Bloodhound Books (22 Sept. 2016)
I am delighted to welcome you to my stop on the Time To Play blog tour. Having never read a KA Richardson book before I was delighted to be involved in this, so without further ado …
The blurb . . .
DI Alistair McKay is still reeling from the ‘one that got away’ but when he is called to deal with a potential murder at the water side, he must put his personal worries aside.
As police diver Marlo Buchanan starts pulling bodies out of the water, it becomes clear that something isn’t right.
Someone is torturing young girls and dumping them in the local reservoir.
Then the body of a man is discovered and Mackay and Buchanan are pulled into the seedy underworld of human trafficking.
As the team race against the clock tensions start to run high.
Can they overcome their personal demons to work together?
And will they find the killer before he strikes again?
The team are back in the third novel from the gripping North East Police series
My thoughts . . .
This is the first book I have read of Richardson’s and I couldn’t tell it was part of a series, which is great. Time To Play is the third instalment of the North East Police series but works just fine as a stand alone.
Police diver Marlo Buchanan is the central officer in this book and I found the inclusion of a different department of the police force quite refreshing, I’m not sure I’ve read a crime/police procedural which includes any officers other than the detectives and their teams (obviously the forensics, pathologists and specialists who are called in) but I’ve not seen any where a different department were part of the investigation and it was a nice change.
Marlo is struggling with her past, she has demons that she has spent her whole life hiding from the rest of the world but they haven’t turned her into the prickly, hard faced females we normally see in these situations. She is strong, independent and very focused. She has friends, she gets on with her colleagues and she openly cares about people. I must admit, I did struggle to understand her almost immediate opening up to a practical stranger. It seemed rather out of character but didn’t detract from the story.
This is a really fast paced and intense story. There isn’t a page without something happening! The detail Richardson gives is so creative and meaningful that it’s almost as if you are there in the pages, watching as the story unfolds. There is so much going on it could be a little hard to keep up with at times but all in all it worked really well.
All the characters are really well thought out and portrayed, each one of them plays a pivotal role in the book and Richardson writes them which such flair and accomplishment that they are easy to relate to, their feelings and fears jump off the pages and really help the reader connect with them.
Time To Play is a deeply disturbing read in some aspects. We have a lot to deal with, Alzheimer’s disease, murder, torture, rape and human trafficking; all described to give the biggest impact, and boy does it! Richardson writes with a no-holds-barred approach and it was harrowing and brilliant all the same time.
I’ll certainly be looking out for more of her work in the future!
I’d like to thank Helen Claire and Bloodhound Books for providing me with an advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.
You can get your copy over at Amazon UK
Be sure to pop over to MissusWolf tomorrow and follow the rest of the tour using #bloghounds @bloodhoundbook
About the author . . .
My name is KA Richardson, and I am a crime writer based in the North East of England. I write around my other work commitments so am constantly on the go. I love reading many genres, love speaking to people and spend a lot of time people watching in coffee shops, though if I’m honest this is more for the purposes of character building and plotting.
I enjoy watching ‘cop’ shows from both the UK and the USA, and am a fan of sci-fi. I began thinking about writing as a career in 2010 and completed my Ma Creative Writing in 2011.
I love to be inspired, and enjoy spending time with friends and family, as well as other like minded folk. My website has some more info on me, if you’re interested pop on over to http://www.kerryannrichardson.com, or I can be found on Facebook as KA Richardson.
Emma The Little Bookworm 