Grave Suspicions is the third book in the Lavington Windsor series by Alice James. In this book, Lavington must solve the murder of Derowen Polkerris, a cornish cheese millionaire. It won’t be easy, he appears to have died alone behind a locked door. Things become even more complicated when Toni is tasked by the Vampires to investigate a missing coterie. Plus, Toni’s stalkers whom seem very interested in seeing her dead.

This book is action packed all the way through. You have the murder of Polkerris that Toni has to solve, the man that appears to be stalking her, and the mysterious missing coterie that Toni has been tasked with investigating. The Polkerris murder is intriguing. There are some good twists and turns throughout the investigation, and you never quite know how it is going to turn out. Toni’s stalkers add some interesting complications making everything a little bit harder. The missing coterie also adds some good twists and turns. I enjoyed the growing relationship between Toni and Nicky while she investigated his missing coterie.

Toni’s life continues to be a disaster. She barely shows up to her job, she’s always hungover, and she never knows what to do with her love life. Toni during this book finally gets to learn a little more about her necromancy and her witch powers. It’s good that James is starting to give more of Toni’s backstory, and give the reader a better understanding of how Toni came to be. It’s also good that she has managed to tie Toni’s backstory into the vampire assemblage, giving Toni some more connection to the vampires.

There are a lot of side characters by book three. We have collected all of the side characters from books 1 and 2, plus the addition of several from this book. It is extremely hard to keep all of the them straight and remember who everyone is. I found myself constantly flipping through to try and jog my memory about several characters. It might be beneficial for James to choose which side characters should be more prominent than others.

All in all, this book is a very entertaining read. It’s the best book in the series currently. James continues to grow as an author through the series. She managed to tie all of the investigations in the book together under one theme, which I found to be brilliant. Everything was tied together in the book, but with an eye towards what might happen in the fourth. I, personally, am excited to see the return of Oscar in the fourth.