Published By: Avon
Pages: 384
Released On: 04/06/2026
If no one believes you, no one will help you…
Once hailed as Liverpool’s finest detective, Mark Fletcher brought a serial killer to justice and earned the city’s admiration. But when he’s accused of working with Liverpool’s most notorious crime family, his legacy is shattered – and so is his life.
Now disgraced and spiralling, Fletcher wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of the last 24 hours… and a dead body beside him.
The evidence says he did it. His instincts say otherwise.
Hunted by the force he once served, Fletcher must uncover the truth – not just to clear his name, but to survive. Because someone wants him silenced, and they’ll stop at nothing to finish what they started…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Avon for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
***Contains Spoilers*** – I couldn’t find a way to review it properly without them
This is my first of Luca’s books but I have been intrigued ever since I took part in the cover reveal.
I’d read a few books before this that, whilst were okay, were a bit disappointing, so this had a lot of pressure on it to live up to the hype.
It’s dark and tense and very atmospheric. We follow a handful of protagonists and whilst they’re all morally grey – some closer to morally black – I was interested in their stories and thought they were written well.
Whilst it is a new story, there are apparently cameos from characters in other books and past cases mentioned, which meant I felt a bit on the back foot at times, like I had to read the others to make full sense of it.
I do wonder at times if there was too much going on. There’s lots of substories going on, and then we’ve got his overarching, Godfather, mafia vibe that didn’t quite hit the mark.
I am notoriously rubbish at working out the endings of thrillers and whodunnits so I didn’t even try with this one, and I didn’t feel the need to work it out because I enjoyed the route to get to the reveal. It’s a good ending and it promises more to come. It wraps up most of what’s gone on previously, but it suggests there’s going to be more and it gets you excited for book two – which I am.
My must admit, I was a bit confused. The blurb and cover comments refer to Mark being blamed for everything and everyone thinks he’s guilty and he struggled to persuade anyone he’s not etc. But I didn’t get that. For me, it felt he is worried about other people thinking he’s guilty, but for the most part anyway, there’s no real evidence of that. It’s all in his own head. Which confused me slightly as the story then didn’t match what I was expecting.
It’s not the best thriller I’ve ever read, personally there were a few niggles. But I still very much enjoyed it and it had so much going for it. I would recommend it to thriller fans, particularly those that like books set around the criminal underworld. And I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for his other books.
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