Review by Booklist Review
Nicki Clements' secret lands her smack in the middle of a murder case. The married mother of two has been in a cyber affair with a man she understood to be bombastic newspaper columnist Damon Blundy, even relocating her family from London to the suburbs to be near him. When Blundy is killed his breathing smothered with tape and a knife stuck over his mouth Nicki's suspicious movements attract police attention. Although she's soon eliminated as a suspect, she's still a key to the investigation, as DC Simon Waterhouse, his wife DS Charlie Zailer, and colleagues consider persons potentially motivated to kill Blundy after waging online battles with him, including former MP Paula Riddiough. But lies beget lies (and Nicki is a longtime and skilled liar) and secrets beget secrets, giving the intuitive Waterhouse a lot to figure out. In this ninth entry in the Waterhouse-Zailer series, Hannah focuses on fantasy versus reality and the part the cyber world plays in this dichotomy. Another intriguing, suspenseful psychological police procedural from a writer who's becoming a master of the genre.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The murder of outspoken newspaper columnist Damon Blundy jump-starts Hannah's convoluted ninth mystery featuring married British cops Simon Waterhouse and Charlotte "Charlie" Zailer (after The Carrier). Nicki Clements, a mother of two and a less-than-faithful wife who has recently moved from London to rural Spilling, carried on an online affair with a man she believes is Blundy (neither used real names). Clements attracts the attention of Waterhouse's team when she speeds away from Blundy's house, where the police have stopped traffic, outside Spilling. Waterhouse, who has become less likable as the series progresses, is obsessed with the message scrawled near Blundy's body-"he is no less dead"-as well as the oddly staged murder scene. Waterhouse sifts through Blundy's detractors, from a former British MP and potential lover to a disgraced sprinter, and Clements's life slowly unravels. In the end, readers will struggle to care about any of these characters or their so-called secrets. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Hannah joins the unreliable narrator(s) club with this title, the ranks of which have swelled since the runaway success of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train, and countless other psychological suspense novels that often feature females in trouble. Unfortunately, the latest in the author's "Waterhouse & Zailer" series (after The Carrier and Kind of Cruel) is not as strong as the aforementioned titles. Nicki Clements goes to great lengths to avoid a police blockade in her English suburban neighborhood, and that makes her a person of interest in the murder of a vituperative columnist, Damon Blundy, who lived near Nicki and her family. When she's called in for questioning by the cops, she lies wildly, as she has all her life, about everything. But is she guilty of the bizarre murder? DC Simon Waterhouse and his colleagues, including his wife, Sgt. Charlie Zailer, sort through the very long suspect list to find out. VERDICT Readers who follow the author's police procedural series will clamor for this one, and anybody who enjoyed Hannah's Agatha Christie estate-sanctioned Hercule Poirot mystery, The Monogram Murders, may want to take a gamble. However, readers looking for complex, relatable characters and/or a believable plot will be disappointed. [See Prepub Alert, 3/2/15.]-Liz French, Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The murder of a heat-seeking online columnist provides DC Simon Waterhouse and his wife, DS Charlie Zailer, with perhaps too many suspectsincluding a leading suspect so overburdened with guilt that she's almost too convenient. Whoever killed Damon Blundy put no end of thought into the job, arriving at Blundy's home with a knife, a knife sharpener, a hazmat suit, and a roll of duct tape that was used to smother the victim only after he'd been stunned with the knife sharpener and the knife itself taped to his face. A note on Blundy's wall, "HE IS NO LESS DEAD," was written not in blood but in red paint the murderer also thoughtfully supplied. Less dead than who or what? wonder Simon and Charlie (The Carrier, 2015, etc.). Despite Blundy's vast throng of enemies, whose numbers included Times columnist Keiran Holland, pot-smoking horror novelist Reuben Tasker, ex-MP Paula Riddiough, and virtually everyone else he'd ever mentioned in his column, suspicion quickly fastens on Nichola Clements, who'd been carrying on a long-term online relationship with the victim. Respectably married Nicki and the correspondent she'd known as Gavin had never met in the flesh (unless of course they had); instead they'd indulged their mutual appetite for sharing secrets by emailing each other 20 times a day. Agonized by shame and fear, Nicki finds even her brother, her mother, and her best friend arrayed against her, along with her own heavy conscience. But there are many more layers yet to be peeled. Hannah, who plots rings around most of the competition, shares Ruth Rendell's shivery conviction that there are still darker secrets than whodunit, how, and why. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
