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Rush Of Blood by Mark Billingham
Mar. 21st, 2015 03:49 amThe Blurb On The Back:
A perfect holiday.
Three couples meet around the pool on their Florida holiday and become fast friends. But on their last night, the teenage daughter of another holidaymaker goes missing, and her body is later found floating in the mangroves.
Perfect strangers.
When the shocked couples return home, they remain in contact, and over the course of three increasingly fraught dinner parties they come to know one another better. But they don’t always like what they find …
Then a second girl goes missing.
The perfect murder.
Could it be that one of these six has a secret far darker than anybody can imagine?
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Mark Billingham’s stand-alone crime thriller sits outside his successful TOM THORNE SERIES (although Thorne himself does make a delicious cameo). It’s a very structured piece, built broadly around the three dinners and although I enjoyed the way he weaves the events in Florida with the burgeoning relationships that develop between the couples, the final quarter seems very rushed and I wasn’t particularly convinced by the revelation of the killer, especially in terms of why they did it. I was equally unconvinced by Marina and Dave’s relationship – for me, they were the most underdeveloped of the couples with Dave in particular coming across as a stereotypical computer geek while Marina’s self-confidence issues get a predictable back-story. I also wanted a little bit more on Ed and Sue’s marriage – there’s more emphasis on Ed than on Sue with the result that she’s slightly under-baked on the page. However there’s a lot to enjoy here as Billingham slowly ratchets up the tension and gradually reveals information so that the book keeps you guessing until the end. He also does a good job in depicting the dinners themselves in all their awkward and stilted glory as games of one-upmanship take place and tensions are revealed, especially as the alcohol flows. All in all, even though the book didn’t quite come good for me, it did keep me turning the pages and, as always, I will check out Billingham’s next book.
Three couples meet around the pool on their Florida holiday and become fast friends. But on their last night, the teenage daughter of another holidaymaker goes missing, and her body is later found floating in the mangroves.
When the shocked couples return home, they remain in contact, and over the course of three increasingly fraught dinner parties they come to know one another better. But they don’t always like what they find …
Then a second girl goes missing.
Could it be that one of these six has a secret far darker than anybody can imagine?
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Mark Billingham’s stand-alone crime thriller sits outside his successful TOM THORNE SERIES (although Thorne himself does make a delicious cameo). It’s a very structured piece, built broadly around the three dinners and although I enjoyed the way he weaves the events in Florida with the burgeoning relationships that develop between the couples, the final quarter seems very rushed and I wasn’t particularly convinced by the revelation of the killer, especially in terms of why they did it. I was equally unconvinced by Marina and Dave’s relationship – for me, they were the most underdeveloped of the couples with Dave in particular coming across as a stereotypical computer geek while Marina’s self-confidence issues get a predictable back-story. I also wanted a little bit more on Ed and Sue’s marriage – there’s more emphasis on Ed than on Sue with the result that she’s slightly under-baked on the page. However there’s a lot to enjoy here as Billingham slowly ratchets up the tension and gradually reveals information so that the book keeps you guessing until the end. He also does a good job in depicting the dinners themselves in all their awkward and stilted glory as games of one-upmanship take place and tensions are revealed, especially as the alcohol flows. All in all, even though the book didn’t quite come good for me, it did keep me turning the pages and, as always, I will check out Billingham’s next book.
