The #Bookvent Calendar 2020 – Day 22

#Bookvent – Celebrating my top reads of 2020

My day twenty-two #bookvent choice is a tale of two cities and one (or two of three) chilling murder(s). Set in both Los Angeles and Glasgow, the story story really hooked me from the off with a chance discovery leading to the most shocking of cases. Although part of an ongoing series, the story initially centred around new characters but it didn’t take long for me to settle into the story or to gel with these new Detectives. With a nod to one of the most famous unsolved murders in America, it also draws back to one of the author’s previous novels and an individual with a very curious and unusual hobby. Featuring murder, mystery and unrelenting tension, my twenty second pick is …

Watch Him Die by Craig Robertson

ONLY ONE PERSON CAN SAVE YOU. AND HE WANTS YOU DEAD.

Police find a man dead at his home in Los Angeles. Nothing suggests foul-play but elements of the victim’s house show that something is deeply wrong.

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, DI Rachel Narey is searching for a missing young woman – and the man she suspects of killing her.

When a feed broadcasting the slow and painful death of a final victim is discovered, these two cases become linked.

There’s no way to identify him.
No way to find him
No way to save him.
Not without the cooperation of a killer.

And the only way he will cooperate is if he can watch him die.

This book is a ticking clock mystery of the finest order. Detectives on both sides of the Atlantic are, quite literally, racing against the clock to save a young man whose fate seems already sealed. The latest in the Narey and Winter series, it is safe to say that, in truth, this story belongs to Rachel Narey and her counterparts in LA, Detectives Bryan Salgado and Cally O’Neill. What starts out as a slightly disturbing unattended death, likely natural causes, soon turns into a twisted and most macabre missing persons investigation that leads Salgado and O’Neill to Narey’s door. At least virtually. And a lot of the action in this story is driven by things happening over the internet and the dark connections made between equally twisted individuals on the dark web. So how does this tie to the missing woman that Narey is hunting for in Glasgow? Well, you need to read the book to find that out because where is the fun in me telling you? But this book had me on the edge of my seat, the tension increasing with each new chapter, and the sense of jeopardy at fever pitch from the beginning. With a nod to classic serial killer cases of yesteryear, particularly the infamous Black Dahlia murder case, the story, and the characters just drew me right in. With the odd scene to make you grimace, an overwhelming sense of urgency that only increases the more we understand and a thorough examination of the psychology behind serial killers and the way in which two individuals can spur each other on to ever more heinous acts, it will have you pondering whether mankind is born evil or whether life pushes them that way. I was left with a real feeling of satisfaction when I’d finished and that slightly awkward feeling of emptiness that comes after such an intense and perfectly balanced read. I loved it.

If you want to read my full review of Watch Him Die you can find it here.

Happy #bookvent reading all

Jen