Book #23 Quieter Than Killing

Quieter Than Killing by Sarah Hilary
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A new DI Marnie Rome novel is always something to savour. This is the fourth in a remarkable series and Sarah Hilary just keeps getting better. Erudite writing with a very complex plot.

A vigilante is at loose on the streets. A child is in danger. Sometimes staying silent is the only way to survive...

DI Marnie Rome and her bagman DS Noah Jake are once again treading the mean streets of London investigating a series of vigilante assaults, that are terrifying in their horrific nature. The attacks seem random. There are victims - and victims of victims, enough to make your head spin. And suddenly it becomes personal for Marnie when her family home is ransacked, the tenants savagely beaten and there are signs that the burglary (is that what it was?) can only have been committed by someone who knows her.

When a child goes missing Marnie is horrified to learn that no one has reported it and it becomes evident that the young boy is the son of a man currently incarcerated at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Does her step-brother Stephen have anything to do with this? Past events are brought into the chilling present, where street gangs are rife. And where does Noah’s brother Sol fit into this? What is Sol so scared of?

There are pages of brutality that are hard to read. The treatment meted out to the kidnapped child is harrowing. And how are all these events linked?

This is dark, compelling and emotionally intense. There are passages that I read over several times for the sheer quality of the writing:

” ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome’. He liked the round sound of the words, like pebbles, like those from the beach where his dad carried him down to the sea. He whispered the pebbles to the room, ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome’, and stared at the light under the door until the yellow line came back. When it opened——“

Set aside time for these 400+ pages because, once started, you will not want to put it down. And I wonder how soon it will be before we read about a newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Marnie Rome? It might be just speculation on my part; I will just have to wait and see….

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Book #57 No Other Darkness

No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The 2nd in the DI Marnie Rome series by Sarah Hilary, read back-to-back with the 1st. I feel like I have binged on murder and mayhem for the past week or so. No Other Darkness is a particularly harrowing story. Anything concerning the deaths of young children is bound to be. In this account the way that Archie and his brother Fred died is dreadful and the plot is full of despair and anguish, following the discovery of their frail, desiccated bodies. There are characters to pity, few to like, although Hilary does produce great emotion amongst the protagonists. Hilary is certainly the magician with metaphors as they roll off the pages aplenty.

I recommend reading these books in order as there are key threads that run from the 1st through the 2nd. I have decided though to shelve the 3rd volume for a reading at a later date. I feel like a change of genre….

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Book #56 Someone Else's Skin

Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Funny how things work out sometimes. I was browsing new paperbacks in Asda, liked the look of and purchased ‘Tastes Like Fear’ by Sarah Hilary, only to find out that this was number 3 in her crime series featuring D.I. Marnie Rome. Reading some of the cover notes seemed to indicate that I needed to read numbers 1 and 2 first. I went ahead and bought the Kindle version of ‘Someone Else’s Skin’, number 1 in the series. This work won the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2015, a very worthy and superbly disturbing debut novel.

DS Marnie Rome is 28 when her parents are murdered by their 14-year-old foster son, Stephen and the story opens as Rome arrives at her former home to see it turned into a crime scene, an officer leaving the building bearing the murder weapon: "Mum's bread knife, its steel teeth full of tattered red skin." She is kept outside by her boss, who lowers her, keening, to the pavement. Five years on, Rome is a successful, trusted DI, her foster brother locked up, her own shadows locked deep inside, when she's landed with a case that will bring her face to face with her "worst fear: the stigma of victimhood”….

This is a fantastic entry to the thriller scene, which seems to be densely populated at the moment. Deftly written, unobtrusively, subtly drawing readers into the cold, wet world of London, where "the sky's empty, grey, as if someone has dragged a tarpaulin across it", where "the rain kept coming, as if someone had unplugged the sky, sheets of the stuff, thick and chilly”. It is a corker: twisty, tricksy and, on occasion, seriously scary. There is a moment when I found it almost impossible to keep reading, the scene Hilary has created is so upsetting, but almost impossible not to, the story is so hell-for-leather compelling.

This is an extraordinarily good debut, utterly creepy, without being gratuitous, and an exciting start to this series. I’m off to download number 2….

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