by Paul Cleave
SYNOPSIS
To catch a killer…
Maybe you've got to be one…
Acacia Pines, USA. Sheriff Cohen's life is falling apart – his father accidentally burned down the retirement home, his wife has moved out, and his son is bullying other kids at school.
When high-school student, Lucas Connor, is abducted, Cohen sees a chance to get his life back on track – to win back his wife and scoop the reward money offered for Lucas's safe return.
But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Cohen's going to have to make the kind of decision from which there's no coming back … a decision with deadly consequences…
A furiously paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller exposing the dark underbelly of small-town life, His Favourite Graves is also a twisted and twisty story of father-and-son relationships, and the one last gamble of a desperate man to save everything…
REVIEW
When Lucas Connor is abducted, it's Acacia Pines Sheriff, James Cohen who is tasked with the investigation. What he discovers is complex and disturbing trail of abuse, mental illness and the outcomes of growing up in an unhappy, dysfunctional family. What Sheriff Cohen doesn't realise is that by the end of the case the future of his own family will also be in danger.
Back in 2021 I read my first Paul Cleave book - The Quiet People - and absolutely fell in love with his dark style, mixing a more traditional crime novel with the addition of crime fiction authors being involved in the plot. I was so thrilled that this element was brought back in His Favourite Graves. It wasn't as central to the plot as in The Quiet People, but as a crime fiction fan, it's almost like an 'easter egg' giving a nod to the genre and little mentions to commonly used tropes or plot devices.
As I have come to expect, this story looks at the darkest sides of human nature and really examines the depths that people will go to when they are desperate and have nowhere else to go. It's unexpected and takes turns quite early on which lead the plot into directions that you really don't see coming. The one thing I should have realised by now is that with this author, every time you think it can't get any more devastating, another layer is exposed and it really is shocking to read.
Paul Cleave has written another stand-out crime thriller which I honestly can't fault. It's addictive, inventive and a story which yet again fails to leave you after reading.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Cleave is Christchurch born and raised, and other than a couple of years when he was living in London and bouncing around Europe a little, he's always lived there. Paul wanted to write horror, and it was a few years in when he realised that crime – real life crime – is horror. When he made that connection, he turned to writing dark crime fiction, writing first The Killing Hour, and then The Cleaner, in his mid-twenties. Not long after that Paul sold his house and lived with his parents so he could write full time – a gamble that paid off a few years later when Random House signed him up. From that point on he's written dark tales set in his home city, introducing Joe Middleton – the Christchurch Carver, and Melissa, and Theodore Tate, and Schroder, and Jerry Gray, among others to the world.
Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours, Paul Cleave - @PaulCleave, and Orenda Books - @OrendaBooks for the opportunity to read and review.
Fiction: Crime Thriller
Publisher: Orenda Books
ISBN: 978-1914585883
Pages: 304pp
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