Book Review | Deadline @damppebbles

Taking a quick dip back into the crime/thriller genre with todays review, welcome to day two of the Deadline tour.

Adam Ferranti was drinking away his waking hours, getting by in a regional newspaper in the North of England. An award-winning journalist, he moved to England to escape the media glare that followed his spectacular fall from grace at The Washington Post; only to be thrust back in it when a mysterious serial killer decides to make him his confidante.

DS Stephanie Walker is a successful member of the West Yorkshire Police force. Whilst she is tough and results-driven at work, with a fearsome reputation on the streets, she hides the domestic abuse she suffers at home.

She finds Ferranti exceptionally difficult to deal with, but he’s her only chance to stay close to what the elusive killer is planning next. Ferranti reluctantly complies with the Police, even though he is fighting his own personal demons, but when his best friend is murdered by the killer, it suddenly gets personal. And suddenly, no-one is quite who they seemed to be.

Amazon UK | Goodreads | Amazon US | Waterstones

Well, this is certainly going to be a hard book to write a review for, I feel like I won’t be able to say anything without giving away some of the plot which I definitely don’t want to do, so forgive me if I sound somewhat vague at times.

I was keen to read this book after seeing some very good reviews and being very intrigued by the description, I was expecting something good but I wasn’t expecting just how many times I would be shocked by the revelations in this story. The plot was so complex that I’m surprised that I managed to keep up, fair warning there are a lot of characters that you need to keep a track of, but it all gets resolved without any loose ends.

The pacing was brilliant, this is the kind of book that I felt like I didn’t want to put down and especially as the story starts to come to its conclusion I was transfixed. I think it’s possibly just a quirk of the copy I received but we end up seeing from the perspective of quite a few different characters, which was great to help reveal the story but the switch was sometimes within the same paragraph which could be a little confusing and break the flow of the story a little, but as I said it could just be a copy issue.

I really enjoyed how far-reaching this was, it involves the media, the police, politicians, criminals and intelligence from both the UK and the US, I quite liked that I never knew how the characters would all converge into the story and in which way their storylines would be significant. I will say that there was an occasion where I did wonder about the location of a character because they weren’t where I would imagine and there was a part of a character’s storyline that I wasn’t 100% sold on but I can’t say anymore because everything in this story is so intrinsically linked and it didn’t affect my overall enjoyment.

I do wish I could say more but once you read it you’ll understand, what I will say is that if you enjoy complex and intense storylines with a lot of unexpected surprises then you are in for an absolute treat.

A long time ago, Geoff Major had an idea for a story, whilst walking his girls to primary school. Two years ago, he decided he had the time and patience to try to write the story down. His wife was wholly supportive, so he turned from full-time to part-time for four months and now – 23 years after that idea first popped into his head – it has been published.

As a self-employed business consultant for 18 years and a fundraising adventurer for 10 years (including ski-trekking 50 miles, over 6 days and 6 nights, to the geographic North Pole), he now works for a debt charity whilst plotting his next three books.

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