Little Red Death by A K Benedict
ONCE UPON A TIME LIKE YOU’VE NEVER READ IT BEFORE . . .
DI Lyla Rondell is on the case of a lifetime. Tasked with investigating a series of perplexing deaths, the only lead she has is that each appears to be based on a different classic fairy tale. Far from the stuff of bedtime stories, the press is having a field day with what they have named the Grimm Ripper Murders.
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But as the bodies stack up, Lyla’s whole world is about to flip on its head. Because the killer’s bloody trail stretches deep into her own origin story, and when she discovers the truth, nothing will ever be the same again.
Faced with the fact that everything she knows is fiction, Lyla will have to take a little creative license of her own if she’s going to turn the final page on the killings . . .
My Review
Little Red Death is like nothing I’ve ever read before. It starts off with a killer obsessed with fairy tales, a kidnapped author called Katie forced to rewrite the Brothers Grimm stories so he can re-enact them, and a threat that she will die if she doesn’t keep writing. So it becomes about her or the victims in the stories.
What a dilemma! Does she even believe he’s serious. Well she soon finds out he is – deadly serious – literally. And the murders are pretty nasty with the bodies laid out in line with the fairy tales they represent. How can Katie escape and who is The Wolf anyway? He wears a wolf mask so she never sees his face.
In the meantime, DI Lyla Rondell has never got over the mysterious disappearance of her best friend Allison twenty-five years earlier when they were both fifteen. She is sure there is a link. Small clues lead her to believe it can’t be a coincidence. Did the current killer, who the press are calling The Grimm Ripper, kidnap Allison all those years ago?
But then the story changes and I have to admit I got a bit lost. I won’t explain as I don’t want to give anything away, but it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I just went with the flow.
As an aside, I love that the author tags her own husband Guy Adams in Katie’s list of authors she likes. I wanted to add Some Kind of Fairy Tale by the late, wonderful and massively underrated Graham Joyce, and then there it was. At last! A fellow fan. The author even refers to herself at one point. Brilliant!
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
A. K. (ALEXANDRA) BENEDICT is a best-selling, award-winning writer of short stories, novels and scripts. Educated at Cambridge, Sussex and Clown School, she has been an indie-rock singer, an actor, RLF Fellow, and a composer for film and TV, as well as teaching and running the prestigious MA in Crime Thrillers at City University. She is now a full-time writer and creative coach.
As A. K. Benedict, she writes acclaimed short stories, high-concept novels and award-winning audio drama for Big Finish, Audible UK, Audible US and BBC Sounds, among others. She won the Scribe Award for her Doctor Who radio drama, The Calendar Man, and was shortlisted for the eDunnit Novel Award for The Beauty of Murder and the BBC Audio Drama Podcast Award for Children of the Stones. As Alexandra Benedict she writes puzzle-filled Christmas mysteries, of which The Christmas Murder Game and Murder on the Christmas Express were both bestsellers and The Christmas Murder Game was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. Her most recent festive thriller, The Christmas Jigsaw Murders, was published in 2023.
She lives on the south coast of England with writer Guy Adams, their daughter, Verity, and dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford. Follow her on X @ak_benedict and Instagram @a.k.benedict.
