The Blurb:
It feels like history is repeating itself when out-of-favour detective Will Harlan gets summoned to a crime scene in the village of Brackenbrae after a young girl is found hanging in the woods.
Five years ago Harlan headed up the investigation of an identical murder in the same woods; a mishandled investigation that effectively destroyed his credibility as a detective. The new case immediately takes a bizarre twist when the body is identified as the same girl found hanging in the woods five years ago.
The following day a local man commits suicide and the police find more dead girls hidden in his basement. The case seems open and closed.
Until the killing spree begins.
Harlan finds himself drawn into a dark world where murder is a form of self-expression and human life treated as one more commodity to be used and discarded.
The only clue that links everything is a large oil painting of ‘Sagittarius A’ – a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy orbited by thirteen stars daubed in blood with the words –
Heart Swarm.
Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing on 5th October 2017.
My Review:
Well, what a story! I thought it was highly original, and it sets out to shock, right from the beginning, but without sacrificing the story.
It focuses on Will Harlan, a cop disgraced following a (perceived) botched investigation into a young girl's death five years previously. But when the body of the same girl is found again, and more and more bodies begin to pile up, it seems that Harlan might not have been so wrong after all. The story is well paced and I enjoyed Will's relationship, such as it is, with Cara - both damaged souls. And when we discover the reason for the killings... not for the faint hearted.
I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading more by this author.
And I can't go without mentioning the cover - it's fabulous! And very creepy.
You can buy Heart Swarm at Amazon UK and US, Waterstones and other good bookshops.
The Author:
Allan Watson is a writer from Glasgow whose work leans towards deliciously dark end of the fiction spectrum. In between books, he once wrote extensively for BBC Radio Scotland, churning out hundreds of comedy sketches, which some people have unkindly commented were all basically a variation of one single joke.
When not writing, he masquerades as a composer/musician, sometimes collaborating with crime writer Phil Rickman in a band called Lol Robinson and Hazey Jane II whose albums have sold on four different continents (Antarctica was a hard one to crack). He also once spent three days as a stand-in guitarist for the Bay City Rollers, but he rarely talks much about that...
Allan lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland, but has never worn the kilt or eaten a deep fried Mars Bar.
He is currently pretending to work on something new.
This sounds really good, unfortunately this means it's another one to go on my TBR mountain ��
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