Laying Out the Bones — Book Summary & Review

DI Matt Lockyer’s second case in Kate Webb’s Laying Out the Bones kicks off with a very specific framework: a Wiltshire heatwave, a sudden downpour, and flash floods that unearth Lee Geary’s skeleton like a bad secret finally getting dragged into daylight. Webb structures the mystery around what the bones can prove versus what witnesses and institutions refuse to connect. After forensic testing links the remains to Geary, reported missing nine years earlier, Lockyer (and DC Gemma Broad) presses on the uncomfortable gaps: Geary was known to be a drug user, and he had learning disabilities—so why was he alone on the Plain? Webb then tightens the screw by anchoring the investigation to the earlier Holly Gilbert murder, the year Geary disappeared, and to the fact that two other persons of interest in the Holly Gilbert case have died or vanished since.

The book’s best move is how Webb lets time do the storytelling work. You don’t get a clean “then and now” reveal; you get a slow accumulation of contradictions—who was questioned, who was dismissed, and how a missing man becomes both suspect and missing piece. There’s a particular chapter rhythm where Lockyer’s field questions and Broad’s legwork alternate, and the narrative keeps returning to the same unsettling question: coincidence, or a string of murders that waited nearly a decade to be named? Webb’s plotting is stingy with comfort, and when the second twist lands, it feels less like a trick and more like the overdue consequence of bad assumptions.

Honest limitation: if you want a cozy whodunit with lots of suspects introduced on page one, Webb withholds that pleasure—some backstory is delivered only when the investigation forces it, and the emotional interiority stays fairly restrained.