Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* On leave following her horrific experience in Dead Scared (2012), Detective Constable Lacey Flint finds herself emotionally ill-equipped to return to the job she once loved, and equally unable to stamp out her growing feelings for colleague Detective Inspector Mark Joesbury. Consequently, she spends her days alone and unapproachable in her apartment, taking long nighttime walks, and watching the kids who congregate at the local community center to smoke and mess around. One of those kids is her neighbor Barney Roberts, an amiable but obviously troubled preteen, whose single-parent father is clueless when it comes to the needs of his son. In the meantime, five young boys who have gone missing in South London have begun to turn up exsanguinated and, of course, very, very dead. When Lacey's midnight forays put her in proximity to one of the murders, she becomes a suspect, though it takes Barney's disappearance to make her react; but by then it may be too late to help her young friend. Bolton sets aside the gothic-tinged atmosphere of her early novels in favor of a more visceral sensibility, exerting immediate and continuing pull by stepping in and out of an unnamed killer's mind. Couple the strong narrative drive with a pair of dysfunctional but surprisingly sympathetic characters, and you have a nail-biting thriller that will send readers back to Bolton's previous books and, of course, have them lining up for whatever the author comes up with next.--Zvirin, Stephanie Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Bolton's eerily atmospheric third novel featuring Det. Constable Lacey Flint (after 2012's Dead Scared), Flint befriends 11-year-old Barney Roberts, who lives with his father next door to her in South London. Barney aches to find his lost mother, who has been missing since he was four, and increasingly fears that his father may be a serial killer who's slain a number of neighborhood boys his age in recent weeks. Though Flint is on leave from the force and continues to battle demons both personal and professional, she can't help getting involved in the case. The stakes rise after a doctor announces on TV that all the victims died in the same horrifying way. Close-to-the-bone red herrings skillfully strewn across the detectives' paths, convincing cop-shop procedure, and perceptively drawn secondary characters help push this contemporary crime novel ahead of the pack. Winner of two Mary Higgins Clark Awards, Bolton looks deep into the lost-soul madness of a killer and makes her vision all too horribly real. Agent: Anne-Marie Doulton, the Ampersand Agency (U.K.). (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Four ten-year-old boys have been murdered in London in two months and another is missing. None of the victims hasÅbeen tortured or assaulted, but all have had their blood almost completely drained. Conducting his own unofficial investigation of these deaths are 11-year-old Barney, whose mother disappeared seven years ago, and his friends. His neighbor, DC Lacey Flint, is on medical leave after being traumatized during the course of a recent case (Dead Scared) and is avoiding people altogether, but she surreptitiously tries to watch over Barney. Her police colleagues suspect that she might be the killer, she suspects Barney, and Barney suspects his father-and then Barney vanishes. VERDICT Realistic fear, heart-stopping suspense, and jolting plot twists keep one almost frantically turning pages as Bolton grabs us from the beginning and leaves us shaken at the end. Highly recommended. [Library marketing.]-Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
No 10-year-old boy is safe in south London. At first, the kids are just missing. Then their bodies turn up on Tuesdays or Thursdays with slashed throats. Websites about the blood-drained boys appear. Someone calling himself Peter Sweep posts Dracula quotations and chides DI Dana Tulloch's police investigation as incompetent. Young Barney Roberts, who suffers from blackouts and spends the majority of his time pining for the mother he last saw when he was 4 years old and the rest tracking the crime scenes with his preteen mates, thinks his father might be responsible for the murders. His dad is never at home on the nights in question. He's obsessed with Dracula. He keeps a boat where two of the bodies were found. Barney toys with confiding in his neighbor, DC Lacey Flint, but asks her only to help find his mom. Lacey, on leave from the Southwark police (Dead Scared, 2012, etc.), is barely keeping herself together. She refuses to talk to DI Mark Joesbury, who loves her, or meet his son Huck. She's evasive with her therapist. And she's begun cutting her forearm to relieve her stress. Moreover, her behavior has encouraged Dana Tulloch to suggest her as the serial killer of the lost boys. When both Huck and Barney go missing, the emotionally overwrought Lacey is forced into action. Bolton, who specializes in over-the-top psychological mayhem, ratchets up the tension with OCD diagnoses, past furies unresolved and a reworking of the Peter Pan story.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
