, even obsession, for several of the men in this woman-starved community. Is this why she died? Or did she inadvertently learn a secret that was dangerous to someone? Or did she, as the original inquest decided, simply slip and fall to her death? And why is someone so determined to have her death reinvestigated? Sometimes the sound of his own voice surprises him, scraped from his throat, out of use like an old piece of machinery pulled from storage." We have a love interest as well that bulks the book out and some very stereotypical nasty villager types. The isolated setting worked well, although it was fairly unbelievable that you could have a whole house and modern extension, with some modern fittings, without any kind of access road or lane. There seemed to be no issue with vehicles travelling across anybody’s land (and the locals are hardly amenable.) Jake is an intriguing and very likeable and unconventional central protagonist and equally likeable is Livia the rural vet. The dialogue between them and other characters in the locality is smart and feels natural. You got a good mixture of characters from the taciturn to the dodgy to the somewhat aggressive which adds to the atmosphere.Stig Abell is a successful and well-known British journalist and this is his first venture into fiction. He has apparently been a fan of crime fiction since his pre-teen years, having followed the same trajectory as so many of us have, via Holmes, Christie, Sayers, etc., and then on to contemporary crime. I wondered if this was going to be a kind of homage to the golden age authors he clearly reveres, but although he references many of them entertainingly, his style is very much his own. And he writes like a dream, making this pure pleasure to read (despite being in the present tense) with a distinctly literary feel.