Peter James' Need You Dead - Review

Need You Dead by Peter James

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A troubling investigation for Roy Grace.

Lorna Belling's plan to escape her abusive marriage and begin a new life with the man she loves is about to be shattered to the core.

Discovering her lover is not whom he claims triggers a confrontation that leads to her tragic death.

Detective Superintendent Grace and the team investigate, pursuing an increasingly desperate criminal who will do whatever it takes to escape justice.

'Need You Dead' is the thirteenth novel in the Roy Grace series by Peter James; another gripping thriller in the police procedural series, following Grace and the team investigating a woman's suspicious death, faced with the tragic reality of many crimes - bad decisions and spur of the moment reactions escalating to actions that cannot be undone.

We meet Lorna as her life begins to crumble, her dream of a new start shattering. Her lover isn't the man she believed him to be, his identity faked, and with this realisation her hopes of escaping her husband are in tatters. Their confrontation erupts into violence, leaving Lorna dead and her lover frantic. When Lorna's body is found, her abusive husband appears the obvious prime suspect. But other possibilities surface as more evidence is found, inconsistencies niggling in Grace's mind despite how clear cut the case seems. As the police get closer, a killer plots to evade capture.

Picking up four weeks after the shocking conclusion of the previous book, 'Love You Dead', Grace is preparing to meet his son for the first time, after discovering his first wife Sandy was pregnant when she disappeared over ten years ago. The personal turmoil and the fallout from the truth of Sandy's disappearance and what followed her reappearance are taking their toll on Roy, threatening to dislodge his focus. Strands of previous cases are also threaded through the narrative, Grace in trial preparation for the murderers apprehended in the last two books, with another dangerous killer currently comatose in hospital.

With each novel, James takes a different approach with themes, perspectives and the focus of the investigation, keeping each chapter fresh and revitalised, while maintaining the series' fast-paced and procedurally-detailed storytelling, complete with psychological thrills, action sequences, and suspense; as the new investigation delves into the sickening nature of domestic violence, unearths police corruption, and confronts the sad and dark reality that one never knows what may be happening behind closed doors or within a person's mind.

As always, with the conclusion of the investigation, we are left poised with tantalising hints of what may come next. I'm very much looking forward to the next in the series, 'Dead If You Don't'.



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