I borrowed this audiobook from the library.
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: July 12, 2022
Summary:
Forensics expert Laughton Rees hunts an unusually clever killer who appears to be staging murder scenes just for her in this twisty new psychological thriller by the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy.
How do you catch a killer if the victim doesn’t exist?
A glamorous woman is murdered in her ultra-luxurious London mansion and her husband goes missing. But according to public records, neither of them exists.
The only leads police have are several objects arranged around the woman’s body, including a set of keys and a book called How to Process a Murder by Laughton Rees—a book that appears to have helped the killer forensically cleanse the crime scene.
Laughton Rees is an academic who doesn’t usually work live cases after the brutal murder of her mother as a teen left her traumatized and emotionally scarred. But the presence of her book at this scene draws her unwillingly into the high-profile investigation and media circus that springs up around it. As the dark objects found beside the body lead her closer to the victim’s identity, a dangerous threat to Laughton and her daughter emerges, as well as painful memories of her past related to the man she has always blamed for her mother’s death: John Rees, Laughton’s father, the current Metropolitan Chief Commissioner and a man she has not spoken to in twenty years.
Laughton’s family was destroyed once and she built herself a new one. Now, she has to face her darkest fears and help catch a killer before this one is destroyed too.
My thoughts:
Simon Toyne is a new-to-me author but one that I cannot wait to read more of! I picked this one up because I am on tour for the second book of this series and I’m so glad I read this one first.
This book grabbed me right from the beginning. Not only do we have a gripping crime thriller, but we are introduced to a fantastic set of characters, some of whom we meet again in the second book. Again, as someone who loves reading series and loves following the arc of the character development over time, this is why I decided to pick this one up first. I loved getting to know Laughton Rees – she really is quite a quirky, eccentric character.
This book is full of unexpected twists and turns right up until the very end which I absolutely loved and didn’t see coming! As someone who reads a ton of thrillers, I can usually figure some things out, but not with this one. I also loved all the different elements to this book – multiple points of view, extracts from Laughton’s crime book, and articles from the media as well as snippets from the local WhatsApp group. This all combined to not only keep the book moving, but also keep me guessing as to what was going on and where things were heading.
This book is dark, twisty and oh so good! I don’t know how I missed it when it first came out but I’m so glad I finally picked it up. And I’m already more than halfway through the next book in the series, The Clearing, which is also really good! Simon Toyne is definitely going to be an author I’ll be reading more of for sure!
Audio thoughts:
Because I needed to get this book read quickly, I grabbed the audio and I thought it was done really well. It was narrated by Shazia Nicholls, who is a new-to-me narrator and I quite enjoyed the way she narrated the story. Even with all the different characters and elements to the story, she managed to make it come alive and kept me fully invested from start to finish!
Books in this series:
- Dark Objects
- The Clearing – due out July 11
