Stuart Neville

I read this book for my dad. I enjoyed being able to talk to him about it and becoming familiar with one of his favorite novels, but I’m not the intended reader for this book. I also enjoyed the history it provided of the IRA and Northern Ireland. But it felt…terrifically repetitive to me—kill this one and then that one and then another one….The last third was too brutal and not for any reason really. It felt like someone writing down the choreography for an action movie. The best moment in the book was very near the end when the little daughter of the love interest let the main character know that she too saw the dead people that haunted him. That was the one surprise in the book—other than how harshly he portrayed the IRA.… (mais)

I find reading a Stuart Neville book both exciting, exhilarating, exasperating and frightening. His characters don’t appear to have an easy life, and this agony is laid bare on the printed page and I felt every word. I must also mention, at this stage, the dazzling DCI Serena Flanagan books, and Neville’s portrayal of life on the edge with Serena balancing home and work and not always successfully. However I hear you say, and quite rightly so, we are here to discuss and review the author’s latest work of angst: Blood like Mine. My goodness this is a 400 page work of some brilliance, as Stuart aptly and expertly balances a police thriller with horror undertones that becomes evident after a number of chapters.
Rebecca Carter and her daughter Monica, known as Moonflower, are on the run throughout the United States from what or whom gradually becomes clear. We learn that Rebecca will do anything to keep Moonflower safe including killing or sacrificing herself. Meanwhile special agent Marc Donner has spent the last 2 years trying to identify and apprehend a serial killer who strikes with regularity and leaves no trace or clues at the scene of the crime. Donner is a troubled soul, he has become obsessed with the apprehension of this individual to the detriment of the love of his wife and children.
This novel was never going to have a happy ending, as the two sets of players attempt to achieve their individual goals, the tension and the pain is written across every page. I truly found it hard to put this book down, Stuart Neville had me hooked from page one. I hoped that mother and daughter would be safe but as the chapters flew by I began to doubt. Donner, a cop with a mission, was on a self-destruct course and only he had the power to turn this around for surely the love of his wife and young children would prove more important…or would it?
If you are going to read one thriller spiced with horror this year I heartily recommend Blood Like Mine, It is a brilliant, addictive read from one of Northern Ireland’s finest authors.… (mais)