By Jon Richter
Rating: 4/5
Source: PR copy for blog tour
When DI Chris Sigurdsson is assigned a grisly murder case on remote Salvation Island, he knows that it might be his strangest yet.
A forgotten wrestling star of the 1980s has been poisoned whilst in the ring, and amidst the slippery lies of his dangerous opponents, unravelling the victim’s murky past is almost impossible.
And as a storm threatens to cut Salvation Island off from the mainland, the race is on for Sigurdsson to find the ruthless killer before he strikes again…
Deadly Burial is a debut from Jon Richter will take you a quick but no less thrilling venture into a gruesome case, in less than two-hundred pages.
The book is set on a remote island and features a murder centred around the sport of wrestling, giving it a very unique feeling. I don't know anything about wrestling but the book is written well and I would assume it was authentic because I followed along with it easily.
One point I really liked in this book is that Richter writes about how the majority of the population of the island is made up of rabbits, this touch made the setting seem more ominous and feel cut off from the rest of the world. Cut off from the rest of the world -with a murderer *chills*.
A trope of the detective novel is a damaged officer whose life is full of conflict, this book is no different. DI Sigurdsson fears his own death and suffers panic attacks and premonitions about the whole subject because of a childhood trauma. I didn't think much of Sigurdsson’s college Carina Mason, but a lot of the side characters were a lot of fun, including the wrestlers. Despite not being a wrestling fan I think this element of the book was the biggest win for Richter.
The plot definitely picked up more towards the midpoint of the book, before then it was very much about establishing characters and the usual procedural detective work. There were a lot of plot twists that I didn't predict which was surprising in such a short book, I wasn't expecting red herrings or a complex plot line, so that gave the book extra points.
There isn't a whole lot more I can say about the book without giving away the plot, but for fans of intense reads and other authors such as; Peter James, Stuart McBride and Leigh Russell, then this is a read for you. I would recommend to anyone who is in a bit of a reading slump because this will jumpstart you for sure.
When he isn’t counting beans, he is a self-confessed nerd who loves books, films and video games – basically any way to tell a good story.
Jon writes whenever he can and hopes to bring you more disturbing stories in the very near future.
If you want to chat to him about this, or about anything at all, you can find him on Twitter or at his Facebook Page.
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