After She's Gone by Sheryl Browne

After she's Gone by Sheryl Browne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 3 days on and off

Publisher - Choc Lit

Pages -

Blurb from Goodreads

He’s killed your child and kidnapped your wife. What would YOU do?
There’s evil and then there’s Patrick Sullivan. A drug dealer, pimp and murderer, there are no depths to which Patrick would not sink, and Detective Inspector Matthew Adams has found this out in the most devastating way imaginable.
When Patrick’s brother is shot dead in a drug bust gone wrong, the bitter battle between the two men intensifies, and Matthew finds it increasingly difficult to hold the moral high ground. All he wants is to make the pimping scum suffer the way he did … the way Lily did.

But being at war with such a depraved individual means that it’s not just Matthew who’s in danger. Patrick has taken a lot from Matthew, but he hasn’t taken everything – and now he wants everything.


My Review

DI Matthew Adams was bullied as a kid, by none other than Patrick Sullivan who is now a top dog pimp, drug runner, murderer and psycho. Their bad blood has gone on all these years and worse still, blood has been shed. When Patrick loses one of his own his retribution is swift, deadly and sets the ball rolling for more bloodshed, anger and vengeance.

Ugh it is never a good thing when a child dies and one of the earlier scenes really hits the reader hard, how can it not when a child is involved. It sets the precedent for everything that follows and cements a long running feud with innocent bystanders set to suffer. We learn about Adams family and introduced to his niece whose "invisible friend" takes the story on a different spin. I would have loved to have heard a lot more about her and seen this aspect of the story explored in a lot more detail, I hold out hope for it in the next installment.

The book is fast paced, we fire in to some disturbing scenes and history between the two main characters. Both have a very negative affect on each other and we see the characters spiral down a dark path. Patrick is a psychopath, as the story goes on we see just how cracked and depraved one person can be and how a balanced individual can destruct when pushed to the limit. The story covers many topics, family, loss, grief, death of a child, abuse, sexual depravity, murder, drugs and prostitution to name just a few. Not for the feint hearted, a good start to a new series, if you haven't read Browne before this is a great place to start. 4/5 fr me this time, thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a review copy.

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