Occasionally I like to post a review of a book I have read recently. Damaged Goods by Jack Everett and David Coles is a great one.
The following is the review I wrote for Suspense Magazine:
Damaged Goods opens as Robert Cleghorn is chopping a tree in his brother Alan’s front yard. While he muses on the degradation he feels doing manual labor for his sibling, he watches helplessly as the tree falls through the front picture window of his brother’s dream home near Lake Kissimmee in Florida. From that point on, the action never stops. Set in Florida and England, this latest novel from the writing team of Jack Everett and David Coles is a roller coaster of a ride, a search for a serial killer who is not who the police think it is, but someone even more frightening.
Robert takes on his brother’s identity after killing him in a fit of rage, employing his brute strength and techniques learned while fighting in an elite military unit in Iraq. Using his brother’s airline ticket, passport, and credit cards, he travels to England seeking the one person he thinks he loves, his brother’s wife, Stephanie.
Police from the Leeds Serious Crimes squad follow the trail of a string of brutal murders that seem to have no connection, but the sheer number of them, as well as information shared by a local sheriff in Florida, soon narrow down their search.
The point of view shifts easily from that of Stewart White, who is just settling into his job as Detective Inspector in Leeds, and the bloody path of the murderer.
Everett and Coles do a masterful job portraying the fearless but possibly brain-damaged killer, and his obsession with Stephanie. Set in Yorkshire in the winter, the cold, bleak landscape intensifies the horror as one murder follow another. There is enough complexity in the plot to be intriguing but not too much to be confusing. Damaged Goods is the first of a trilogy, and I will be first in line to read the next book as soon as it becomes available.
Here is a link to read a few sample pages. It will get you hooked!
It is seldom that I get the opportunity to thank someone for carrying out such an insightful
(synonyms: intuitive, perceptive, discerning, penetrating, penetrative, astute, percipient, perspicacious, sagacious, wise, judicious, shrewd, sharp, sharp-witted, razor-sharp, keen, incisive, acute, imaginative, appreciative, intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive, deep, profound)
review on one of our works. So it is with great pleasure that I say that now. Thank you again Kathleen, great job.