Thank you Fremantle Press for this book in exchange for an honest review

Synopsis:

1961, Philadelphia. After having to give up his brother to save his own life, hitman Blake Saunders flees the Mob and seeks refuge on the other side of the world. Two years later he has been reborn in a tiny coastal Australian town. The ghosts of the past still haunt him, but otherwise Coral Shoals is paradise. Blake surfs, and plays guitar in his own bar, the Surf Shack. But then the body of a young woman is found at a local motel, and evidence links her to the Surf Shack. When Blake’s friend is arrested, and the local sergeant doesn’t want to know, it becomes clear to Blake – who knows a thing or two about murder – that the only way to protect his paradise is to find the killer.

Review:

This is my second Warner book and while this falls into the same category as Clear to the Horizon, it felt as though it was written by a completely different author with the writing style noticeably different and the sentence structure as well. It was brilliant, I actually got Clear to the Horizon out and compared the two and loved it. In my defence of my crazy action you can pick up a few books by an author and know that it is written by them just by their style and use of words, some examples of this are James Patterson and Sarah J Maas. Nothing wrong with this at all it was just something I thought was fascinating and had to write down because my mind works in crazy ways.

At the start of the book it took a while to draw me and get used to the dynamics of the characters and how they know each other. Nothing wrong with this at all, generally it would keep me on my toes to dive further into the book but I guess in my moody mood, I wasn’t up for using my brain and I need the author to tell me how everything lined up. Again this isn’t a flaw just something I noted down while reading this book. And to be fair it was a great book so there isn’t anything I can rant about so I’m just paragraphing my dot point notes that I took while reading.

The start of this story is set in the USA where Blake has to give up his own brother to save himself from the mob – brutal right? The next chapter fast forwards a few years where Blake has set up his new life in Queensland where he owns and runs a small bar near the coast. Everything is peachy keen until a young woman is found murdered and one of Blake’s friends is arrested for the murder. Blake knows his friend is innocent and sets out to find the killer and friend his best friend.

Warner has a knack for world building and to be fair as an Australian I find most authors don’t really capture Australia correctly – but Warner certainly does and it is an eye opening adventure.

There is one flaw in the book that I personally found and that was that we spent too much time in the characters minds. This is a personally pet peeve of mine and I find more and more authors are doing it and over doing it. I think if you are going to hang out in a person’s head only hang out in there long enough for a coffee – don’t hang around and make yourself at home while they clean up around you and want you to leave. The less time in characters heads is always has the audience trying to guess the ending instead of already knowing it.

I think Warner would have to be one of my favourite Australian Thriller writers, hs is just that amazing.

Rating: 4/5

Publisher: Fremantle Press

ISBN: 9781925591569