A gripping thriller starring Kate Daniels, who must make the connection between two seemingly unrelated grisly accidents…which may not be accidents at all.
Four a.m. on a wet stretch of the highway: a driver skids out of control. Quickly arriving on the scene, detective Kate Daniels and her partner, Hank Gormley, witness a horrifying display of carnage and mayhem that proves to be one of the worst traffic accidents in Northumberland’s history. But as the casualties mount, they soon realize that not all of the deaths occurred as a result of the accident …
At the same time, on the other side of town, a house goes up in flames and its two inhabitants become charred corpses. Except for the timing, there is no evidence to connect this incident with the traffic accident. But it soon becomes apparent that all is not what it seems, and that Kate and her colleagues are always one step behind a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to get what they want.
My thoughts: a terrible accident on a wet road, a fire ripping through a family home, a man dropping dead of a heart attack. How can these be connected? DCI Kate Daniels and her team have their work cut out for them as the killer starts targeting the one witness who can link them to at least one or possibly more of these terrible crimes.
They’re looking for a chameleon – someone who can change their appearance at will, with dozens of aliases and absolutely no concern for other people. Totally ruthless, willing to kill an old lady in a car accident to steal a lottery ticket, manipulative and cruel. And worse of all, they wear a uniform – they could be a cop, a paramedic or in the fire service, one of their own.
It’s a race against time to find their suspect and bring them to justice, before they disappear and possibly to somewhere with no extradition treaty. They are happy to kill anyone that stands in their way. But Kate has to do this by the book. Will her one witness tell her who to look for?
Another heartpoundingly good case for the MIT as a series of apparently unconnected crimes all start to come together and bring the team to focus on one person, if they can get the evidence together to prove it.
Plus Kate’s messy personal life comes to the fore, as Jo issues an ultimatum and prepares to move on in her job if Kate can’t come out and be with her publicly. Then there’s the glamorous, no strings, artist she’s been flirting with. Can Kate choose love or will she loiter in the closet?
The next gripping novel by Mari Hannah. When the body of what appears to be an adult female is found on the Northumberland coastline, it is DCI Kate Daniels and her murder investigation team that are first on the scene. Then another body is discovered sitting side by side with the first, and suddenly everything changes. Why have they been placed together in such a desolate area beneath the walls of an imposing castle? Meanwhile prison psychologist Emily McCann is just returning to work after the death of her husband only to find herself the fixation of convicted sex offender Walter Fearon. As his mind games become more and more intense could it be possible what’s happening on the outside has something to do with his murderous past, and as his parole approaches what exactly does he plan for Emily? As Daniels’ investigation runs down dead end after dead end it becomes apparent that nothing is quite as it seems, and someone is hiding more than one deadly secret…
My thoughts: this starts with a strange discovery on a quiet beach, and requires a delve into the past for Kate and the team to find some answers, do the outfits the victims are wearing have anything to do with why they were killed?
Meanwhile Emily, a psychologist colleague of Jo’s at the prison is having something of a crisis, an inmate is due for release, and he’s obsessed with her, sending her into a tailspin. Does she have reason to be afraid?
As the two cases unfold and become more complicated, can the team solve them and continue their run or successes in keeping killers off the streets?
Another intelligent and complex crime thriller, with lots of twists and turns that hooked me and drew me back into Kate’s world.
*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 