Valerie Keogh: Such Bitter Business

Book Review time.

Book blurb

Nicola doesn’t want to help the police again.
But this time a child is missing and Sean and Tom know she can help.
Unfortunately, so too does DI Jane O’Neill. It’s her case. The child is the son of an eminent politician and Jane has her eye on the next rung of her career.
Can Nicola help once more? She found a certain level of satisfaction in helping before but she is wary of Jane, knowing that to help her will be to condemn herself to being used over and over.
Nicola, Jane and Sean form an uneasy alliance to search for the child. Tom, meanwhile, is searching for the mastermind behind a local robbery, but the body-count is rising and a local woman is missing.
A child and a woman. Can both be found alive?

My review,

Valerie sent me an ARC, but only because I asked – cheeky I know but I really wanted to follow up on this the most unusual of serial killer catchers. The premise of setting a thief to catch a thief has I think been unexamined quite in this fashion until Nicola Connelly exploded on the scene, and like other unusual profilers (paraplegics, tetraplegics, blind) it works.

This style of writing in this genre probably started with the likes of Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot and for me Valerie Keogh comes up to this mark with, also unusual Nicola Connelly. She’s evil, single minded and selfish in equal layers but there’s a sliver of humanity, despite of everything lurking. Yes, she’s a serial killer (oh how my finger wants to type cereal) but not of children, but he didn’t really count – to her that is.

The only fly in the ointment for me is the cost. Yes the book was free (thank you, Miss Keogh) but I find myself searching the Internet for anything cashmere. Nicola Connelly has done more for the cashmere industry than Harrods and Ab Fab combined!

 

 

 

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