Well this is certainly the start of something brilliant - a new detective series - and what a delight she is.
The plot is as gruesome as it sounds from the blurb, with a madman abducting mothers and children and keeping them in woodland graves. Ugh just writing that gives me the chills. In fact from the first chapter this left me decidedly unnerved, feeding off the terror confronting Julie Hubbard. Interweaved with this plot is the threat emanating from her despicable husband, Keith, and the stalking of his lawyer, Annabel Leigh-Matthews. All these serve to make Mummy's Favourite an exciting and action-packed read.
Leaving the plot aside though comes the characters. We are promised another novel by Sarah Flint in spring 2017, and I for one am certainly gladdened by this information. The characters of those abducted are interesting enough, but they do play a backseat to the great DC Charlotte 'Charlie' Stafford. She is one of the more interesting detectives to have been introduced in a good few years. I liked how our first introduction to her is of her being late for work rather than her as some crack detective. The relationship between her and DI Geoffrey Hunter also promises to develop into something very interesting, though I might have preferred it if it could have held some romantic promise! The rest of the task force, Paul, Colin, Sabira, Naz and Bet, were also introduced well, but they certainly hold the promise of being developed at a greater depth in future books.
None of what I've just said should be taken as this is just a good introductory novel though, it isn't, it's a great one.
My one slight negative is I don't think there was any need to put the title actually in the novel. It was a natural sentence to say, but I felt it was shoehorned in when it wasn't necessary. I do wonder now if that is one of my own personal pet peeves when reading - the title making it in. Possibly. Probably! Anyway that made it lose its way ever so slightly, I could have lost that whole 'this is why I've done it' section in fact.
That aside, I really do think that this is a series to add to the list of must-buys in future. A great read.
