With many thanks to Compulsive Readers for inviting me on the blog tour for the new standalone M. J. Arlidge book.
Thanks too for my copy of the book for review – as always, opinions are entirely my own.
My Review
As someone who loves Arlidge’s series about DI Helen Grace, I absolutely jumped at the chance to read this standalone crime thriller. I know what to expect from Arlidge – high concept, fast-paced and often gruesome stories that quite frankly don’t allow time for sleep!
This book was all those things, but also genuinely thought-provoking too.
The story focuses on several people living seemingly ordinary lives – a young mother, a man starting out on a new job, another man falling in love. However, they are all living under false identities, having been granted top secret lifelong anonymity after serving time for their past crimes. When their identities start to be revealed and murder is committed, the police and probation service face the fact that there may be someone leaking information from within…
Because of the nature of the story – with lots of different strands – I found this quite fragmented at first as I got to grips with each of the ex-criminals and their new lives. Once that was established, I got genuinely caught up in the lives of some of the characters and the perilous existence they had, especially once killers seeking revenge started to find out their new identities.
For me, this book raised all kinds of questions about crime, punishment and revenge. The police and probationary service clearly have a duty to protect those who have served their time for their crimes, but Arlidge also presents the perspective of their victims’ families to muddy the waters. As a reader, it is totally understandable why they would be seeking revenge, especially when the details of their shocking crimes are detailed. It certainly makes you think about being in the shoes of someone grieving a person lost to crime – and whether the police can ever deliver true justice. I found my sympathies shifting quite often during this book!
It’s worth saying that the crimes detailed are often very brutal and grim; I especially found the child abuse stories very disturbing and there were definitely some parallels with real-life, awful crimes like the Jamie Bulger case. The crimes are horrifying and really make you think about the nature of evil and possible redemption.
As with all of Arlidge’s books, this one was tough to put down once I’d got immersed in the different stories. I did wonder how they would all come together in the end and – no spoilers – absolutely wasn’t disappointed with the way that Arlidge kept the twists coming right to the satisfying end.
I’d recommend this to anyone who has enjoyed Arlidge’s books before, or who enjoys pacey, lively crime fiction. There’s much to keep you reading here, especially as you find yourself drifting into some of the moral conundrums thrown up by the subject matter.
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