About the book…

Two victims. Brutally murdered in their own home. Body parts taken.
D.I. Graves is back on the case to face his toughest challenge yet. A case with no motive and no suspect, nothing at all that could explain why someone would kill innocent people in such a way.
Then the next victims are discovered. Another pair of bodies. New body parts taken. Again in their own home.
Someone is breaking into houses across the city at night, leaving horror in their wake. It seems to Graves that this could be two serial killers, working together. But how are they choosing their victims? Is any house in London a target? Is anyone safe?
To make matters worse, a journalist is threatening to cause more harm than good with her obsessive push in covering the story to further her career, and someone is targeting Graves personally, seeking revenge against him in relation to an old case.
Can Graves keep himself safe long enough to stop the serial killers before they strike again?
Thanks to the publisher, Panther, for inviting me on the blog tour for ‘Inside The House’ after having me on a previous blog tour for ‘Murder On The Rocks’.
Full disclosure, I am a reader not an art critic and this is my freely given and honest review.
As such, I didn’t actually finish the book.
It’s not bad, it’s just not good either*
The protagonist I just could not get to grips with at all, nor did I like the way that the author protrays his female characters (harridans, heartless, scheming one dimensional caricatures).
It felt as though all his efforts went into describing the murder scenes , the writing was very expositional so there felt like there was no need to read Book 1 in the series as he gave the plot away.This was, I feel, meant to engage you with Graves but it just made me, as a reader, feel talked down to.
Every plot point was laid out to the extent that could see where the joins between scenes were knitted and I stopped caring whether the team found the killer as there was a marked lack of suspense or tension created. By the time I got to the middle of the book, I looked at the books waiting in the wings and felt my time was wasted in continuing.
This is 100% on me as a reader, I can see that it has had rave reviews on Goodreads so definitely check those out and the accompanying blogtour, I am genuinely sorry that I didn’t like it more .
*also I was not a  big fan of 2 of the 5 star big hitters of early 2019 either,both thrillers, so that again says this is a reader’s review .

 

About the author…

WD Jackson-Smart is a crime and horror/thriller writer from the UK obsessed with all things thrilling.

He has written the bestselling supernatural thriller ‘Red Light’, the Hollywood-based horror/thriller ‘Slasher’, as well as horror short ‘What’s Yours Is Mine’.

His new release ‘Demons’, the first in a new London-based crime series featuring Detective Inspector Graves, is out now. Search WD Jackson.

“Demons had me going all the way to the very end. The very end… just macabre.”
Barbara T. Cerny, author of The Tiefling

“Jackson lures readers in and holds them, which is always a sign of good writing filled with experience with the genre.”
– J Cheiser, Online Book Club

“A well-crafted suspense writer.”
Dave Gammon, Horrornews.net

Links-https://www.wdjacksonauthor.co.uk/

https://www.pantherpubs.com/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07QFBGJ9R?pf_rd_p=330fbd82-d4fe-42e5-9c16-d4b886747c64

Twitter @wdejackson

 

8 comments

    1. It’s horses for courses, isn’t it? Your review was fantastic which is why I recommended people looking at other reviews for balance, it’s just an opinion.
      I wasn’t a big fan of 2 books which pretty much everyone raved about earlier this year, so it was a bit of a dilemma what to do and write. So honesty and not sharing it is I think the way to go as in on retail sites etc.

    1. This is it, the blurb sounded more intriguing than the story in this case! Same here and then you this review, these thoughts and where do they go? Do you say anything? It’s tricky!

  1. Sounds like this book would have benefited from the approach Stephen King uses. Write the book, put it in the drawer for a year and don’t look at it at all in that time. The distance of time shows him what works/ doesn’t work.

    1. Yep! Totally agree with you there that time and distance plus growth would have benefitted this story. The problem is, having read some absolutely fabulous thrillers, I thought maybe my patience and expectation wass an issue?
      So I read it again and unfortunately it was just grated . Not a fan of expositional writing, I can follow plots and fill in the gaps quite nicely

    1. It’s ok, plenty of people will! Hoping you will Zoe, it just didn’t do it for me and I couldn’t lie sadly. Thanks for taking the time to comment x

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