Sunday 17 July 2011

CRIME REVIEW: Taboo - Casey Hill

Release Date: 07/07/11

SYNOPSIS:

Forensic investigator Reilly Steel, Quantico-trained and California-born and bred, imagined Dublin to be a far cry from bustling San Francisco, a sleepy backwater where she can lay past ghosts to rest and start anew. She's arrived in Ireland to drag the Irish crime lab into the 21st century, plus keep tabs on her Irish-born father who's increasingly seeking solace in the bottle after a past family tragedy. But a brutal serial killer soon puts paid to that. When a young man and woman are found dead in an apartment, the gunshot wounds on their naked bodies suggest a suicide pact. But Reilly's instincts are screaming that something's seriously amiss, and as more bodies are discovered, the team soon realises that a twisted murderer is at work, one who seeks to upset society's norms in the most sickening way imaginable...


REVIEW:

I love a good crime novel and whilst this is seen as a debut, it’s the writing team of Melissa Hill and her husband Kevin. What works extremely well in this book for me were the characters, they were vibrant, they were intruiging and they had real world problems that interfered with the investigation that really made them feel fully rounded. Add to this a cracking serial killer whose clues mystified the hell out of me as well as a great overall arc and it was a story that satisfied on so many levels.

All in, the writing style kept it bubbling along with sharp prose, decent dialogue and of course an overall arc that keeps, as Poirot would say “The little grey cells” ticking. Great stuff.

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