Oh no, he’s done it again! I was with him all the way, couldn’t stop – until about 4:00 a.m. when I folded. I bade him goodnight and said I’d see him in the morning. In case you’re thinking odd thoughts, I have to explain, the ‘him’ I’m referring to is the writer Damien Boyd, and what I was engaged in, deeply involved and up to my reader’s neck, was his latest novel, “Seeing Red“. It’s the 16th in his D.I. Nick Dixon series and dropped onto my e-reader at midnight.
A body is found in a newly dug grave in a rural Somerset churchyard. The murder matches a series of brutal attacks blamed on a serial killer in Devon, and a DNA profile neatly points to the same suspect. Fresh from another bruising encounter with the Professional Standards Department, Acting Detective Superintendent Nick Dixon knows the scene is wrong and the evidence staged—someone else has engineered this killing to silence the victim. Ordered not to over-complicate the investigation, and with his judgement under scrutiny, Dixon must choose between the convenient solution or digging deeper to uncover a truth someone is desperate to hide.
As usual with Damien, you have to keep on your mental toes as there are many strands to the story and the different plot-lines, and you have to be on the alert and a nifty reader so you don’t miss a vital piece of the jigsaw. If you haven’t read any of Damien’s stories before, either his contemporary Nick Dixon stories, or his excellent new series “starring” Bob Willis and set in the 1970’s, you are in for a treat. Not only is there a cunning story, with believable characters, but there is always an interesting setting which gives insights into areas many readers wouldn’t know. For example, in this new book, yachts, yachting and boating feature. Now I’ve only ever been on a yacht once, many years ago in Puget Sound in Washington State, avoided being hit on the head by the boom, and nearly ran over a buoy because my American friend kept shouting at me to mind the boo-ee and I had no clue what she meant!!
Back to “Seeing Red” – I’m resisting picking it up again now so I’m saving it until later, to no doubt finish. It’s book club tonight and I know I’ll tell my chums about it, before I tell tehmm about my new book, “Something and Nothing”!
Lois Elsden 