Liz Loves Books.Com.

Coming April/May 2014

Thank you to the author/Penguin books for the netgalley review copy.

Two hostages. One bullet. One lives. One dies.

They were going to spend the rest of their lives together. Soul mates. But when a young couple wakes up alone together, disorientated and trapped, they are yet to grasp the true horror of their situation. They have no food, no water. Instead there is a gun loaded with a single bullet and a mobile phone with enough power only to deliver a short message: ‘when one of you kills the other, the survivor will walk free’.

So another “serial killer thriller” debut coming soon and one I was very interested to read. Not an awful lot to be done with this genre generally speaking, so its always great to find a well written one that is genuinely exciting – and this one was.

The very best thing about this was the actual modus operandi of the killer – who takes two victims each time and isolates them with no means of survival – until that is, one gives in and kills the other, then the survivor walks free. The author plays on your mind with this very cleverly – psychologically speaking would you actually survive to go on and live a life had you taken another away in order to achieve that chance? That theme is explored very well and it gives this novel a “lift” above the standard storylines associated with a book in this niche.

The mystery aspect is also well imagined – and we have an intriguing and well drawn police team attempting to track down the killer. D.I. Helen Grace is a particularly strong female lead – and her team all compliment her well. There are some generic themes here – the mysterious past, the alcoholic detective, the haunted psyche, but it is all extremely well written and there are still unexpected developments along the way..so there is never a dull moment.

All in all if you love crime stories, and more specifically serial killer novels then you will enjoy this one very much indeed. High standard and I will look forward to the authors next book – in which I hope to meet Helen Grace again.

Happy Reading Folks!