#BlogTour-‘The Killer You Know’ by S.R Masters

About the book…

You need to kill at least three people, right? So that’s what I’ll do.

When Will jokes about becoming a serial killer, his friends just laugh it off. But Adeline can’t help but feel there’s something more sinister lurking behind his words.

Fifteen years later, Adeline returns to Blythe for a reunion of the old gang – except Will doesn’t show up. Reminiscing about old times, they look up the details of his supposed murder spree. But the mood soon changes when they discover two recent deaths that match.

As the group attempts to track Will down, they realise that he is playing a sinister game that harks back to one they used to play as kids. Only this time there are lives at stake . . .

My grateful thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things and Little Brown for my copy of ‘The Killer You Know’ by SR Masters.

What an astonishing, deep and morally invested debut this is-it is so well plotted that it does not feel like a first novel at all.

Adie, Rupesh, Will, Steve and Jen grew up in the Midlands in the 90’s , friends thrugh circumstance then by choice. They watch bootleg films and discuss the minitiae of the plots in Steve’s house, the only one who has access to a continually empty house. Something awful happens to Will, and he ends up being a year behind them , academically ,which might as well be a 100 years from a social perspective.

Meeting up again for a school reunion as grownups, one Christmas, 4 of the 5 turn up but no one seems to have kept tabs on Will and he has given no indication he will be there. Has he followed through with his threats to become a serial killer, take the lives of 3 people, then disappear, sated .

On a whim, Jen scans the internet for deaths that year which match Will’s plans and finds 2 that are too similar to ignore…..if it’s Will, what should they do and who could be the third?

Flipping back and forth to the 90’s and 2015, you get to know the backgrounds of each main character whilst in the ‘now’ the hunt for Will begins. As you establish their individual charactersistics, you gauge from their memories whether Will has given anything more than a show of braggadocio….

Teaser moments and twists change your mind every other chapter until you don;t know if any of them have honestly remembered their childhoods or the person who isn;t even there to defend himself. As a thriller and suspense novel, ‘The Killer You Know’ has it nailed. As a philosophical question poser, SK Masters adds layers of texture to the writing which leave you wondering how well you ever truly know somebody. How can someone be a killer if you haven’t been in touch for over a decade? How desperate are you to recapture that sense of the past? Does it extend to ascribing actions to someone who may very well have good reasons for not being in touch with anyone after leaving school.

Rupesh, the GP, is the Jiminy Cricket of the group, the conscience-

‘Just look at the world right now,’he said.’Dangerous politicians promising to bring back the good old days.I mean,technically nostalgia os a medical  condition, I’m sure you know that.The etymology,it’s like myalgia, neuralgia…Nostalgia.A pain caused by coming home.I’m convinced nostalgia’s an illness. The whole world seems worringly obsessed with the past, don’t you think?Sometimes I just think ”Get over it.’What’s done is done.”

Adeline is the recorder of their childhood via her movie podcast where if a compelling argument cannot be made to rewatch a film, it goes in her ‘crusher’.

Jen is an actor , never quite hitting the big time-is she holding onto her childhood dream to the expense of the life that she could be living?

And Steve, Steve the enigma. Seeing Adie again raises feelings he though had been dealt with many years earlier.

As for Will…you’ll have to read ‘The Killer You Know’ to find out what the missing 5th wheel has been up to….

About the author…

SR. Masters studied Philosophy at Girton College, Cambridge before working in public health and health behaviour for the NHS. He is a regular contributor to UK short fiction anthology series The Fiction Desk, having won their Writer’s Award for his short story Just Kids. His story Desert Walk was included in Penguin Random House USA’s Press Start to Play collection and he continues to have short fiction published in a variety of magazines. He grew up around Birmingham but now lives in Oxford with his wife and son.

‘The Killer You Know’ is his first novel.

Links- http://www.sr-masters.com

http://randomthingsthroughmyletterbox.blogspot.com/p/services-to-publishers-authors-blog.html

Twitter @SRMastersAuthor

             @LittleBrownUK

             @annecater