Peter James (1) (1948–)

12 books into a series, you know what to expect. In this installment, Roy Grace need to deal with a black widow (with a penchant for creepy-crawlies), finally faces the truth of Sandy's disappearance and seems to find a closure for another old case (or two). If I did not know that there are more books after this one, I would have been worried if this is the end of the series - too many lose threads are getting finally closed, some of them from the very first book.

It does not work as a show more standalone novel - the black widow plot is a standalone but everything around it is just the continuation of the series and if you don't have the backstory, they fall flat - the spare details added here are enough to understand what is going on but not to build the full picture.

And if you are coming from the previous books, the whole book works - the story-lines connect in weird ways and then diverge again, making one wonder if that connection was really there... and then they do it again. The solutions come slowly as they usually do in this series - but they are logical and without weird jumps around.

I will be very curious to see where we are going to go from here - pretty much all of the drivers of the series are closed now and James has an almost clean sheet (well... there are some figures on the board but no more long threads coming from the past). But as long as the supporting characters are still around and the crime stories keep up the tension, I am sure that some new connections will show up - after all, not every single thread got closed. Plus Roy Grace is very good at annoying people. show less

Lorna Belling has issues. Her husband, Colin, is abusive. Her only hope is her lover, Greg, who assures her he will divorce his wife and take Lorna away from Colin.

Meanwhile she’s selling everything of value to squirrel away money to move to Australia where her sister lives, just in case. However, some guy she wants to sell her car to keeps saying he’s transferred the money through Paypal but she hasn’t received it. He keeps threatening to reveal her love affair to her husband if she show more doesn’t turn over the car or refund his money.

But the worst…looking at one of her beauty parlor customer’s vacation photos, she recognizes Greg and a woman, presumably his wife, lovingly looking into each other’s eyes. Realizing Greg has been lying about everything including his name, Lorna vows to ruin him. While waiting in the bathtub at their hideaway for their next tryst, she’s thinking of revenge. When he walks in she screams her intention. In a fit of rage he bashes her head against the bathtub wall, causing her to become unconscious, blood spurting everywhere. Unsure if Lorna is dead, he flees. Returning later to a corpse, he plots to incriminate Colin.

The question, not answered until the very end, is “Who is the murderer?”

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, assigned to the case, appoints a young protege, Guy Batchelor, as Senior Investigating Officer partly because it will be good experience for Batchelor and partly because Grace will be in Germany meeting Bruno, the 10 year old son he never knew he had from his first marriage.

Need You Dead by Peter James, the thirteenth Roy Grace book after Love You Dead (all the titles in the series contain the word ‘Dead’), packs a punch. Suspects and red herrings abound and Grace, Batchelor and the investigative team follow the plentiful leads. Grace’s attention alternates between the case and the psychological impact on Bruno of his mother’s suicide and his subsequent move to England. This British police procedural has action, car chases, gory deaths and more. Something for every mystery fan.

Need You Dead is totally satisfying, although I do have one small criticism. The narrative glosses over how the murderer and Lorna originally met. James ranks with other British mystery writers such as Ian Rankin, Colin Dexter and Peter Robinson (although Need You Dead has no cold case component to it). If you’re already a Roy Grace fan or you’re looking for a new mystery series, try the Roy Grace series. At 13 books, it won’t be hard to start at the beginning and work your way through them. However, Need You Dead, stands pretty well on its own. show less

Ghosts are trapped in the past, right?

They might communicate by bashing tables, putting out the lights and throwing a few objects around, but they're typically portrayed as very old school. Well, not in Peter James' first ghost story, in which it seems that ghosts can text, email and generally use modern technology to bedevil you. I kept expecting them to flash up on a Twitter feed or write a Facebook post. This worked quite well when I still thought there might be human malevolence at work, show more supporting the spirits, but I found it slightly more difficult to suspend belief when it became apparent that only one person could be responsible...

But let's start at the beginning.

Peter James, bestselling and well-renowned crime writer, has turned his hand to the supernatural. Intriguingly, he claims to have drawn inspiration from a real-life haunted house he lived in with his first wife. Fortunately, the real-life haunting had a less tragic conclusion than his novel...
What's it about?

Townies Ollie and Caro Harcourt move with their daughter, Jade, to an old Georgian mansion. It's falling apart and is in deperate need of repair, but, more problematically, it quickly becomes apparent that they are sharing their home with at least one ghost. As the spooky sightings become more malevolent, will the Harcourts heed the warnings and leave or will they find themselvers trapped in Cold Hill House forever?

-- What's it like? --

Very much your typical haunted house story: furniture moves in impossible ways; spirits appear and disappear; and some local research begins to reveal a history of horrid happenings in the house. The spookiness is well integrated into a very straightforwardly written tale about a regular family; although they must have a fair stash of money to have ever considered taking on a dilapidated Georgian mansion, Ollie, Caro and Jade are consistently pleasant and get along with everyone while dutifully pursuing their allotted roles in life. Their nice blandness allows you to focus on the strange shennanigans, especially as time begins to slip...

-- What I liked --

The opening pages are shocking. Initially I was merely puzzled - who are Jonny, Felix, Daisy and Rowena? The blurb only mentioned the Harcourts. I'm sure you can guess what happens to O'Hare family; I doubt you can guess how it happens, but it's a brutal scene that sets the mood for the rest of the book. While Caro frequently suggests leaving, Ollie is stubbornly insistent on staying, and there's really only one way this can end.
"Heeeeeere's Jonny!"

As the story progressed I found it reminded me in some respects of 'The Shining'. While Ollie is far too loving towards his wife to ever be in danger of deliberately harming her, his inability to leave Cold Hill House is clearly placing her in mortal danger. Gradually, he becomes less certain of his own sanity; could he possibly be sabotaging himself? But why would he do that? This quietly deepening fear develops neatly alongside simple practicalities. It seems that Ollie didn't read the surveyor's report with sufficient wariness, so every time the workmen dig out a wall or a floor they discover another aspect of the house that needs a complete (and expensive) overhaul. This and the mundane pattern of Ollie's day (he works in his study for two hours then wanders downstairs to make a sandwich or pick up his daughter from school) effectively counterpoint the increasing tension. And it really was tense; I was keen to discover more about what was really happening and why, but here is where the book failed me a little.

'Evil isn't born, it's built'...

...or so claims the strapline on my ARC. But...I'm not totally clear about how that relates to the story James tells. Perhaps that's my fault and there was something I missed, but I wanted to know more about the practicalities behind the haunting. There were a few intriguing details along the way that I hoped would be expanded upon at the end, but they were never explained. Obviously it can be effective to have some elements of a ghost story left mysterious and unresolved, but I felt a little bit cheated and would have liked a bit more background.

-- Final thoughts --

This is a story that has actually grown on me since I finished reading it. Perhaps because I read most of the book in three long sittings while battling a cold, I found myself making reflecting on the story more when I finished it than I had while reading. I really like the ambiguity surrounding how and why the Harcourts meet the end they do, and this is the kind of book where you might be tempted upon finishing to immediately return to the beginning and reread it, searching for clues to help create a timeline of events.

I do feel there were a few missed opportunities. Crucially, as mentioned above, I wanted the sense of malevolence in the house to be more defined by the end, perhaps by developing more of the background. I also really enjoyed the parts of the book where characters reflected on what ghosts were and how they might operate, and thought there could have been more of that. Finally, by the end the ghosts seemed capable of anything they fancied, which almost detracted from their power as far as I was concerned. (If something is simply all-powerful then it becomes less frightening and is simply unconvincing or inevitable.) However, these are possibly quite individual concerns and interests.

Overall it's an effective haunted house story which will have you wishing Ollie wasn't quite so stuborn and wondering precisely when he sealed his fate.

Thanks to Midas for providing me with an uncorrected proof copy in exchange for an honest review. show less

Much like Queen Camilla recently stated, the Peter James police procedural series about Roy Grace is her favorite, it is also one of mine. This is a roller coaster of a series as we follow the career of Detective Roy Grace and now after12 books he is the Detective Superintendent for the city of Brighton. Haunted by the disappearance of his first wife Sandy, this long running side plot has been resolved in this volume. There was also plenty of oher action going on as Roy and his team hunt show more down a black widow serial killer as well as tie up some issues left over from the previous book.

This author takes his time to develop his characters and story and always shows that the police work involved is a team effort. The narrative is straight forward and matter of fact but he keeps the series fresh with original story lines. In each book he juggles multiple story lines which also sometimes run from book to book. There can be a lot of violence but the author knows exactly how to draw his readers in and how much to actually add to the story.

Because of the nature of the crimes in this book and the use of deadly spiders and snakes this one is particularly blood curdling. I enjoyed this outing although I do feel that the “Sandy” subplot could have been concluded earlier. I am now looking forward to book #13. show less