Last year, the English crime author Andrew Lowe began a new series of dark police procedurals with The Whispering Bones. Introducing the somewhat aging DCI Lennox and his young underling DC Blackwood, Lowe added to his already successful Jake Sawyer thriller series. Only this time, the stories are set on the northern fringes of London – a shadow, anonymous swathe of suburbia, instead of the rainy and grimy North of England trodden by Sawyer.
As book two in the Lennox and Blackwood series opens, Olivia Blackwood is awkwardly accepting an award for her service on the case outlined in The Whispering Bones, while Lennox tries to reorientate himself after those harrowing events.
The Vanishing Room looks set to give them an equally traumatic experience. An eight-year-old boy has gone missing from a housing estate and the two detectives find themselves hunting for a methodical culprit. Without giving too much away, further clues suggest they have 48 hours to find the child, or it’s lights out.
There’s a chilling, gothic feel to Lowe’s writing here – perhaps even a touch of horror, although this is firmly a mystery with a procedural basis, rather than anything leaning towards the supernatural. The frightening aspects of the case are given added texture by the personalities of Lennox and Blackwood themselves. Each is dealing with something that shapes many aspects of their work.
In Lennox’s case, it’s instances of memory loss. He still has plenty of experience and insight to offer, but occasionally his thoughts drift away from him. Meanwhile, Blackwood is neurodivergent. She has ADHD and, while she is quite self-aware around this issue, she has a tendency to deviate from protocol and rub peers the wrong way. If you enjoy Tim Sullivan’s George Cross novels, this series is also worth a look for its sensitive handling of neurodivergence.
From a crazed killer who drains victims of their blood in the first novel, we move to a cold, calculated and meticulous operator in The Vanishing Room. Someone who goes to the effort of making things just so, and is happy to pull the strings of Lennox and Blackwood like puppets – observing from afar.
The Vanishing Room comes out on 27 August 2026, in its vibrant magenta jacket, from Vinci Books. Below you’ll find our images from the crime scene, so to speak, and you’re free to investigate them in detail, plus our Amazon buttons so you can order a copy.
