The Hollow Man by Rachel Amphlett Summary

The Hollow Man by Rachel Amphlett, which is Detective Mark Turpin, number seven. I didn’t know it was number seven when I picked it up, but it feels like a pretty good standalone. Apparently, Mark Turpin has been doing quite a bit of detecting, and now I’m intrigued because I really liked this book.

I was engaged and curious, needing to know what would happen next. After being summoned to a crime scene late on Friday afternoon, Detective Mark Turpin arrives to find the body of a man with his face obscured by a plastic sheet. When the victim’s final moments are traced to a rented property in the Oxer countryside, Mark discovers another body, one that has been brutally cut into pieces and left to rot. 

As the manhunt for the murderer intensifies, Mark uncovers several unresolved cold cases with similarities to his own and exposes a killer who has escaped both national and international scrutiny. Then, one of his colleagues disappears without a trace, and Mark faces an impossible situation that could put his career in jeopardy.

The Hollow Man is the seventh book in the best-selling Detective Mark Turpin series. I had the audiobook and 100% agree it’s an edge-of-your-seat murder mystery. It’s expected to be published on October 6, 2025, and the Kindle edition is 264 pages. My audiobook was around seven or eight hours, and I finished it in a day and a half because I was very intrigued.

The story begins with a cleaning woman entering a rented office space after the tenant’s time is up. Before turning on the light, she sees a figure in a chair and asks if they’re okay. As she gets closer, she realizes they’re definitely not—slashed across the throat and with a bag over their head. From there, the detectives come in to investigate. Nobody heard or saw anything, and it’s been a couple of days since the tenant was supposed to leave.

Mark Turpin and his partners begin to look into the case and discover the victim had rented another property. They go to the rental, where boxes are scattered everywhere. As Mark records the investigation, they find nothing in the first boxes. Then, his partner goes to check other rooms and discovers a gruesome scene—a disassembled body. She’s shocked, and they have to call for reinforcements. It seems the person in the office might have been the one responsible for that crime, as the apartment body had been decomposing for over a week. When the medical examiner investigates, they find an extra eyeball, which links to a third body, deepening the mystery.

I was hooked. The grotesque descriptions add a sinister vibe without crossing into body horror. The mystery builds beautifully, and I loved not knowing where it was going. They link the suspect to another location in Dubai, where he had lived previously. The people there describe him as friendly and helpful, but it becomes clear he’s been doing this for a while, with an appetite for dismemberment and destruction. It’s a well-crafted and complex case.

This isn’t a classic Agatha Christie-style mystery—it’s a mystery-thriller-suspense novel that stays true to that genre. At one point, Mark’s partner goes missing after following a lead alone, which was frustrating but added great tension. I was captivated by the story and now want to read the earlier books in the series.

Rachel Amphlett has written many books—Goodreads lists 186. The Mark Turpin series includes None the Wiser, Her Final Hour, The Lost Boy, A Silent Truth, Cover the Bones, The 11th Grave, and The Hollow Man. The story is twisty and keeps you engaged, flipping pages or, in my case, pressing play every chance I got. The reveal wasn’t what I expected, and I liked being surprised. There were moments of tension where I worried for certain characters, especially near the end, but the outcome was satisfying.

Turpin’s partner, Jan, is a big part of the book. She gets kidnapped later on, and that sequence is intense. I liked that Turpin and Jan have a strong partnership without romantic involvement—they just work well together. Jan has a husband and kids, and Mark has a girlfriend and a boat. They both have full lives, which makes them feel grounded and real.

Other readers also praised the book. One called it “complex with unexpected links and threads that keep good surprises up their sleeve—compelling and engrossing from the start.” Another reader mentioned loving multiple books by Amphlett and wanting to catch up on her series. I can see why—if this is book seven and it’s still so engaging, the author clearly knows how to sustain quality and complexity.

I think I’ll continue reading the Mark Turpin series. I already have plans for my next audiobook credit, but after that, I’ll try another one by Amphlett. I also have to say, compared to another popular mystery-crime series written under a pseudonym by a certain well-known author, I like this one better. It has a solid mix of crime procedural, mystery, and suspense with a strong partnership at its core.

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