Black Summer by M W Craven

Black Summer by M.W. Craven
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - 1 day

Pages - 352

Publisher - Constable

Source - Netgalley

Blurb from Goodreads

After The Puppet Show, a new storm is coming . . .

Jared Keaton, chef to the stars. Charming. Charismatic. Psychopath . . . He's currently serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of his daughter, Elizabeth. Her body was never found and Keaton was convicted largely on the testimony of Detective Sergeant Washington Poe.

So when a young woman staggers into a remote police station with irrefutable evidence that she is Elizabeth Keaton, Poe finds himself on the wrong end of an investigation, one that could cost him much more than his career.

Helped by the only person he trusts, the brilliant but socially awkward Tilly Bradshaw, Poe races to answer the only question that matters: how can someone be both dead and alive at the same time?

And then Elizabeth goes missing again - and all paths of investigation lead back to Poe.




My Review

Tilly and Poe are BACK! An old case of Poe's comes back to bite him and he needs help. Calling in Tilly - Poe has to investigate, delicately, whilst having to answer to his colleagues, judgement and the horrific possibility he got it wrong and an innocent went to jail.

Poe is a good cop, he has great instincts and he knows he put a bad guy behind bars yet proof has come to light he got it wrong. The dynamic duo, Tilly & Poe have to work together to investigate how this could happen.

Chapter one, oh dear Lord, I had the boke! There is a scene in a restaurant and they talk about a dish that is barbaric to the animal in the prep of it. If you struggle with animal cruelty you may want to skip past when they start talking about it, it will stay with me a long time. I thought how lobsters were done was bad, this is the thing of horrors, be warned. That said, there isn't much in the way of animal cruelty after this and we get back to the meat of the story.

The uniqueness that is Tilly Bradshaw and her friendship with Poe is one of my fav things about these books. Tilly is a one of a kind, socially inappropriate at times, funny, caring, innocent, super smart and fiercely loyal. I love their interaction and when the story kicks off I was hooked pretty quick wanting to know how, how could this happen. I think if you snag your reader quickly you know you have a winning formula, Craven seems to have this knack, certainly with this series. I need to check out his other books! Fast paced, interactions with a psychopath, police investigations and the long awaited Tilly & Poe bantz, 4/5 for me, roll on book 3!

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