The Engine House by Rhys Dylan is a good start to a series that consists of 20 books. It was offered via Prime Reading, and I think that was a good idea, as I likely would not have picked it up otherwise. I was surprised at how drawn in I was to the mystery and to the main cast of characters. This made for a very quick read.

The main investigative team, although not much to write home about in terms of strong and memorable characters, I believe does get the job done in serious crimes such as those presented in The Engine House and likely for the rest of the series. Warlow, Jess, Catrin, and Rhys are all no-nonsense types of cops and detectives. If you’re looking for playful banter along with hilarious types of dialogues between characters and colleagues, I don’t see this being for you, although I’ve only finished the first in the series. I do remember watching a TV series or two that are also crime and mystery based in the Welsh region and characters in those stories are also very serious, gruff and no nonsense. Maybe it’s their thing?

Unless the team moves location, I would have to assume that all future novels in the series will incorporate some type of Welsh lore and history as the story and crime progress. This is great, as we likely don’t have enough of that in either popular TV series or novels. One concern I do have is whether or not the author used AI to help with his writing and storytelling. The Engine House was only published in January of 2022. Since then, he’s published 19 other books in the series. That is a lot. The second book was published only a month after the first.