A city on edge. A killer in plain sight. A detective running out of time.
On a crowded London bus, a young woman is slashed in broad daylight. The attacker vanishes before anyone realizes what’s happened. Detective Jack MacIntosh knows this isn’t an isolated attack.
The media call him the ‘Tube Slasher’ — a phantom who strikes on packed trains and crowded platforms, then disappears without a trace. No witnesses. No pattern. No evidence. Victims keep coming. CCTV offers only fleeting glimpses. And every attack feels random — until Jack realises it isn’t. So far, the wounds have been shallow. Controlled. Almost deliberate. But now the killer has changed his pattern. He’s left the Underground. And that can only mean one thing. Escalation.
With pressure mounting and time running out, Jack is chasing a man no one can see — and a motive he can’t yet understand. Because Jack knows what’s coming next. The next attack won’t be a warning. It will be murder.
Michelle Kidd is a crime fiction author best known for the DI Jack MacIntosh and DI Nicki Hardcastle series. Michelle qualified as a legal executive in the early 1990s, spending ten years practising civil and criminal litigation. But the dream to write was never far from her mind and in 2008 she began writing the first book in what would later become the DI Jack MacIntosh series. Michelle now works full time for the NHS and lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. She enjoys reading, wine and cats — not necessarily in that order.
My thoughts: Jack MacIntosh starts this book delivering his new niece on the floor of his sister-in-law’s cafe. But then he barely has time to breathe as the Underground Slasher, a masked man who cuts his victims with a knife, shallow but painful wounds, and waves to the CCTV, strikes again, but this time on a bus. Has he changed his MO? Will he now start killing people?
Jack and his team are up against it, a suspect who changes his appearance, brushing past his victims in the crush of the Tube, nothing to go on in their vague descriptions. No evidence left behind. Just strange smiley face calling cards.
Then he becomes a meme, a hash tag and something of an online sensation. Will all these strange fans set the Slasher off and put people in more danger or will he be flattered by the attention and draw his audience to him somehow?
Jack isn’t the most internet savvy, and needs an idiots guide to hashtags and the dark web, but thankfully his team are a bit more clued up.
There’s also a nasty strain of fentanyl laced ecstasy killing people, Jack’s pretty sure he knows where it’s coming from and who, but he can’t say too much to the other team investigating without dropping himself in it, he needs to carefully give them a lead. Because these pills must be taken off the streets before another young person dies.
It’s another busy caseload for Jack and his colleagues to handle, which is why he doesn’t have a personal life, but if they can catch the Slasher and get the dodgy pills off the street, he might just have time to feed his cat and maybe see his baby niece.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
❤️💙 Thank you so much for being a part of this adventure x
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