Never Coming Home by A.R. WiseAuthor Website Amazon (UK) Amazon.com Smashwords (ebook), 2015
276 Pages
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
It's the ten year anniversary of a murderer's first crime, and the memory of that kill reawakens a vicious lust in him. He accepts his true nature. He's a killer, and his passion needs to be sated. He begins to plan future murders, but discovers that someone out there is on his trail, digging up old, forgotten clues and interviewing people involved with the crime that police had all but forgotten. In order to continue with his new spree, the killer will have to eliminate the detective who's begun asking the right questions.
Lincoln Pierce is an amateur private detective who took on a case that was close to his daughter's heart. Ten years ago, two of her school friends disappeared on their way home. The brother of one of the victims was charged with murder, but a lot of people believe he was falsely accused, including Lincoln's daughter. As Lincoln and his daughter work together to dig into the cold case, it becomes clear that there's more going on than they ever anticipated. Lincoln will discover that the real killer's still on the loose, and his next victim could be close to home.
OPENING PARAGRAPH
He liked to make them wait. It gave them time to get scared.
WHAT I THOUGHT
I'm a huge fan of A.R. Wise and have enjoyed his work including the Widowsfield Trilogy which is among the best horror fiction I've read in recent years. With his new series, Lincoln Pierce Mysteries Wise has branched out to writing crime fiction.
I thought Never Coming Home was fantastic. Wise manages to combine child murder/disappearance, divorce, cancer, domestic abusive, predatory sexual acts into one rollercoaster of a read. This is a first class thriller, the kind of book that gets into your head and haunts your dreams. Several chapters are written from the perspective of the killer and were extremely unsettling. I liked the original take on a cold case offered in this novel. The world at large believes the murder ten years ago has been solved but Lincoln's daughter doesn't and he becomes determined to find the truth one way or another. There are some graphic scenes in the novel but I never felt they were written simply to shock. The murder mystery aspect of the novel is well-written and absorbing but the relationships and characters make it really shine. I loved Lincoln, Darcy and Bentley a little.
Never Coming Home is a great start to a new series by the ever-talented A.R. Wise and I can't wait to find out what Lincoln gets up to next.
