Originally published: 20 September 2018

Author: Katarina Diamond

Published by: Avon Books

Genre: Crime Thriller

Length: 448 pages

Reading dates: 15-20 October 2018

Star Rating: 4/5

This is the 4th in the series of books featuring DS Imogen Grey and DS Adrian Miles set in Exeter – I think it is OK to dip into this series without having read the others but I did have a few niggling questions about previous events. I hope to go back and read all the others one day as I really enjoyed this one.

When a young woman is found strangled in her own bedroom, Grey and Miles soon discover her laptop and phone missing and conclude that maybe she met the person who did this to her via an online community. IT specialist Gary soon uncovers an online game that she belonged to and Imogen decides to act as bait to see if they can catch their killer.

Running concurrently to the investigation, we meet Conner and his dad who have just moved back to the UK from America where something terrible happened. Conner is a good looking boy and soon finds himself in the group of popular kids at school, but he isn’t comfortable happy to be there.  His dad is often drunk and violent so he spends a lot of time in the tree house in his garden, where he spies on a girl from his school.

We as the reader know there must be something connecting the threads, but it isn’t easy to guess and the pieces fit together in the last few chapters and it wasn’t what I expected!

This book is great (I’m hoping the others are as good!). The author has a knack of juggling the different strands of the story and you really want to find out what holds them together. Comparing it to another police/crime series I love from Helen Fields, this one focuses a little less on the police procedure but gives enough details that we understand how the investigation comes together. I love the relationship between Grey & Miles and I like that the victims are found online as it highlights the dangers of being too trusting.  My only criticism was that I felt the story wrapped up a little too quickly. There were a couple of loose ends that I would like to have seen tied up but maybe they are threads for the next novel!

Thank you to Sabah from Avon Books, for sending me a copy of this and for inviting me to be part of the blog tour.

The other books in the series are:

 

About the author:

Katerina Diamond was born in Weston in the seventies. She moved to Thessaloniki in Greece and attended Greek school where she learnt Greek in just 6 months. After her parents’ divorce, they relocated to Devon. After school, and working in her uncle’s fish and chip shop, she went (briefly) to university at Derby, where she met her husband and had two children. Katerina now lives in the East Kent Coast with her husband and children.

Twitter: @TheVenomousPen

Website: https://www.katerinadiamond.com/