Monday 17 April 2017

A Twist of the Knife (Brigid Quinn #3) - Becky Masterman


It takes a strong woman to be able to watch someone die.

Brigid Quinn is tough, determined, steely and sharper than sharp. As an ex-agent of the FBI she has seen it all, and survived. But nothing can cut her closer to the bone than family...

When Brigid gets a call from her mother saying her father is in hospital with pneumonia, she decides to check on her former colleague Laura Coleman who is living nearby. Having saved Brigid's life, Laura is now working on an 'innocence project', investigating cold cases. And one in particular seems to have caught her attention. Fifteen years before, Marcus Creighton was accused of killing his wife and three children. Now the state governor has signed the warrant for his execution.

Worried that her friend is getting in too deep, Brigid promises to help. But what if her instincts are betraying her? If she can't even trust her memories of her own childhood, how can she make a call on some stranger's story that took place over fifteen years before?

What did I think?

Although A Twist of the Knife is the 3rd book in the Brigid Quinn series, I decided to jump straight in and I'm really pleased that I did. For me, you can tell that this is part of a series as the characters are already very well developed and I think I missed out a little bit by not reading the first 2 books (something I do intend to remedy very soon).  Putting that to one side, this is a great book and there is so much going on that your head will be in a spin until the cleverly drawn out conclusion.

A Twist of the Knife has one of the most chilling prologues I have ever read, as Brigid witnesses her first execution.  35 years later Brigid heads to Florida as her Dad is in hospital and whilst there meets up with Laura Coleman.  Laura is working on a death row case, that of Marcus Creighton who was convicted of killing his wife and children.  The bodies of the children were never found, which has caught the attention of Alison Samuels who works for an organisation specialising in locating missing children.  With four days left before Marcus Creighton is executed, can Laura, with help from Brigid, prove that he didn't kill his family and will Alison Samuels find the missing Creighton children?

Brigid Quinn is such a feisty character.  She keeps her emotions very close to her chest and I loved her interactions with her very dysfunctional family over her father's hospital bed.  The Quinns know just which buttons to press in each other and you can almost feel them fizzing with barely controlled emotions.  It was while enjoying such scenes that I realised how much of the building up of Brigid's character that I had missed by not reading the first 2 books.  Not that it spoiled my enjoyment of the story at all, I just think it would have been enhanced by knowing more about her in advance.

The story of Marcus Creighton was excellent.  Not that I could say whether it was accurate or not, but the police procedural element appeared to have been meticulously researched.  I felt like I was in a race against time as the countdown to Marcus's execution began and I truly believed that he was as innocent as Laura claimed him to be.  Will Brigid be able to uncover the truth before it is too late? You will just have to read it and see!

This definitely has the potential to be a 5 star book but, through no fault of the author, I have awarded 4 stars purely because I felt that I was missing something.  Totally my fault by not reading the books in order, but it is the mark of a good book when I am looking to add the earlier books to my TBR pile in order to catch up with Brigid's story.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:




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