Other People's Houses by Clare Mackintosh – Reading Wales 2026

In the third mystery featuring Detective Constable Ffion Morgan in Wales and Detective Sergeant Leo Brady just across the border in England, Ffion is investigating a drowned real estate agent while Leo has been summoned to a ritzy neighborhood in Cheshire, the Hill, regarding a string of burglaries. As I learned when visiting Cornwall several years ago (and it is also true on Cape Cod), housing in areas where tourism is a major industry has become too expensive for traditional residents.

Homes get purchased by rich visitors or investors and may not even be occupied regularly. Ffion’s landlord is turning her home into a “holiday let” and she is frustrated by the difficulty of finding something to buy and down on duplicitous real estate agents.

Leo suggests hopefully that she move in with him but she says the commute back to Cwm Coed would be too far, which is code for he is getting “too serious.” Their relationship has progressed since the first two books but there is something of a role reversal about it – Ffion is the foul-mouthed, commitment-phobic hard-boiled detective whose only weakness is the poorly behaved dog she acquired in a previous book, while Leo is a sensitive single-father eager for Ffion to meet his son (when it happens, it is a disaster).

One of Mackintosh’s strengths is her secondary characters and I particularly like DC George (Georgina?) Kent, who works with Ffion. She is calm and cool in contrast to Ffion who is loud and easily annoyed but they have learned to get along and George has allowed some snarkiness to appear when they are investigating a drowning:

George glances toward the riverbank, where a group of women are clipping each other into bright-orange life jackets. “It’s all fun and games till someone drowns.”

“That’s a cheery slogan.” Ffion grins. “Visit Wales should have you doing their adverts.”

As vivid but less appealing is Leo’s ex-wife Allie, who lives around the corner from the Hill and yearns to part of its easy privilege. She has offered to help sorting items for a yard sale so she can befriend the women on that street, not realizing they are making fun of her behind her back. And despite the fact that she is happily remarried, she resents Leo’s relationship with Ffion and tries to poison their son against her.

Mackintosh deftly connects Ffion’s case with Leo’s burglaries, and in the background is a cold case that has been resurrected in a true crime podcast that everyone, including Ffion, has been following. When Leo finds a link between his case and the podcast murder, he is excited because it is embarrassing for law enforcement to be outdone by civilians. The description of how the locals are absorbed in the podcast is somewhat tongue-in-cheek but very true to life.

The previous two books took place mostly in Wales but this one is focused on the affluent members of the Hill in Cheshire. Ffion and Leo originally met in a bar but their relationship developed because of border-crime related cooperation between their two police forces. Ffion has kept their ongoing romance quiet because she assumes it won’t last, which worries Leo, but there is hope for them and I look forward to learning more about George. I enjoyed attending a bookstore event about 18 months ago when Mackintosh was interviewed by local author, Hank Philippi Ryan.

I chose this for Reading Wales Month and it is also my tenth book for the Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge. It’s set in the present tense, which is becoming more and more common and which I dislike but you get used to it. I enjoy this series, which begins with The Last Party.

Title: Other People’s Houses
Author: Clare Mackintosh
Publication: Sourcebooks, hardcover, 2025
Genre: Mystery/series
Source: Library