The Blurb:
A killer is stalking his victims on Glasgow's streets.
Men are being abducted, kept tied up for weeks and force-fed, then strangled and their livers are being removed.
Detective Inspector Duncan Waddell has enough problems not least of all that his best friend and colleague Stevie who's meant to be comatose is talking to him and only him. Now he faces his most bizarre case yet.
This time he has help in the shape of FBI profiler Odessa Thorne who arrives as part of a new Police Scotland initiative.
When a career criminal comes forward to say he was targeted by the killer but somehow managed to get away, Waddell hopes it's the breakthrough they need. But can they trust this witness who's known to be a habitual liar?
As they close in on their ruthless killer Waddell must look into a heart of darkness to get his killer.
Cannibal City was published in paperback and digital formats by Caffeine Nights Publishing on 16th April 2020.
Purchase Links:
Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/2CZ4mVH
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3jQUr5c
Waterstones: https://bit.ly/2CQ7Zxi
Book Depository: https://bit.ly/2Pa0tzu
My Review:
It's always good to find a new team to get behind and I found that in DI Duncan Waddell and his team. Based in Glasgow, they have to deal with some horrible cases. In Vile City it was missing women and sex trafficking but here it's something even more horrific. A man is found dead covered in burns with chain marks around his wrists and ankles. The post mortem shows that he had been forced fed and his liver removed. Waddell and his team are stumped. And when Duncan gets stumped, he likes to chew things over with his colleague Stevie Campbell, get his take on things. Except Stevie is in a non responsive coma and can't speak. But that doesn't stop him telling Waddell what he thinks.
I liked the team. Waddell himself is a good, solid family man who is dedicated to his job. His best friend being in a coma had hit him harder than he would admit. I loved the little I saw of his wife Isobel and would have liked to have got to know her better. Stevie's replacement, DC Brian McKeith, made me laugh - tall (too tall really for most of the pool cars), earnest and keen, he struggles to impress Duncan, but than Brian has big shoes to fill. He has his moments though, when things come together and he's able to shine. I was slightly confused by his personal relationship with a co-worker which seemed to arrive from nowhere. From the others, Jim Henry was a stand out for me - a solid, serious, dependable man of faith. But everybody is generally well drawn.
Adding the visiting FBI clinical psychologist was an interesting move and one that works, I think. Odessa Thorne brings a fresh take on the case and works hard to bring the doubters around. And later in the book, when Duncan has a very personal crisis to deal with, she is invaluable.
The case itself is original, gruesome and complicated. There are plenty of blind alleys and red herrings. Told from multiple points of view the story hooked me in. I would have liked a different resolution but that's maybe just me. The writing is good although I found there to be some repetition. It's full of colourful similes and metaphors. This is true for both books and my very favourite came early in Vile City but it will give you a flavour of the writing in this one:
'The paperwork was piling up on his desk faster than knickers at a porn shoot...' had me snorting with laughter.
The text is shot through with humour and peppered with Glasgow phrases. All of this makes it richer and more enjoyable.
Overall, I enjoyed this. I'd never read a book before where one of the main characters is in a coma - a really interesting idea. I liked the rest of the team and the story was satisfyingly twisty, gruesome and dark.
The Author:
Jennifer is an award-winning crime writer (she won the Scottish Association of Writers Award for crime thriller Vile City, the first book in the Detective in a Coma series) and is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association. She studied creative writing at Strathclyde University. She’s also a feature writer whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Times and Scotland On Sunday.
She wrote the Detective in a Coma (so called because the detective in the title is in a coma and only the lead character in the series DI Waddell can hear him) and the Die Hard for Girls series of books.
A human and animal rights advocate, she wrote Living Cruelty Free - Live a More Compassionate Life which focuses on how we can be kinder to animals and each other.
In her spare time, she loves going for walks with her rescue greyhound Harley and plotting the perfect murder.
Author Social Media Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenthom72
Thanks so much x
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