Flesh Evidence by Malcolm Hollingdrake
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I was provided with an ARC of this book, by Bloodhound Books, in return for an honest review.
This is book 3 in this series and I normally like to read books in sequence but I wanted to read and review this in time for publication. It works very well as a stand-alone book and the author has managed to ensure the reader doesn’t struggle without the background to the characters from books 1 and 2 yet still avoided long sections of repeats from the earlier books. The book is professionally written and totally gripping I read it within 24 hours because I couldn’t put it down.
I am very impressed with this book it ticks all my boxes with the added advantage of no steamy sex scenes or the temptation to have 2 cases that end up being linked that I have found with the last 5 police thrillers I have read.
The main characters are DCI Cyril Bennet and DS David Owen they are totally different characters that work extremely well together. Had I read the earlier books I would have said the characters lacked depth but until I have caught up with the series I assume that this was covered already and this book adds to that depth.
You can’t help but love this duo and the other characters and Malcolm has made an excellent job of writing a thriller that is gory enough for the readers that like a bit of gore in their books but not enough to put off the more sensitive reader.
The story starts with incidents in the past regarding Sam who is transgender and struggles with his life from a very early age. Fast forward to the present and 14 year old boys are going missing with jars of honey containing tattooed samples of their skin are found in various locations with the bodies they came from turning up later.
Cyril’s team has a race against time to solve the case before any more teenage boys disappear and relationships are built while everyone pulls together. There are many twists and turns along the way with a total curve ball at the end.
Excellent book and well worth the 5 stars. I will be reading more by this author.
