Steel and iron. Tree and root. And a city crushed between.
In the ancient city of York, a master charm has been stolen. With it comes the power to raise an army of unstoppable metal guardians spread across not just Yorkshire, but the world.
Which is bad enough. But if the charm isn’t recovered soon, the steel beasts won’t be the only ones on the rampage.
Because Heather – near-goddess of the wood and wild, partner of the charm’s creator – has her own ways of dealing with these things. She’ll turn the city to mulch to reclaim the charm, and never mind the casualties.
DI Adams never asked to be the magical community’s problem-solver, but with York teetering towards destruction, she’s suddenly the only one standing between humanity and a full-blown nature-vs-machine catastrophe.
Armed with her invisible, caffeine-addicted dog, her duck, and some allies with questionable loyalties, Adams plunges into the hidden underbelly of York in search of the thief. Never mind the implacable automations, ravenous beasts, and lurking toilet monsters – she’s also got the horrors of people skills and some bendy physics to deal with, and she can’t even arrest them.
But she’s got to make this work. Time’s running out. The charm is waking.
And when root rises to meet steel, it won’t just be York that falls…

IN A NUTSHELL
The DI Adams series keeps getting better. Adams (almost against her will) continues to develop as a character. Adams is also learning more about the Folk and their interactions with humans.
‘A Right Shambles In York‘ goes beyond being a cozy mystery and becomes an Urban Fantasy thriller with child-safe corners to stop it feeling too edgy. It introduces some wonderful (and quite scary) new creatures and puts Adams under more pressure than ever before. 
It was an engrossing, entertaining read that often made me smile. 

On publication day, I fell on ‘A Right Shambles In York‘ (2025) with the eagerness of a starving man at a free buffet. It didn’t disappoint. I like that the DI Adams books are a little darker and edgier than the Toot Hansell novels. This DI Adams novel steps the tension up a gear, making it into a thriller rather than a mystery, but still keeps a cosy, optimistic, nothing-too-awful-is-going-to-happen feel. 

I enjoy Adams’ slightly prickly style. She’s focused. She hates small talk and she really, really hates having people try to help her. A black female Met Detective who transferred to Yorkshire with a reputation for getting involved in cases with a woo-woo feel to them, Adams started this series as an outsider. It was just her and her invisible magic dog. In this third book, Adams starts to realise that, whether she wants it or not, she has people around her who have her back, which is just as well as this book has some fairly scary monsters in it and Adams is repeatedly put in high-risk situations where help isn’t optional. 

I admire Kim Watt’s ability to produce a thriller where the tension and the action are threaded through with bits of humour. I liked that the people around Adams stayed cheerful, even under pressure. I also liked the Guardians, magic-powered automata made of scrap metal that Adams encounters, especially the not-quite-a-cat-but- DEFINITELY-NOT-a-robot, Fergus. I hope he’ll become a regular member of the cast.