Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson

The Blurb On The Back:

Following a brutal attack by her ex-boyfriend, Kate Priddy makes an uncharacteristically bold decision after her cousin, Corbin Dell, suggests a temporary apartment swap – and she moves from London to Boston.

But soon after her arrival Kate makes a shocking discovery: Corbin’s next-door neighbour, a young woman named Audrey Marshall, has been murdered. When the police begin asking questions about Corbin’s relationship with Audrey, and his neighbours come forward with their own suspicions, a shaken Kate has few answers, and many questions of her own.

Jetlagged and emotionally unstable, her imagination playing out her every fear, Kate can barely trust herself, so how can she trust any of the strangers she’s just met?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Peter Swanson’s standalone psychological thriller is a hackneyed affair that’s driven by hackneyed coincidence, implausible characters, a deeply misguided romance with a peeping tom and a deeply silly plot that nods at STRANGERS ON A TRAIN and although I believed in the main character’s anxiety (which is well depicted), she’s very much a victim all the way through the plot, which made it impossible for me to empathise with her.

The Drop by Mick Herron

The Blurb On The Back:

Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly, he sets in train events which will alter lives. Bachelor himself, a hair's breadth away from sleeping in his car, is clawing his way back to stability; Hannah Weiss, the double agent whose recruitment was his only success, is starting to enjoy the secrets and lies her role demands; and Lech Wicinski, an Intelligence Service analyst, finds that a simple favour for an old acquaintance might derail his career. Meanwhile, Lady Di Taverner is trying to keep the Service on an even keel, and if that means throwing the odd crew member overboard, well: collateral damage is her speciality.

A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.

It's also what happens just before you hit the ground.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Mick Herron’s latest addition to THE SLOUGH HOUSE SERIES is a tightly written short story that picks up where THE LIST left off with Herron’s customary wit and fast pacing but while it’s enjoyable, it’s more of an episode in a side series than a story in its own right and expensive for what it is. Unless you’re a hard core fan, my advice would be to wait for these novellas to be amalgamated into a collection rather than buying them separately.

THE DROP was released in the United Kingdom on 1st November 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Hope That Kills by Ed James

The Blurb On The Back:

The body of a young woman is found on the streets of East London, in the shadow of the City’s gleaming towers. No ID on her, just hard-earned cash. But there is no doubting the ferocity of the attack.

DI Simon Fenchurch takes charge but, as his team tries to identify her and piece together her murder, they’re faced with cruel indifference at every turn – nobody cares about yet another dead prostitute. To Fenchurch, however, she could just as easily be Chloe, his daughter still missing after ten years, whose memory still haunts his days and nights, his burning obsession having killed his marriage.

When a second body is discovered, Fenchurch must peel back the grimy layers shrouding the London sex trade, confronting his own traumatic past while racing to undo a scheme larger, more complex and more evil than anything he could possibly have imagined.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Ed James’s police procedural crime novel (the first in a series) is a so-so affair that offers up another tortured male police officer devoted to his job and to finding out what happened to his daughter but with little emotional intelligence and whose interesting plot is spoilt by an overblown finale that was too overdone to be believable such that while I kept turning the pages, I don’t think I’ll continue with the series.