Dead Memories – Angela Marsons

Crime Fiction
5*s

Wow! Just for a change I’m going to start this review by saying how much I love this crime fiction series and its chief protagonist DI Kim Stone. I gave the very first book in the series, Silent Scream, the full five stars when I read it in 2015 – sadly despite the subsequent books being even better – five stars is the maximum. Angela Marsons has truly surpassed herself with Dead Memories, the tenth book in the series.

The scene opens on the notorious Hollytree housing estate, specifically the fourth floor of Chaucer House which just happens to be a few floors below where Kim Stone was found next to her dead twin, handcuffed to a radiator. Can it be a coincidence that today two youngsters have been found handcuffed to a radiator? Let’s face it, it’s going to be a no!

This series is firmly wedded to its setting in the Black Country and many of the books take in the Hollytree housing estate with Chaucer House being designated the block which is the roughest of them all, at some point. But this book gets to the heart of Kim Stone’s life. With Bryant, Stacey and Penn, at her side she is going to have to confront some of the many traumas that she has met in life being recreated for someone’s sick game. But that won’t be easy because spiky Kim doesn’t want to share those details with anyone, let alone her colleagues!  Because of the basis in the crimes being committed it was a more traumatic read than most and one that made me realise quite how fond of the detective I have become. Yes, I know its fiction, but when I was reading, it was as real as anything else!

I’ve mentioned in my many reviews of crime fiction series of how much I like meeting up with old friends, in this case the small team that Kim Stone is part of. Angela Marsons has managed her reader’s expectations and interest levels very well on this score with different team members playing larger roles in some of the books and in this episode we have a return of the Alison Lowe a profiler who has been brought on board to keep an eye on Kim herself. This gives a satisfying and fresh injection into the characters and their interactions.

As always the plotting is faultless and although I’d gauge the crimes committed at the top end of my personal gore rating, the black humour that runs through the books means that what could be an unrelenting book of horror doesn’t have that overall feel at all. This really is the mark of a writer who knows her craft and injects a small dollop of humour at the right moment, never inappropriately, to keep the reader engaged but not depressed.

With an enterprising killer at work we also get a full insight into those traumatic incidents in Kim’s life, from the first moment of being left to die next to her twin Mickey to the more recent tragic fatality of a close colleague. So with each murder we get a double whammy of concern for the victims and their families in the present and a second-hand one for Kim, which only served to make me enjoy her company even more.

If you haven’t read this series, start now – they are fantastic but to my mind, you need to read them in order. This the tenth is absolute the cherry on the crime fiction cake!

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Bookouture for allowing me to read a copy of Dead Memories before it is published on 22 February 2019. This unbiased review is my thanks to them and Angela Marsons for another brilliant episode in the Kim Stone series.

First Published UK: 22 February 2019
Publisher: Bookouture
No of Pages: 459
Genre: Crime Fiction – Series
Amazon UK
Amazon US

Previous Books featuring Kim Stone
Silent Scream
Evil Games
Lost Girls
Play Dead
Blood Lines
Dead Souls
Broken Bones
Dying Truth
Fatal Promise

This Week in Books (February 6)

Hosted by Lipsy Lost & Found my Wednesday post gives you a taste of what I am reading this week. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words

My current read is The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White which is on The Classics Club reading list because I am determined to make sure I read twelve books from this list in 2019.

Blurb

The Wheel Spins is the novel about young and bright Iris Carr, who is on her way back to England after spending a holiday somewhere in the Balkans. After she is left alone by her friends, Iris catches the train for Trieste and finds company in Miss Froy, chatty elderly English woman. When she wakes up from a short nap, she discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is on the verge of her nerves. She is helped by a young English traveller, and the two proceed to search the train for clues to the old woman’s disappearance. Amazon

The last book I finished was the tenth in the Kim Stone series, Dead Memories by Angela Marsons was a fantastic addition to this brilliant series.

Blurb

On the fourth floor of Chaucer House, two teenagers are found chained to a radiator. The boy is dead but the girl is alive. For Detective Kim Stone every detail of the scene mirrors her own terrifying experience with her brother Mikey, when they lived in the same tower block thirty years ago.

When the bodies of a middle-aged couple are discovered in a burnt-out car, Kim can’t ignore the chilling similarity to the death of Erica and Keith – the only loving parents Kim had ever known.

Faced with a killer who is recreating traumatic events from her past, Kim must face the brutal truth that someone wants to hurt her in the worst way possible. Desperate to stay on the case, she is forced to work with profiler Alison Lowe who has been called in to observe and monitor Kim’s behaviour.

Kim has spent years catching dangerous criminals and protecting the innocent. But with a killer firmly fixed on destroying Kim, can she solve this complex case and save her own life or will she become the final victim? Amazon

Next up I plan to read The Secretary by Renée Knight which I’m really keen to read having loved Disclaimer, the author’s first book.

Blurb

Look around you. Who holds the most power in the room? Is it the one who speaks loudest, who looks the part, who has the most money, who commands the most respect?

Or perhaps it’s someone like Christine Butcher: a meek, overlooked figure, who silently bears witness as information is shared and secrets are whispered. Someone who quietly, perhaps even unwittingly, gathers together knowledge of the people she’s there to serve – the ones who don’t notice her, the ones who consider themselves to be important.

There’s a fine line between loyalty and obsession. And when someone like Christine Butcher is pushed to her limit, she might just become the most dangerous person in the room . . . Amazon

What does your reading week look like?