Daily Archive

What’s it all about?

Two women have been murdered. Different methods, but both around 1 am on consecutive Sunday mornings. Seems to be coincidence until a third body turns up and the police can’t avoid the fact that they are connected which of course = Serial Killer. The events take place on the three Sundays before Christmas so obviously the press dub said murderer The Advent Killer.

As panic spreads across London, DCI Antonia Hawkins, leading her first murder investigation, must stop a cold, careful killer whose twisted motives can only be guessed at, before the next body is found

Thus endeth the blurb

Why did I want to read it?

Well, I must have read something about this somewhere or had it recommended by someone because I put it on my Christmas list and lo and behold, it turned up under the tree. And was devoured, mostly on Boxing Day. I like a good serial killer. In fiction obviously, not real life, though I did work with someone who was booked to go on a civil service training course with Dennis Nielsen. But that’s another story.

What did I think of it?

Like I said above, I read most of it in one day; it’s ideal for curling up under a blanket on the sofa, if you like that sort of thing which I of course do. It’s a fairly undemanding read in many respects but none the worse for that. A solid police procedural with a likeable lead character and all the things I have come to expect in this sort of story:

• a detective out of their depth, with a complicated personal life and occasional flashes of intuition, in this case made more interesting by the detective being female and apparently the victim of institutionalised misogyny
• sidekick, with whom lead detective has History of some kind, is brought in to assist once the out of depthness has been recognised by those Higher Up,
• time pressures – this case must be solved by X otherwise Y will happen (or not happen)
• a killer with a Mission which makes sense only to them (even after we all know what it is)
• the Red Herring
• and of course, it all gets Personal

All of which is done really well and the story moves at pace and you really do want to find out what it’s all about.

Except I actually guessed (and it really was a guess) who the murderer was within the first 90 pages, just because I’ve read and/or watched loads of these things and I just though “I wonder if it might be…..” It didn’t spoil the book for me because I couldn’t actually believe I was right and even if I was I wasn’t sure how it was actually possible (you find out in an aside quite late on in the story) but the Motive was revealed slowly throughout the book and I did want to know what that was all about. Poor thing, no wonder things turned out the way they did…

Anyway, I liked DCI Hawkins a lot, so much so that I’ve ordered the sequel. It’s called My Bloody Valentine. I think I see a pattern here…..