Tuesday, 30 April 2024

The Alliance by Matt Brolly


It's my pleasure to share my review for a book that just grabbed me as soon as I read the blurb - The Alliance by Matt Brolly. Big thanks to Zoe at Zooloo's Book Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour And to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy.
 


The Blurb

Four cities, four killers, four murders. The Alliance is just getting started.

When four unconnected serial killers simultaneously commit identical murders across four different US cities, FBI Special Agent Shannon Wallace faces an unprecedented threat—a cooperative of killers working in unison. Each homicide is witnessed by a survivor, and now these lucky ones need to decide how to tell their stories to the world.

Their posts about the horrific murders create a media storm and a new term is soon coined for the killers: The Alliance. As they recruit new killers into their ranks and more innocent people linked to the initial murders are killed it becomes clear that Wallace is dealing with an unprecedented threat—a deadly alliance formed to terrorize the nation with coordinated strikes.

With the killers always one step ahead, the very fabric of society threatens to unravel and Wallace battles to decipher The Alliance’s endgame before they dismantle civilization city by city. In a desperate race against time, can Wallace uncover the members and motives of the Alliance and end their reign of terror before more victims wind up dead.



My Review

I read and reviewed one of Matt Brolly's earlier US set books, The Controller, a few years back and really enjoyed it. So that fact, along with the blurb (shown above) piqued my interest in this one. I wasn't disappointed. 

Icarus (Ike) Glass - great name - is a Brit who came to the US years ago, settled in San Antonio and became a journalist. He's pretty washed up and definitely drinks too much. One evening he shares a few beers with a man he meets in a bar - it turns out not to be a great idea...

I didn't find Ike Glass particularly likeable but it was hard not to feel sorry for him as he gets caught up in a bizarre string of events. Shannon Wallace was much more relatable - in her forties, a strained relationship with her son and trying to establish herself at Quantico after years of working in the field. She's in the Behavior Analysis Unit (the one often imagined on the small screen), specifically the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which I imagine is a tough gig at the best of times. But here she is presented with a case like no other, with identical incidents across the US - it's unprecedented. But I think my favourite character was Lieutenant Michael Boyd, who takes initial charge of the San Antonio crime scene. He's world weary, mourning the death of his wife but there seemed a gentleness around him. I liked him a lot. 

I really liked the idea of crimes taking place simultaneously across the US. And ones that are creatively staged too. Yes, they are far fetched but suitably creepy and pretty darn scary! For various reasons that become clear as the book progresses much of the action here is in San Antonio but we hear plenty of details of incidents happening across the country. 

I loved the use of both more traditional media and social media in this novel. It shows both how quickly news can travel - instantly, really - and people's fascination with the darker side of human nature. As events build and the Alliance themselves make more use of social media, there is no shortage of folk ready and waiting to watch whatever horror is perpetrated. And I really don't know if that wouldn't be the case in real life - there seems to be a real appetite for true crime. It's funny, as regular visitors here will know, I read (and watch) a lot of fictional crime but very rarely the true life stuff. But plenty of people are fascinated by it. So is it such a big leap to imagine us watching it on our screens in real time? Subscribing to social media accounts set up by killers? I'm not so  sure.

The Alliance is a hard book to review in detail without giving plot spoilers, which, of course, I'm not going to do. It's tense almost from the get go and only gets more so until we reach a denouement full of surprises. The writing is tight - there's always something going on, moving the plot forward. It's exciting and I was genuinely invested in what happened in the end. And more than a little shocked. Worth a read. 


The Author


Matt Brolly is the Amazon number one, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the DI Blackwell novels set in Weston-super-Mare, as well as the DCI Lambert crime novels, the acclaimed near future crime novel, Zero, and the US thrillers, The Controller, The Railroad, and The Running Girls. His books have sold over one million copies in 16 countries. 

Matt lives in London with his wife, their two children, a dog called Herbie, and a cat called W.G Snuffy Walden.


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