We should never have kept our father’s secret.
Before, my sisters and I were close. Now, a year after our father’s funeral, we barely speak to each other. Molly won’t accept the truth. Rachel can’t forgive him. And I spend all my time digging through his life, trying to understand.
Then we hear the news. A woman has been found by the docks, her wedding ring stolen. The reporter says it appears the local serial killer has returned…
But I know that can’t be right, because I know who the killer was.
Henry Martin. Our father.
Someone is sending us a message. Someone knows we lied.
Now my sisters and I must work together to find out who is targeting us. How do they know what we’ve hidden? What do they want? And what other secrets lie buried in the past, putting us all in danger?
A brilliantly twisty suspense thriller that will have you flying through the pages and gasping at the twist. Fans of Lisa Jewell, Gillian Flynn and Ruth Ware will love The Killer’s Family.
Listen to an extract here
Miranda Smith writes psychological and domestic suspense. She is drawn to stories about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Before completing her first novel, she worked as a newspaper staff writer and a secondary English teacher. She lives in East Tennessee with her husband and three young children.
My thoughts: this was very clever, full of twists and turns and kept me guessing all along. Three sisters, united in grief are divided when they find out their father’s darkest secret – he was a serial killer. Dying suddenly his hidden cache of trophies and sinister photos weren’t destroyed, and when his grown up daughters find them hidden beneath the floor in his shed, they’re devastated. One of them, Cara is a crime writer married to a detective. Can they keep their dad’s secret? And what happens when a series of copycat killings begin, targeting people close to them?
Grief is a horrible thing and it can make us react in all sorts of ways, as it does here. Each of the sisters react in different ways and their discovery drives a deep wedge between them, they all want to do something with the knowledge, whether it’s destroy it or tell the police. And that pushes them apart.
The writing is tense and compelling, the new killings place the sisters right in the centre but not in ways they’re willing to point out too closely to Cara’s husband Tate, who happens to be on the investigative team. There’s a couple of huge twists towards the end, no spoilers, that you won’t see coming, they’re so cleverly done. But everything gets cast in a new light and honestly, the ending leaves you with questions, in the best way. Really enjoyable stuff.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 