The last time we saw DI Marnie Rome, she’d been given some photos by her foster brother Stephen – photos he claimed would shed a very different light on her parents and the events leading up to their untimely deaths. Meanwhile, Marnie’s sidekick Noah Jake was recovering from a serious assault and trying to do the best for his troubled brother Sol.
Rather like the recent Bond films, this latest installment picks up immediately where the last left off. Sol is now in prison and Noah is riddled with guilt – an emotion Marnie knows only too well as she wrestles with her failure to protect her parents from the boy currently serving a life sentence for double murder.
Sarah Hilary opens with a first person narrator describing a prison riot, which left several men dead or maimed, and enabled one violent prisoner to escape. Mickey Vokey is at large and at least three women are thought to be in immediate danger. First there’s the woman whose testimony helped put him behind bars. Then there are the two women who wrote to him in prison, sharing secrets and fuelling his fantasies.
As the hunt for Vokey gathers pace, Marnie and Noah are tested to the limit, wrong-footed at several turns and forced to face up to their own personal failings. And then there are those mysterious photos...
As ever, Hilary writes brilliantly, taking us inside the heads of her characters, shedding light into the darkest corners of the darkest minds and ratcheting up the tension with every chapter. I read this book in two sittings, breathless with admiration. Crime fiction doesn’t come any better than this.
Published by Headline on March 22, £18.99