When James Taylor was in school, he and his two best friends were known as the Three Musketeers because they were inseparable, but as they grew up, they also grew apart. As the novel opens, James is at Barnie’s funeral, thinking that his friend didn’t turn out so well and he’s only attending for old times sake, when he sees Rufus six rows in front of him. Which can’t be right, because he attended Rufus funeral 2 years ago…

This book has a subplot, or maybe more accurately a plot thread, about a woman called Shannon, who works for a shady company trawling the Dark Web for clients, when she meets a new man. Both of them have secrets, she was raped by a professor and never told anyone, and he makes and deals 3D printed firearms. As they grow closer, she ends up working for him, and over dinner one night she reveals her secret. He asks, what if a little accident happened to that professor? Nothing that could be traced back to you? She says she could live with that.

It’s a great opening to a suspenseful novel, and a very curious set up. These kinds of very intriguing opening situations are the thing that the Roy Grace series are known for. A central premise that’s odd and leads down into a winding rabbit hole of plot. This book is the 21st book in the series, and I’ve covered a few of them on this blog now. You can start reading this at any point in the series, you don’t have to read them in order, and there is also a TV series based on this series as well.

The book loosely has three main threads, James Taylor and his figuring out if Rufus was really at the funeral, Shannon and her mysterious man, and Roy Grace and his team investigating. We have themes of modern technology, like the Dark Web, block chains, and 3D printing, and it also has other popular recent interests like foraging for mushrooms and being an Influencer, which plays into the story. I think this was handled well. If things like this aren’t handled well, and often they’re not, they can be so cringe, like someone trying to use language of a much younger generation. Here I think they’re not overused and threaded in neatly, and so they’re a really good choice here.

Something that is a little more awkward, shall we say, are the Dad jokes peppered in. They’re not good jokes, just vaguely punny, like saying the DC is a dog lover so throw me a bone! Bit cheesey, but maybe they land with the target audience, if that’s an older demographic maybe. There are also little quotes dropped into the dialogue, which I don’t hate, but it feels a bit unnatural. People don’t speak in quotes at each other. I think both of these things are just part of the style of the author, and I guess they do make his style more unique to him, so perhaps this is more of an observation than a real criticism.

These books are always enjoyable. They set out with a premise that hooks you in and makes you wonder what’s going on, and then the pace and twists are there. They’re nice, chunky reads but they’re also quite fast reads too. You have characters that you know and see a little more of their lives, and then you have sympathetic or highly suspicious characters, whose stories are compelling. They’re very much thriller genre fiction in style, but they also have enough unique qualities to make them stand out as a series. This one is no exception: I loved that opening premise, I was happy to spend time with Roy Grace and his team again, and I liked how fast paced and twisting it was. It’s not so much that we’re trying to guess the mystery here, but this one feels like a really page turning game of cat and mouse. Is the bad guy going to get away this time? Will the killer slip through Grace’s fingers? You’ll have to read to find out.

Read It If: Fans will be happy. New comers will be entertained. Another twisting read from Peter James.

Thank you to PGC Books for the copy of this book for review.