March 28, 2020

Reading this book (the fourth in the DI Sterling series) was like coming into the fourth episode of crime procedural on television. The case itself is stand-alone, but you know you are missing some background to the main characters. Fortunately, the author does a great job of focusing on the matter at hand. And boy, is it a good one.

It hardly needs to be said that you can get plot points from blurbs and other reviews. Suffice to say that this story has everything you can want in a crime novel: blackmail, torture, revenge, vigilantism – it’s all there. The opening scene alone is not for the faint of heart.

I wouldn’t say that this is a page-turner as much as it is a steady investigation with lots of twists that seem natural to the arc of a story. I thought the author did an admirable job of relating accurate info in terms of the investigation.

I also liked the balance between Sterling’s homelife and job. The offer that gets thrown at him about midway through was realistic, and I appreciated how he didn’t let it overtake his focus but thought about it when he could. That may sound weird, but it just seemed very…human.

I will say that for some people, the topics addressed and the activities of some characters might be unsavory. They didn’t bother me, because I’ve read worse, but as I mentioned earlier, this gets gritty and dark in places.

As for me, I liked the characters, and the plot was engaging. I will definitely be looking for DI Sterling books in the future.

About Lorraine Mace

Born and raised in South East London, Lorraine lived and worked in South Africa, on the Island of Gozo and in France before settling on the Costa del Sol in Spain. She lives with her partner in a traditional Spanish village inland from the coast and enjoys sampling the regional dishes and ever-changing tapas in the local bars. Her knowledge of Spanish is expanding. To stop her waistline from doing the same, she runs five times a week.

When not working on the D.I. Sterling series of crime novels, Lorraine is engaged in many writing-related activities. She is a columnist for both Writing Magazine and Writers’ Forum and is head judge for Writers’ Forum monthly fiction competitions. A tutor for Writers Bureau, she also runs her own private critique and author mentoring service.