Helen King’s childhood is marred by physical abuse and rejection. At the age of fourteen she finds herself in the clutches of a pimp in Gloucester. He lures her into a life of drugs and prostitution. At the age of twenty she uses her drug addiction as a way to blank out the memories. It enables her to hide the psychological scarring caused by those that she feels had abandoned her.
Her life is … life is spiralling out of control. Helen’s decision to quit her addiction comes at a time when she has a chance encounter with an old school teacher. This opens up old wounds that had remained hidden and festering deep within her. It also leads to her decision that it is time for payback for all those that she felt had betrayed her. Helen, bitter and twisted, heads to Edinburgh to begin her killing spree.
When the first body is found the police are mystified. When a second body turns up they quickly realise that it is the same killer. They face a race against time to find the connection and the killer.
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Poignant, powerful, and tragic – a thriller of a tale of bloody revenge. My favourite book this year!
What an awesome book! As a fan of police procedural and murder stories, I can honestly say this is one of the best I’ve read in the genre in a very long time. While some books try to intrigue and tease the reader into reading beyond that all-important first chapter, Sharon Brownlie grabs you by the throat from the very first line, commanding your attention to the last.
The writing was crisp and sharp, always propelling the story forward or helping set the scene in the reader’s mind. I liked too that there were strong female characters on both sides of the law, which gave the story an additionally interesting slant. The portrayal of the seedy underbelly of Edinburgh, namely the drugs and prostitution, and the equally seedy characters that inhabit such a world was utterly convincing.
This is a story of bloody revenge taken to the nth degree. The main character, Helen King, is as loathsome, ruthless, and manipulative an individual as you would never want to meet outside the pages of a book, and yet her background and motivation allow the reader to, if not condone, at least understand and sympathise with her, even more so when she finally shows a few glimmers of humanity. Likewise, with the other characters – the author doesn’t strive to make the reader actually like or empathise with them, concentrating instead on portraying them as realistically as possible within a totally engaging story. A couple of traumatic incidents and a chance meeting of sorts are the catalyst for Helen’s transformation from an abused and cruelly exploited young girl and woman into a ruthless killer. Driven by her vivid dreams of revenge on those people she perceives as having let her down when she was a child, she’s consumed by a need to make them pay for their ‘betrayal’ of her. The author doesn’t exaggerate the violence in the book i.e. it’s not as graphic or detailed as you might expect given the theme of the book, but yet the author still manages to conjure a clear image of it in the reader’s imagination. The investigations into her activities are authentic and well constructed but without bogging the reader down with every precise detail or overuse of police terminology. As you would expect, there are several police officers involved in the investigation, though of course, the story focuses on those leading it, and the author brings them to life with little snippets of background information and all the varied character traits you would encounter in the real world. In addition to the story being told, these characters could easily warrant further crime thrillers in their own right.
It’s impossible for me to overpraise this book; anyone who’s ever read and enjoyed Lynda La Plante’s ‘Prime Suspect’ series (or seen the tv adaptation) will be in for a real treat with this one. My favourite crime book this year.
I enjoyed the writing and the journey.
I’ve always been interested in what make people do the things they do. In Betrayal, the author explores the mind of Helen, a young woman driven to murder. It’s a story of guilt, blame and lost innocence: a downward spiral from physical abuse into drug abuse, and anger at the betrayal of those who should have protected her in childhood. Fascinating insights into both the investigative psyche and those on the wrong side of the law. I enjoyed the writing and the journey and look forward to the sequel, Betrayal, the Consequences.
I thoroughly enjoyed Betrayal, Book 1, by Sharon Brownlie. Coupled with a well-written police investigation was a compelling murderer’s story that had me feeling sympathy. The action unfolded quickly and had me turning pages the whole way. I was surprised to learn there is a sequel. I can’t wait to read it.
A powerful and compelling thriller
Since childhood, Helen’s life had been a nightmare of sexual and physical abuse by her father and his friends. At the age of fourteen, she ran away from a care home, Cranston Hall, to find her friend Ash. But she ended up in the dark, seedy world of drugs and prostitution and suffered in the hands of her pimp, Addie.
By the age of twenty, life had turned Helen into a ruthless and manipulative person, who would stop at nothing to get revenge. So, she decides to quit drugs and punish the people who knew about her suffering and betrayed her.
“Betrayal” is a gripping thriller with fully developed, complicated characters and a great twist in the end.