Mimic by Daniel Cole

Today it’s over to Mandie who is joining the blog tour for the audiobook release of Mimic by Daniel Cole. Thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive readers for the invite and to publisher Trapeze for the advance copy. Here’s what it’s all about:

About the Book

In The life she was his muse…in death she’ll be his masterpiece …

1989: DS Benjamin Chambers and DC Adam Winters are on the trail of a serial killer with a twisted passion for recreating the world’s greatest works of art through the bodies of his victims. After Chambers nearly loses his life, the case goes cold due to lack of evidence. The killer lies dormant, his collection unfinished.

2006: DS Marshall has excelled through the ranks of the Metropolitan Police Service, despite being haunted by the case that defined her teenage years. Having obtained new evidence, she joins Chambers and Winters to reopen the case. However, their resurrected investigation brings about a fresh reign of terror, the team treading a fine line between delivering justice and becoming vigilantes in their pursuit of a monster far more dangerous and intelligent than any of them had anticipated …

Mandie’s Thoughts

I have not read any of the other books by Daniel Cole, but they are on my TBR pile so when I was given the chance to listen to the audio version of Mimic, I jumped at it especially as this is a stand-alone story.

The story opens in 1989 when DS Benjamin Chambers is called to a dead body that appears to have been frozen to look like a statue. Along with DC Adam Winters he finds himself on the trail of a serial killer that nearly costs Chambers his life. When the case goes cold it is seven years before Chambers is once again dragged into trying to solve the case when a DS Marshall starts digging as she has a personal interest in finding the killer. The only problem is her interest has woken the killer and the chase starts all over again. They all have ghosts to put to rest over this case and one way or another they will see it through to its conclusion.

Although there are quite a few murders in this book we only get to hear about their staging in relation to the work of art they depict. The reader is spared the grisly details of how they died. For some this may seem a little disappointing, but I felt that the not knowing was in keeping with the story being told when you eventually discover the motive behind the act.

You can feel the frustration of Chambers and Winter as they continually battle against senior officers to take their theories seriously as at times it seemed to be more a case of keeping them in line rather than truly solving the case. I did love the banter between Chambers and Winter. At first, they almost seemed to rub each other up the wrong way but as they got into a pattern of working together, the humour they sometimes shared showed why they were such a good team. I think the grief he got at home stuck between his wife and his mother goes a long way to explaining Chamber’s personality at work,but it was often those interactions that had me smiling the most.

The addition of Marshall in the second half of the story changed the dynamic again as she was certainly not you average copper and with her own personal agenda on this case, she really needed to keep Chambers and Winters on side and force them to face the mistakes made previously. 

I really enjoyed listening to this audio book as the narrator seemed to pace the story just right, building the tension when it was needed and it certainly had me cramming every bit of listening time in that I could (I may have sneaked my headphones in to work so that I could continue listening when the boss was not about) as I wanted to know just how the story was going to end.

About the Author

At 33 years old, Daniel Cole has worked as a paramedic, an RSPCA officer and most recently for the RNLI, driven by an intrinsic need to save people or perhaps just a guilty conscience about the number of characters he kills off in his writing.

On writing his debut novel RAGDOLL, which began life as an unproduced television pilot, Daniel says: ‘After five years of rejections, I had a yearning to actually finish one of my stories rather than leave it collecting dust with the others under my bed. With no formal training at all, I feel I wrote the book very selfishly, with the aim of creating something that I, personally, would love: as shocking as it is humorous, as thought-provoking as it is relentlessly entertaining, and with a cast of characters who feel like friends by the end of it.’

He currently lives in sunny Bournemouth and can usually be found down the beach when he ought to be writing book two instead.