Life Sentence by AK Turner

I really enjoyed Cassie Raven's first outing in Body Language so was excited to read this new one. Life Sentence was published by Jaffre on 14th April 2022. Many thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for inviting me onto the tour and to the publisher for my review copy.

The Blurb

Following her first outing in Body Language (published 2019), Camden mortuary technician Cassie Raven returns to solve another ingenious forensic mystery.

Mortuary technician Cassie Raven believes the last thoughts of the dead linger like static in the air...

Cassie has always had a strange affinity with death, ever since her parents were killed in a car crash when she was four. At least that's what she grew up believing...

But that was a lie. Cassie's father is alive. He was convicted of murdering her mother and spent years behind bars. Now he's out - and he's looking for her.

He swears he didn't do it. And Cassie wants to believe him.

To find the truth, she must turn detective. As she seeks answers, help is to be found in inexplicable places - for the dead are ready to talk.

My Review

Cassie has recently discovered that what she thought she knew about her parents is all a lie and that her father is in prison for murdering her mother. Until she discovers that he's out and determined to convince her that he's innocent. She so wants to believe him but isn't willing just to take him at his word. So, whilst she also looks into the death of a young man who comes across her table much of this book is taken up with her own story as she seeks to find the truth. 

I really like Cassie. She sports an alternative, goth style that you maybe wouldn't expect from a mortuary worker but she shows such deep care and respect to the bodies that she prepares, it's quite touching. And, occasionally, they 'speak to her. A sensitive soul, she is rocked by what she's finding out about her family and we see how it affects her relationship with her beloved grandmother. This is a beautifully written relationship with the love between grandmother and granddaughter radiating from the pages. 

Also interesting are Cassie's relays with young pathologist Archie and policewoman Phyllida. Archie is posh, well spoken, always well dressed in smart, expensive clothes. The opposite of Cassie, they shouldn't really get on but they do. They've formed a firm friendship and Turner teases of more. And Phyllida, uptight and by the book, is both irritated by and fascinated with Cassie, and vice versa. It's quite an odd dynamic, but one that really works, and it's a relationship I'm totally invested in.  

The main storyline is emotive, sad, shocking and heartbreaking. It's told with sensitivity, with a growing understanding for Cassie but with an increasing sense of threat. It's very atmospheric as Cassie immerses herself in the musical world in which her father used to be long, and I loved seeing her joy in the progress her friend was making following homelessness and addiction. The sub plot involving the death of a young man, a boy really, is also heartbreaking but, again, sensitively told. 

In Cassie Raven, AK Turner has given us an engaging protagonist, one the reader is rooting for throughout, and one with an unusual gift. Life Sentence is a story about death, life, love, family, jealousy, heartache and making up. About how events of the past can have a profound impact years later. Brilliantly and sensitively told, it never drags and is a really enjoyable read. 

The Author

AK Turner's first foray into crime fiction was a detective thriller trilogy, written under the pen name Anya Lipska, following the adventures of Janusz Kiszka, a fixer to London's Polish community. All three books won critical acclaim and were twice optioned as a possible TV series. In her other life as a TV producer and writer, AK makes documentaries and drama-docs on subjects as diverse as the Mutiny on the Bounty, the sex lives of Neanderthals, and Monty Don's Italian Gardens.