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Hidden Norfolk #2

Bury Your Past

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A secret worth dying for is a secret worth killing…
When a violent storm uncovers the remains of an unknown young woman, long buried among the sand dunes, DI Tom Janssen must piece together fragmentary evidence to determine how she came to be there.

In the years she lay undiscovered several young women have disappeared and as the team work through the possibilities they come to an uncomfortable conclusion... is a serial killer stalking coastal Norfolk? Each missing person had a story. Each of them had enemies. Some were more dangerous than others...

They appealed to the same men, dabbled in the occult and came to the attention of powerful figures who would brush them aside without a second thought. But who had the motivation to kill? Where is the killer now? When the past is brought into the light will they be willing to ensure their closely guarded secrets remain buried?

To do so, they will have to kill again...

Set within the mysterious beauty of coastal Norfolk, this fast-paced British detective novel is a dark murder mystery with
a little humour and a touch of romance, one that will keep you guessing until the very end when the final shocking twist is revealed.


Bury Your Past is the second novel in a new series of thrillers from Amazon number one bestselling crime writer, JM Dalgliesh, the author of the Dark Yorkshire books. Perfect for fans of LJ Ross, JD Kirk, Angela Marsons, Joy Ellis and Damien Boyd.

294 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 18, 2019

6127 people are currently reading
805 people want to read

About the author

J.M. Dalgliesh

38 books931 followers
Jason Dalgliesh was born on the south coast of England and grew up in Hampshire, UK. He has worked in the power transmission industry, the retail sector, call centres and as a night-owl in a bakery. His greatest challenge of all is ongoing, as a stay at home parent.

He is presently writing the Dark Yorkshire crime-series, featuring DI Nathaniel Caslin.

The novels are set in Yorkshire, England. The medieval City of York is Caslin's home town and the plot lines take in some of the UK's most rugged and beautiful landscapes, from the windswept North Sea coastline and across the stunning North York Moors.

Penned in the style of the Crime Noir genre, Caslin is a deep character, as flawed as he is brilliant, battling his own demons as much as those he is pitted against. Readers who enjoy gritty, atmospheric thrillers will find the series a must read.

Having spent time abroad, Jason has lived and worked in various parts of England as well as the Scottish Highlands. He currently resides in the East Riding, with his wife and two young children.

You can reach him via his website at www.jmdalgliesh.com

You can also follow him on social media;
facebook.com/jmdalglieshauthor
twitter.com/darkyorkshire

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5 stars
5,809 (41%)
4 stars
5,737 (40%)
3 stars
2,041 (14%)
2 stars
298 (2%)
1 star
119 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 252 reviews
Profile Image for Brenda.
5,085 reviews3,017 followers
August 28, 2021
With the uncovering of a skeletal body in the sand, Detective Inspector Tom Janssen knew the evidence would be hard to find. Salt water removed any traces of DNA, so they had a little to go on. Tamara Greave, acting DCI, joined Janssen and Eric as they worked through clues, past events and the slim evidence. With the body having lain undiscovered for five to six years, other young women were also still missing. Tying them together, along with arson in a factory around the same time, was a contract for Janssen and Greave, but they doggedly continued. Would they find the answers they needed? Or would a killer continue to go unpunished?

Bury Your Past is the 2nd in the Hidden Norfolk series by J.M. Dalgliesh and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Eric was filled with a gritty determination to find answers, to be part of the team, and he did well. Janssen and Greave were equally determined – I enjoyed the main characters very much. A great police procedural, Bury Your Past is one I recommend, and I’m looking forward to the 3rd in the series, Kill Our Sins, soon.
Profile Image for Gloriac.
17 reviews1 follower
December 26, 2019
Easy reading

Not as enjoyable as the first. Storyline is not bad, characters a little flatter than I’d like, but the errors in the text are annoying and make my review less favourable. Both books I’ve read could do with a good proofread.
Profile Image for Lewis Weinstein.
Author 13 books612 followers
September 20, 2021
excellent read ... a little slow to start but picked up pace and ended with some interesting threads still open for the next in this series
Profile Image for Linden.
2,112 reviews1 follower
July 24, 2024
Tom Janssen and his team have a new case. A body has been found half buried on a local beach. Looking through the missing persons files from several years ago, they find the names of four young women. They are trying to identify the victim with some jewelry and a waterlogged business card, which leads them both to occult and anti-vivisection groups. There's a tenuous link with a fire set several years earlier, for which several of the environmental group members went to prison. Then there is another murder which seems to be related to blackmail, and they realize that almost everyone involved has some hidden secrets.
Profile Image for Lee.
1,040 reviews124 followers
October 29, 2020
I have enjoyed all of this authors books but found this one to be hard to get through.
Profile Image for Julia Buckley.
Author 31 books803 followers
November 2, 2025
Good overall. A deeper characterization would help with the main police officers. Dangling modifiers and pronoun errors remain a distraction.
24 reviews
October 1, 2021
I found the book very confusing, couldn't sort out which girl was which. The tain characters were flat and not at all engaging. Their hinted at relationship was quite meaningless, no depth, no chemistry, no nothing. Won't bother with any more from this author.
680 reviews
August 1, 2022
Good mystery but the female character, Tamara, is UUGGHH so annoying. I also feel like the characters have potential, but aren't developed very well.
Profile Image for Anthony Brooks.
253 reviews7 followers
July 1, 2024
Tom Jannsen catches a case of a buried girl, a buried past!

The character development is coming together. This book can be a rather slow, but very detailed read.

An old case, an arson at factory, protesters blamed for a crime they did not commit, and to many secrets stashed away. Its up to Tom and his new boss Tamara to crack the case of a buried body, young kids framed for murder and arson, and a group of business men and a crooked cop willing to keep these secrets buried!
3 reviews
January 17, 2021
This is the second book of "Hidden Norfolk" I have read this month. I have enjoyed the character developments in book one, which really laid the foundations for book two. The plotline was structured well and kept you guessing for most of the way through. I have really enjoyed the procedural style and have immediately started on the "Dark Yorkshire" series.
14 reviews13 followers
October 11, 2021
Much preferred the 1st in this story, this one was slow to start and I found the characters confusing
Profile Image for Annabel Lindley.
16 reviews2 followers
June 2, 2023
This was just a random book I had downloaded on my kindle so thought I’d give it a whirl. Didn’t find it a slog to read but didn’t massively enjoy. Too many similar characters made it hard to attach to any of them really so I was never going to feel that gagged by the ending no matter who it ended up being
Profile Image for Sandrine.
44 reviews
November 30, 2025
I gathered a few things but that's about it - so this one is a definite 5 stars. Still enjoying the style of writing. You get the impression you are watching it in telly, nevermind listening to the Audible
Profile Image for RichardGreen.
109 reviews2 followers
October 23, 2024
Good plot and the main detective characters are developing nicely from the first book. Interested to see how this continues in book #3.
416 reviews12 followers
December 12, 2020
This book started out incredibly slow for me. I had never read a book from this author before, and I was hesitant at first. But it turned out to pick up speed and excitation about half way through the book. I think one of the problems was there were a lot of characters, and they needed to be more filled in before the plot kicked in. A body has been found on a beach...it's been there for some time. The first order of business is to determine who this person is, so it means checking for missing people. Since so little is found with the body, it makes it hard forensically. But it appears several young women similar to the body have been missing since a fire in an industrial facility, and it is necessary to find out which of them are alive or not. Eventually everything is tied in with the five year old fire, and several people that were involved in the fire are linked to the body found in the sand...

I think I may need to go back and read the first of Dalgliesh's book for a rounder view of the characters in his book...
7 reviews
May 5, 2021
This is the third book in this series that I've read and they all suffer from the same issues. They are full of confusing sentence structures, lack of punctuation and highly repetitive phrases. Characters seem to be forever blowing out their cheeks (nine times in this book) and saying 'to be fair' (seven times) or some variation of 'to be honest' (fifteen times) which makes them all feel like the same person. Also I'm an actual idiot and I was still able to guess the remaining plot long before the end.
Profile Image for Belinda.
37 reviews31 followers
April 17, 2021
Can we all just agree that Eric is carrying this CID office? Tom and Tamara come off a little more intelligent in this book than the first one, but they'd still be dead in the water without Eric. Also, how exactly does one "flick" one's eyebrows? I'm listening to the audio version which covers a lot of sins, but sometimes the weird word choices can't be ignored. Still, I'm enjoying the plotting and am confident Eric will continue to save the day.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
1,012 reviews15 followers
September 27, 2022
Much better than the first novel in this series. A more complex plot and some interesting characters.
Nonetheless, I found the writing dry at times and overly detailed. We don't really need to know every physical gesture that the detectives make or that Eric's neck turns red when he is embarrassed, something that seems to happen every other chapter. Avoiding these repetitious passages would make the story flow better. However, I enjoyed the story and the ending was well crafted.
Profile Image for Jackie Watts.
66 reviews1 follower
March 6, 2022
I read this second book in the series immediately after the first because they'd been recommended to me and I'd been promised that they got better. I'm giving this one three stars because the plot and characters (apart from the detectives) were more interesting and I did actually want to know how it ended - but the writing is still pretty dreadful.
71 reviews1 follower
February 25, 2021
I enjoyed this book but it is not on my best list. The story line was fair u the characters could do with a bit more padding out. Janssen could develop so much better as could Tamara. I will persevere a I hope as the writer gets more comfortable the plots and characters wil improve.
Profile Image for Jack Adams.
189 reviews5 followers
July 25, 2021
I enjoyed this as much as the last one.
Will I remember it? No. I have already forgotten the last one.
Will I read the next one? Probably.

They’re easy to digest and relatively interesting. They also are set where I grew up. So it’s worth it just for that really.
923 reviews
January 23, 2021
Very predictable again and story went on a bit much for me without with much action
Profile Image for Susan.
280 reviews
January 24, 2022
Disappointing

Not as enjoyable as the first of the series. A weak plot and repetitious phrasing and descriptions create an amateur feel. Not sure I will continue with the series.
82 reviews
March 11, 2022
I like the characters in this series but the story itself was a bit boring for me. I found the twist was very obvious and the overall plot was just not engaging for me personally.
Profile Image for KH Khaw.
652 reviews
February 2, 2023
Not as good previous books. Didn't really enjoy it.
17 reviews
February 21, 2024
Just another book where I’m over halfway through and nothing is happening.
Profile Image for Bryngel.
1,921 reviews13 followers
June 2, 2024
A little bit more of a struggle to get through, too long and rather repetitive. When it comes to the police; Janssen is ok, Tamara not so much. And Eric saves the day.
1,630 reviews
Read
September 21, 2020
A secret worth dying for is a secret worth killing…
When a violent storm uncovers the remains of an unknown young woman, long buried among the sand dunes, DI Tom Janssen must piece together fragmentary evidence to determine how she came to be there.

In the years she lay undiscovered several young women have disappeared and as the team work through the possibilities they come to an uncomfortable conclusion... is a serial killer stalking coastal Norfolk? Each missing person had a story. Each of them had enemies. Some were more dangerous than others...

They appealed to the same men, dabbled in the occult and came to the attention of powerful figures who would brush them aside without a second thought. But who had the motivation to kill? Where is the killer now? When the past is brought into the light will they be willing to ensure their closely guarded secrets remain buried?

To do so, they will have to kill again...

Set within the mysterious beauty of coastal Norfolk, this fast-paced British detective novel is a dark murder mystery with
a little humour and a touch of romance, one that will keep you guessing until the very end when the final shocking twist is revealed.

Bury Your Past is the second novel in a new series of thrillers from Amazon number one bestselling crime writer, JM Dalgliesh, the author of the Dark Yorkshire books. Perfect for fans of LJ Ross, JD Kirk, Angela Marsons, Joy Ellis and Damien Boyd.

Slow, didn't finish.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Renee.
863 reviews
November 12, 2024
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Four stars.
The first in this series was solid. This second addition to this police procedural/crime series was even better! I always try to figure out who the killer is in these types of books. In this one, I did guess the killer but I got the motivation wrong. I really enjoy the small town setting and there is always something particularly good about British crime fiction. The characters have a good rapport together, both the main characters and the supporting cast. The author leaves a lot off the page when it comes to explaining about the characters, who they are and their motivations. I’m not sure whether I like this or not. An example is we get drip fed little bits of information about relationships and are only given small bits of insight about what is going on. I don’t know if this is because the author wants the reader to try and fill in the blanks themselves, or because the ultimate plan is to slowly reveal more and more about the characters as the series goes on. Or maybe it’s something completely different. Either way, I think I come down on the side of it being intriguing. It’s almost like watching a tv show, seeing what is happening on the outside and not being able to see what is going on inside the protagonist’s heads. I purposefully have not said much about the story because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who might read it. If you are interested in this type of story, just give it a go.
Profile Image for Kelly.
1,654 reviews47 followers
October 5, 2022
I didn't enjoy this one as much as the first in the series.

While I still really like Tom, Tamara grated on me in this book. She came across as quite patronising and superior at times. Her and Tom suddenly had very similar inner voices as well. I'm not sure if it was like that in the first book and I just didn't notice or if it was just this book.

The supporting cast were all unlikeable, including some of the victims. So I found it really hard to get into their story with any enthusiasm.

I also felt like the writing was a bit less developed in this book. I read a few sections where it was a bit hard to read so I had to go back.

I also felt that it wasn't as well thought out plot wise. Some things came up and they'd either already been done or said, or they contradicted previous elements.

It also felt like a harsh and clumsy way to have Tamara join the force permanently. She wasn't even repetent, she just took the job because she fancies Tom. That was an element I didn't get 'Now I'm his boss, it's fine that I date him despite the fact that he has a girlfriend!' Er, no. Down girl.

I liked the first book but did struggle with this one. Will keep going though as I do really like Tom and I'm hoping to go back to the development of the first book in subsequent.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 252 reviews

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