Blue Sky is the second in the WPC Sam Barrie series by Trish Finnegan. Having thoroughly enjoyed reading the first book, Blue Bird, I was keen to see how this stacked up. I particularly liked the 70s setting and being introduced to WPC Sam Barrie as she starts her police career as a trainee.
This time around we learn WPC Barrie has a boyfriend on the force, has settled into the role, and is close to becoming a proper police constable.
Blue Sky begins with Barrie’s colleague and friend Steve, who is keen to get into the RAF, is taking flying lessons at a nearby airfield. Unfortunately, he gets busted for drugs smuggling and Barrie’s bosses choose her to take flying lessons in an undercover role to identify the ringleaders and crack the ring.
Along the way, Barrie discovers the airfield is also home to a mystery to do with a parachute incident years before and so embarks on an investigation of that, too.
There were so many characters in Blue Sky that I lost track of who the goodies and baddies were and which plot they featured in. There was too much about the boyfriend getting a new job, conversations that were repeated, the trigger calamity was unbelievable, as was the role given to Barrie. I lost total track of the airfield mystery plot.
Maybe in the 70s, the police put probationers on deep undercover missions to crack drug smuggling rings headed up by nasty villains who had no qualms about dishing out a beating or murdering people and burying them in a forest.
Blue Sky (The Blue Bird Series Book 2) didn’t work for me. 2/5.