Tuesday 23 August 2016

Tenacity - J. S. Law


Two hundred metres below the surface, 

she will have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

A sailor hangs himself on board a naval submarine. Although ruled a suicide Lieutenant Danielle Lewis, the Navy's finest Special Branch investigator, knows the sailor's wife was found brutally murdered only days before.

Now Dan must enter the cramped confines of HMS Tenacity to interrogate the tight-knit, male crew and determine if there's a link.

Standing alone in the face of extreme hostility and with a possible killer on board, Dan soon realises that she may have to choose between the truth and her own survival.

The pressure is rising and Dan's time is running out...

What did I think?

I did really enjoy Tenacity, it has all of the ingredients for an edge of your seat thriller, but I'm not familiar with job roles on a submarine so I found I got slightly bogged down with terms such as 'Coxswain' and 'Chief Stoker' and which character they actually related to.  For this reason, and this alone, I gave Tenacity 4 stars rather than 5.

Danielle (Dan) is a woman in a man's world.  She has been sent on board HMS Tenacity to investigate an apparent suicide of one of the crew.  Walker has apparently committed suicide after being informed of his wife's murder and Dan is tasked with finding out if there's more to it than meets the eye.  Of course there is more to it, ensuring that the pages turn faster than you can say 'up periscope'.

I felt quite claustrophobic when Dan was on Tenacity, there simultaneously seems like nowhere to hide yet sometimes feeling all alone. The crew were unsurprisingly suspicious of her and all were ready to stick a metaphorical knife in her back, leaving me wondering if there was anybody she could trust.  The captain, known as the Old Man, had no intention of helping Dan with her investigation and saw her as a nuisance on his ship.

Tenacity really is a page turner and I look forward to reading more about Danielle Lewis.  I struggled a little bit with matching characters' forenames to their jobs so I wasn't always sure who I was reading about when names like 'Chief Stoker' were mentioned, however, the story was fast paced enough to overlook this minor gripe.  Tenacity is an amazing debut from J.S. Law with a spunky heroine from whom I'm sure we'll be hearing lots more.

I received this book from the publisher, Headline, via Bookbridgr in exchange for an honest review.

My rating:




Buy it from Amazon

2 comments:

  1. I'm reading it atm and I've had the same problem! The character is mentioned by name, then job, and I was getting a bit mixed up over who did what. But I'm just rolling with it (maybe a job - name list at the start would've helped us landlubbers?! Great otherwise; look forward to reading more about Dan.

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    1. I wish I'd written down names to help me - I don't usually need to do that but I think with it being unfamiliar territory for me it would have helped. I loved the character of Dan and would be keen to read more about her.

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