Rating: 5/5
Source: Bought from Amazon UK
No one knew about The Puppet Maker... Until DI Brady found what remained of his victims.
The murderer never meant for them to be found. They are his private collection: each body identical, each... altered. Brady knows that now his secret is out, the killer will destroy the evidence -including his latest captive. He must find a man who has hidden the worst of crimes for over twenty years.
And whose nameless victims were never even missed...
The Puppet Maker is the fifth book in the Inspector Jack Brady series and currently the latest instalment. This book takes dark to a whole new level. With each novel Danielle Ramsay has introduced her readers to more heinous crimes, but The Puppet Maker tips the Brady series from crime/thriller to psychological thriller. The story is written so well, you can tell the transition from crime to thriller is something Danielle has been working up to and wasn't just a spur of the moment idea she had one day. From the prologue right up until the end, this book is terrifyingly graphic.
"Why were they like that? Identically dressed. Long dark hair. Perfect faces. Painted. Heavy red lipstick - each one of them. All turned to face him. Watching him.
Grotesque. Horrific. Dead."
The Puppet Maker carries on from Blood Reckoning. There is enough information about The Joker killings in this book that it can still be read as a standalone, though I highly recommend you pick up the others anyway. To set the scene, Jack has a run in with a notorious killer from the seventies called The Joker in the events of Blood Reckoning, he gets away without charge just before Jack gets the evidence he needs for a conviction, the evidence comes too late to save several lives and this results in Brady being held responsible by the press.
Jack is dealing with the aftermath of these events while The Joker is still on the loose when he uncovers the work of another serial killer, The Puppet Maker, whose crimes date back twenty years yet he's never been caught or even come under suspicion in all that time. While trying to solve this new mystery, The Joker gets restless and things between the killer and Jack get personal.
You really should feel for Jack, despite always getting results there's equally always something more going on that comes back to bite him. He really needs a nap, he's barely had a drink and with Claudia gone out of his life again, it's all getting to be too much. The Jack in this book felt a lot like the Jack from Broken Silence, unwilling to accept help after taking six months off the job. He's cold to everyone even his loyal Deputy Conrad, typical self destructive behaviour that Jack had started to train himself out of prior to Claudia leaving him, again.
The ending of the book is bittersweet. There's a certain amount of resolution, not all of it good but it ends a turbulent chapter in Brady's life and one that I hope sees him coming back stronger than ever. Wounds heal but scars remain, hopefully Jack will allow himself time to get himself sorted and Danielle will return with a sixth book in the near future. It's good to see Jack get his walking off into the sunset moment, I like to imagine that he finds his brother, they have an adventure and Jack remembers that he's a survivor and then he returns to the North East ready for the next job.
I would recommend this book to any classic thriller fan, some of the Chapters will give you Stephen King levels of adreniline and as much as I want Jack to have a good, easy life -I would love more of this type of storyline in his future. While we wait for a new instalment, we've got the first book in a new series coming up. The Last Cut featuring DS Harri Jacobs will be released in less than a week on June 1st! I will be reading and reviewing the book as soon as I can so look out for that.
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