When lawyer Carol Berkley visits a man on death row, who has not spoken one word from the time of his arrest and right through his trial, she is shocked by his first spoken words. James Delaney is a man sentenced for one murder, but it turns out that he may be the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known. When James despatches Carol to find a priest, a priest with a secret, she … becomes tangled in a web of murder, blackmail and revenge, as her life spirals out of control. Father Martin Doyle thought he had left a terrible secret behind him in Ireland, but when Carol turns up at his church in a poor Miami neighbourhood, he is forced to travel back home to confront the demons of his past and discover even more sinister new ones. With a hurricane looming large off the Florida coast, James knows that there is a far more dangerous storm brewing. The arrival of new prison officer Elias Wainwright means that James will never make it to his official execution date, without the help of Carol Berkley and the priest with a very particular secret. Time is running out for James and he has a secret of his own that may change everything. But some secrets should be kept in the family.
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A dark and murderous tale to chill the blood …
This book really hooks the reader from the opening page, raising questions right from the start that keeps the reader turning the page in the hope of answers. For the most part, this is a thriller of the first order, but one that skates around the fringes of horror and the paranormal. None of the characters are quite what they seem, least of all James Delaney, the mysterious figure who at the start finds himself on Death Row for unintentionally killing a policewoman, and for most definitely trying to kill another man; and yet, for a man facing years of incarceration and a death sentence at the end of it he seems remarkably unconcerned by his situation, and as the story progresses we learn he may be responsible for many more deaths, a serial killer of unimaginable proportion. But he is in good company here; with just a few exceptions, virtually every character has at one time had blood on their hands. I won’t say in what way but there are several clues early on and throughout that there’s something ‘different,’ something ‘more,’ about James Delaney and his enemy Elias Wainwright that sets them apart from ordinary men. And the other characters too, an ambitious young female lawyer, a priest with a less than angelic past, and Jamal, a streetwise young man from the ‘less than affluent’ side of town, all command the reader’s attention. Max Power expertly lays the foundations of a blood and corpse-filled thriller, providing the reader with a jigsaw of literary elements that slowly come together from which an intriguing story of an age-old battle and blood feud emerges.
Although written in the third person, Max Power delves into the minds of the most prominent characters in such a way as to make the reader think and almost believe that the story is being told from the perspective of each one at any given time. Another of the great strengths of this author’s writing is also to create a real sense of atmosphere, usually somewhat dark and brooding, and characters that defy all the usual stereotypes, ones that hover and glide between being the hero and the villain, being liked and loathed in equal measure. Some of the narrative is a little graphic at times but always in keeping with the context and tone of the story. One area I would have liked to see explored more was the history between James Delaney and Elias Wainwright and their respective families, and perhaps a little more explanation about the alluded to mythology about them.
I almost feel guilty for not awarding this book five stars, and perhaps if this had been the first of the author’s books I had read then I might well have done so, but having previously read two previous books by the same author, this one didn’t quite work as well (for me) as the previous two but it still remains a thoroughly well-written, enjoyable and blood curdling read nonetheless. Soon after finishing this review I shall be moving onto Max Power’s latest book… If Edgar Allan Poe was writing in the modern era then Bad Blood would be the sort of book I would be expecting from him…