THERE ARE WORSE PLACES THAN HELL…
Hotel Beresford is a grand, old building, just outside the city. And any soul is welcome.
Danielle Ortega works nights, singing at whatever dive bar will offer her a gig. She gets by, keeping to herself. Sam Walker gambles and drinks, and can’t keep his hands to himself. Now he’s tied up in a shoe closet with a dent in his head that matches Danielle’s broken ashtray.
The man in 731 has been dead for two days and his dog has not stopped barking. Two doors down, the couple who always smokes on the window ledge will mysteriously fall.
Upstairs, in the penthouse, Mr Balliol sees it all. He can peer into every crevice of every floor of the hotel from his screen-filled suite. He witnesses humanity and inhumanity in all its forms: loneliness, passion and desperation in equal measure.
All the ingredients he needs to make a deal. When Danielle returns home one night to find Sam gone, a series of sinister events begins to unfold. But strange things often occur at Hotel Beresford, and many are only a distraction to hide something much darker…
Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series, which includes Good Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the mainstream international press.
Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for both the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2020 and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by four standalone literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous, The Daves Next Door and Suicide Thursday.
Will spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his children. children.
My thoughts: it won’t be a surprise to anyone else in the cult of Carver that this is very, very good. Set before The Beresford, this takes place in the hotel next door, where Mr Balliol watches everyone and everything that goes on.
Carol, the best manager of a hotel ever, ensures the smooth running of the building, making certain that nothing interrupts the guests day. Including a dead body or two.
There’s a conference taking place in the hotel and everything must be perfect, Mr Balliol expects nothing less. But an old friend of his has checked in, and he wonders why now.
Obviously nothing important happened today and the Beresford has its own unique way of ensuring that nothing ever will. The detective asking about the dead man in 731 gets distracted by a long term guest, so doesn’t notice anything else going on, which is probably a good thing.
It’s a brilliant, twisted and utterly engaging read, defying an easily defined genre – is it a crime novel, a thriller, something fantastical? I don’t know. I just know I was totally hooked.
*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 