Title: The Ash Doll
Author: James Hazel
Series: Charlie Priest #2
Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre
[Synopsis]
The past had been buried. But now someone has remembered . . .
Prolific lawyer Charlie Priest has bet his career on one case, but when his star witness turns up brutally murdered on the first morning of the trial, things start to fall apart.
Priest knows there’s a vicious killer out there, but as the bodies begin to pile up, he soon realises that he’s caught in a web of corruption that protects a deadly secret: one that threatens to tear him and those he cares about apart. And Priest has demons of his own to battle, suffering from dissociative disorder, a condition so destructive that it leaves him questioning the truth of his own existence.
Can Priest uncover the truth before it’s too late?
[My Review]
Having really enjoyed The Mayfly [see my review here], I was looking forward to being thrown back into the dark (and, at times, rather bizarre) world of lawyer Charlie Priest and his colleague Georgie Someday. The characters are what makes this novel so enjoyable; the subject matter in this novel is a lot darker, and at times was quite difficult to read, but both Charlie and Georgie are great to read about and made me want to keep reading on. The fact that they’re not detectives or part of the police, but instead lawyers, allows them to break the rules sometimes in ways that the police can’t, and this adds to the fun.
The plot has twists and turns, and requires some concentration to keep track of what exactly is going on, whilst there’s a definitely sense of unease and the unknown which created a pretty unsettling atmosphere, which (though it sounds weird) I did enjoy!
I didn’t find this quite as much of an addictive read as The Mayfly but it’s still a great read.
[Rating: 3.5/5]
Many thanks to Bonnier Zaffre for providing a copy of this book on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.
I love the cover. But I do have to be careful judging a book in that manner because I have read a book for the cover and they did not fit or live up to it.