Published By: The Book Folks
Pages: 266
Released On: 16/05/2023
A young woman passes out in the streets of a quiet village…unfortunate, but surely not a serious incident. That’s until Yorkshire police discover the terrible truth.
The victim has had her kidneys removed. Inevitably, she doesn’t survive the ordeal.
Who could even think of doing such a thing, let alone carry it out? That’s what Detective Stewart Gardener and his team will have to work out. Yet even if the cops find the perpetrator, they’ll be faced with someone who has a trick up their sleeve to escape being held accountable for their actions. Will a cruel killer once again escape justice?
*****
Thanks to The Book Folks for a gifted proof of this title in return for an honest review and spot in the book tour.
This is book number 10 in the DI Gardener series and yet I didn’t feel short-changed having not read any of the previous nine. I’m sure, as with most series, you get more out of a book if you’ve read the ones before, you know who’s who and what they do and their history etc. But then on the flip side, coming in blind, I have no preconceived ideas, I can only judge the characters and the story as I see fit. It is perfectly readable and enjoyable as a standalone story.
Ray doesn’t hold back. There’s no preamble or scene setting. It’s wham, bam, injured girl. It really kicks off almost immediately, and so you’re thrown into this terrifying world along with the characters themselves.
I don’t know Ray’s background, and truth be told, I didn’t necessarily want to know, for reasons similar to ones I made about reading it as a standalone. I didn’t want what I knew of the author to influence the book. And so I don’t know if he has personal or professional experience of policing, crime and murder – hopefully not for the latter – but if he doesn’t, then he’s done some phenomenal research. I don’t have any research in them, and yet everything felt so believable. It’s really thrilling and keeps you guessing.
There are too many characters to really get into here, but they’re all very well created. I assume any come from the previous books and so he’s had some time to develop them, but going in fresh, I think they’re all well rounded and well created.
The idea of organ harvesting is a creepy one, best left to the pages of a book. The idea that this happens in real life is just too awful to think about.
It’s thorough and in-depth, but without being bogged down with overwhelming detail.
I wasn’t expecting it to be so good. I can’t tell you why. I wasn’t expecting it to be bad. Like I say, I had no prior knowledge of his writing, and I hadn’t read any of the rest of the series, and so I was just taking it as it was. But in my opinion, these sort of detective novels can get a bit samey, and because I’ve read a lot in my time, I am often comparing them to each other, and it has to be really good to impress me. And this was really good. So much so that I’m thinking about reading the others.
For me, it was such a unique plot. I hadn’t read a whodunnit like this before and it really works.
There are so many layers, so many intricacies, it’s really impressive. Full of twists and turns. Now I’m not the best at working out whodunnits, I admit, but I really had no clue. I had a couple of suspicions but they weren’t based on anything particularly tangible. But even with 40 pages to do, I was still sat with absolutely not a scooby idea as to who was behind it. There were some audible gasps from me. It was really an excellent piece of thrilling writing.
Books By Your Bedside 