Publication Date: Available Now from Harper Collins
Source: Bought in a bookshop
You find your neighbour dead in his bath.
Your son is with you. He sees everything.
You discover your wife has been in the man’s house.
It seems she knew him.
Now the police need to speak to you.
One night turns Alex Mercer’s life upside down. He loves his family and he wants to protect them, but there is too much he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know how the cracks in his and Millicent’s marriage have affected their son, Max. Or how Millicent’s bracelet came to be under the neighbour’s bed. He doesn’t know how to be a father to Max when his own world is shattering into pieces.
Then the murder investigation begins…
In ye olde Domestic Noir genre you get a mish mash of reads, some good, some bad, some really excellent and not many done by male authors. Although a few. If A Line of Blood is anything to go by then perhaps more should be entering the fray.
What I loved about it was it was so much more about the dysfunctional family than it was about the possible crime. The next door neighbour kills himself (probably, or did he?) his body is discovered by Alex and son Max and then off we go – into a tale of 3 people, Husband, Wife, Child, all of whom are entirely disturbing and completely frustrating. In a good reading way. I wanted to slap the lot of them frankly but I could NOT look away from the drama unfolding.
Told by Alex, the story goes on a beautifully constructed twisty path of domestic insanity where everyone is hiding something and nobody is entirely trustworthy. Quite aside from the “who did what to who” where no possibility seems too unreasonable, you have some very insightful and thought provoking character studies, an addictively absorbing style of writing (yes Millicent your name by the end was tattooed on my soul) and quite honestly no idea where it was all going to end.
Those are the best stories right? Right.
Clever writing, clever plotting, divisive and undeniably unlikeable characters who will get stuck in your head, when it comes to this particular popular sub genre this is the way to do it.
Highly Recommended.
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Happy Reading!
