A MEANS OF ESCAPE

TITLE: A MEANS OF ESCAPE

AUTHOR: JOANNA PRICE

Pages: 281

Date: 30/09/2011

Grade: 4+

Details: no. 1 Kate Linton

            ARC received from Real  Readers/Book Dagger

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On a cold November morning the body of a young woman is found on the Glastonbury Tor. The girl has been strangled and her body is surrounded by twelve small holes surrounded by candle wax.

Detective Sergeant Kate Linton is one of the police officers working the case, together with her superior Detective Inspector Rob Brown.

They soon discover that similar holes with wax were found surrounding two women murdered at Avebury’s stone circle and fear they may be dealing with a serial killer.

When, shortly afterwards another young woman goes missing and a star from a reality television show also disappears their fears become more urgent. The suspected killer may be holding two more women, while waiting for a chance to kill them too, and the police haven’t got any clear clues about his identity.

The case however is not the only thing occupying Kate Linton’s time and mind. She has quite a few issues in her own life concerning her relationship with her parents, her troubled brother and a messed up love life. And there are also the very mixed feelings she has about her superior, Brown.

With time running out for the missing girls, Kate and her colleagues appear to be fighting an uphill battle.

I enjoyed this mystery. It was well written, with plausible characters and an interesting story-line. I found myself compulsively turning the pages in order to find out what exactly was happening and how it would all be resolved.

However, there were one or two things I was less happy about.

It seems to me that Kate Linton may have one or two issues too many in her life. I understand that it is important to give a main character a good back story in order to make her come to life, and that this is even more important when the book in question is the first in a planned series. However, since there are more books involving this character to come, I felt that maybe the issues could have been spread out over future stories a bit more. Having said that, I also think it will be interesting to see how those story-lines develop in future books.

The way in which the story shifted perspective between quite a few characters in the book, including quite a few minor ones, did throw me off the reading rhythm at times. But, those sections were usually short and it wasn’t long before I would find myself back to the main story and captivated again.

Overall I would say this was a good first instalment in a planned series, and I will definitely pick up future books featuring Kate Linton.