Rush of Blood by Mark Billingham
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Perfect strangers. A perfect holiday. The perfect murder…
Three couples meet around the pool on their Florida holiday and become fast friends. But on their last night, their perfect holiday takes a tragic twist: the teenage daughter of another holidaymaker goes missing, and her body is later found floating in the mangroves.
When the shocked couples return home, they remain in contact, and over the course of three increasingly fraught dinner parties they come to know one another better. But they don’t always like what they find: buried beneath these apparently normal exteriors are some dark secrets, hidden kinks, ugly vices…
More known for his police procedural crime novels featuring Tom Thorne, this is a stand alone novel. I loved the different take, with the book focusing far more on the main characters – three couples who meet on holiday. They have nothing in common apart from that, but keep in touch mainly because the tragedy that occurred. The story twists and turns, teasing out the secrets and lies to an ending that I didn’t see coming. Excellent!
I received a review copy of the novel via Netgalley.
Wendy Cartmell 