Two murders. One missing girl.
DI Kate Fletcher is called out to a freezing canal where a woman’s body is found floating in a lock. With no identification, the police struggle to piece together the details of the woman’s life.
In Thorpe a daughter confesses to the murder of her father. She says she helped him escape a painful death from liver cancer, but was her role more active than she claims?
As Kate and her team investigate, the links between the two cases are inescapable and everything seems to lead back to the disappearance of a teenager years earlier.
Then the main suspect vanishes….
Can Kate connect the events of past and present to bring the culprit to justice?
A cracking one sitting read, Merciless is a book that moves along swiftly, with a deft skill and style ensuring you won’t want to put down.
Merciless is the second book to feature Hammersley’s protagonist DI Kate Fletcher, but don’t let that bother you, you can read it as a standalone with ease, I haven’t read the first book (although I will be downloading it now) and I didn’t have any issues at all with picking this book up.
It’s written in switching narratives between Fletcher and Caroline, the woman who confessed to assisting her father’s suicide, in slightly different time frames. Fletcher in the present day, as she investigates both Caroline and the body in the canal, Caroline in the months leading up to the death of her father.
Fletcher is a compassionate character keenly attuned to her team members and eager to discover the truth behind the mysteries before her. Caroline is awful, devious and manipulative. She is a character you will automatically dislike, yet at the same time you won’t be able to help yourself from empathising with her situation, even though you won’t want too.
If you want an intriguing read, that will add a dash of thrilling suspense to your lazy Sunday afternoon, this is the book for you.
Heleyne Hammersley is a British writer based in Cumbria. She writes psychological suspense thrillers and crime novels.
Heleyne has been writing since junior school – her first work was a collection of poems called ‘Give Them the Works’ when she was ten years old. The poems were carefully handwritten on plain paper and tied together with knitting wool.
When she’s not writing, Heleyne can often be found wandering on the fells or in the local park with her dog.
Life of Cri.me 