Book 34 - Play Dead - Angela Marsons

Kindle Edition Cost: Netgallery Publisher: Bookouture Published: 20/05/16 Amazon uk link: Here Goodreads Link: Here

The Blurb

The dead don’t tell secrets… unless you listen.

The girl’s smashed-in face stared unseeing up to the blue sky, soil spilling out of her mouth. A hundred flies hovered above the bloodied mess.

Westerley research facility is not for the faint-hearted. A ‘body farm’ investigating human decomposition, its inhabitants are corpses in various states of decay. But when Detective Kim Stoneand her team discover the fresh body of a young woman, it seems a killer has discovered the perfect cover to bury their crime.

Then a second girl is attacked and left for dead, her body drugged and mouth filled with soil. It’s clear to Stone and the team that a serial killer is at work – but just how many bodies will they uncover? And who is next?

As local reporter, Tracy Frost, disappears, the stakes are raised. The past seems to hold the key to the killer’s secrets – but can Kim uncover the truth before a twisted, damaged mind claims another victim …?

My Thoughts

This is DI Kim stones 4th outing and having read all the other books in the series I was looking forward to this. The plot is, as always a good one, with a surprise thrown in here and there. It’s not a complicated plot that you will get lost in and it flows very well. I loved the setting for the crimes and the perpetrators reason for their crimes.

This being the 4th Kim Stone book I was expecting a little bit more. It was a little bit Kim stone by numbers. You know what you are going to get and although what we get is a well written and well thought-out , I was expecting something a bit different to take her story to another level.

Her back-story hasn’t moved on much and kind of repeats through each book. I also find her constant struggle against authority a bit much to believe, I find it hard to believe she would have risen to or kept her job as an Inspector with the constant trouble she has with authority or people in general. Yeah, it’s a book, I know.

I did find that, maybe, up to the 50% mark it there was too much idle chit chat and procedural, which, to move the plot along is necessary but it didn’t give me the can´t put it down buzz that I long for in a book.

The introduction of Doctor A, a foreign character that has trouble with the English language was a bit of a 1980s, Officer Crabtree from allo,allo, stereotype that I think the book could of done without.

Having said all that, I really am being fussy. The last few chapters were majestically written and gave me the buzz I want when reading. It really is a good book and I would recommend to anyone that is a fan of this Genre

Quote from Book

“Inspector, you are just in the nook of time,” she said without looking up.

Next Review - 44 Gilmore Street - Shani Struthers