Publication Date: Available Now from W&N
Source: Review Copy
It takes a strong woman to be able to watch someone die.
Brigid Quinn is tough, determined, steely and sharper than sharp. As an ex-agent of the FBI she has seen it all, and survived. But nothing can cut her closer to the bone than family…
When Brigid gets a call from her mother saying her father is in hospital with pneumonia, she decides to check on her former colleague Laura Coleman who is living nearby. Having saved Brigid’s life, Laura is now working on an ‘innocence project’, investigating cold cases. And one in particular seems to have caught her attention. Fifteen years before, Marcus Creighton was accused of killing his wife and three children. Now the state governor has signed the warrant for his execution.
Worried that her friend is getting in too deep, Brigid promises to help. But what if her instincts are betraying her? If she can’t even trust her memories of her own childhood, how can she make a call on some stranger’s story that took place over fifteen years before?
A Twist of the Knife is the third novel featuring Brigid Quinn and honestly for me this series just gets better and better – Brigid is probably the most diverse female lead in crime fiction right now – older, wiser in some things yet none the wiser in others, driven and often haunted but determined and following her own moral guidelines. She is entirely engaging, her thoughts and actions leap off the page pulling you along with her through some difficult and often thought provoking cases.
In this story she is worried about an ex colleague and friend of hers – they had faced previously a dangerous and life threatening situation together – now Laura is caught up in the case of a man on death row and may be way too involved for her own good. Brigid wades in and what follows is a highly addictive and intriguing read that asks a lot of questions of the reader and of Brigid. Often edge of the seat, with many emotional layers, you get sucked into this battle to save a possibly innocent man.
I love how Becky Masterman changes things up with each of her stories featuring Brigid – drip feeding us pieces of her personality and previous history – showing you all her sides and edges – at the same time always providing taut plotting and invariably twisted mystery elements. There are brilliantly placed psychological insights within each story and at the end of each one I always want more. Brigid’s relationships with family, friends, close loved ones are cleverly described and endlessly fascinating, the cases she investigates are dark and twisted, overall this series provides everything you might want from a crime novel and therefore they come highly recommended by me.
Happy Reading!
