#BlogTour ‘The Binding Room’ by Nadine Matheson

About the book…

Detective Anjelica Henley confronts a series of ritualistic murders in this heart-pounding thriller about race, power and the corrupt institutions that threaten us

When Detective Anjelica Henley is called to investigate the murder of a popular preacher in his own church, she discovers a second victim, tortured and tied to a bed in an upstairs room. He is alive, but barely, and his body shows signs of a dark religious ritual.

With a revolving list of suspects and the media spotlight firmly on her, Henley is left with more questions than answers as she attempts to untangle both crimes. But when another body appears, the case takes on a new urgency. Unless she can apprehend the killer, the next victim may just be Henley herself.

Drawing on her experiences as a criminal attorney, Nadine Matheson deftly explores issues of race, class and justice through an action-packed story that will hold you captive until the last terrifying page.

My thanks to the team at HQ Stories for having me on the tour for ‘The Binding Room’, the second in her fantastic Inspector Anjelica Henley series!

What to say about this book?

A) I LOVE Henley, she is unapologetically her, she is still carrying the trauma of what happened in The Jigsaw Man and yet her focus is always on doing the right thing despite the myriad of difficulties life throws in her way.

B) This novel treads that glorious line between horror and crime in such a great way, the binding of the title is reflected on so many levels throughout this twisting, turning narrative. Binding wife to husband, mother to child, ideology to reality and religion to salvation as an extended metaphor for the central crime of the novel is absolutely brilliant.

The challenges of providing justice to the victims of crime in a system that uses the victims as political point scoring exercises, fighting institutional racism, AND homophobia are all day to day realities for the Serial Crimes Team.

Although they are not technically involved in a serial crime, rather drafted in to help with what looks like a hate crime against the black preacher responsible for a London ‘mega church’ soon takes a deep and nasty dive into the way those with mental health issues are discarded from society at large. This is reflected in the trauma suffered by Henley and her team which lingers on from their last investigation for which some, including Henley, are having therapy, The stigma which is attached to mental health is so eloquently and movingly rendered, and you feel such anger towards those who would exploit the vulnerable, the desperate and the weary.

What appears to be a simple crime soon descends into so much more as the subsequent search of the church run by Caleb Annan and his wife reveals a hidden room occupied by an almost dead young man, bound to the bed and hideously tortured. As his widow , Serena, courts the local MP and media accusing Henley and her team of focussing on the not quite dead white man not her black husband, Henley has her hands full juggling the needs of her team, a complex crime investigation and her husband who feels neglected by her lack of need for him.

I honestly felt so annoyed as she was juggling being a mother, a superior officer and yet also deal with her bosses as well as Rob wanting a second child-he in his clumsy way was trying to pull her back to focussing on her family and cope with the death of her mother but the way he went about it made me want to pull my hair out.

She is being pulled in so many directions and the depiction of what life is like for the modern, professional woman was absolutely spot on. No matter what you do there is always someone feeling neglected and usually it is Henley.

Henley is someone who is flawed but fabulous, I love her energy, her determination to stand up for those who are unable to do it themselves and her unerring sense of justice.

As I was reading this and texting a friend who I have been nagging to read ‘The Jigsaw Man’, explaining why she needs both these books in her life,I have been 100% unable to put it down or cheat on it with another book. There are so many complex-not convoluted, but complex-threads to this story that you want to keep going to the very end.

The exploitation of the vulnerable and the way it is explored is done in such a humane way, the story flows logically and with such a great variety of characters that you want to know more about each of them. My hope is that this series will run and run because Nadine Matheson is the real deal. In an often over crowded marketplace of police procedurals, she stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of storytelling, characterisation and social injustice. Simply put, this is  must read.

About the author…

Nadine Matheson was born and lives in London. She began her working life at the BBC and now practices as a criminal defence lawyer. In 2016, she won the City University Crime Writing Competition and completed the Creative Writing (Crime/Thriller Novels) MA at City University of London with Distinction in 2018.

Her crime fiction novel, ‘The Jigsaw Man’, was published by HQ on 18 February 2021 and Hanover Square Press on 16 March 2021. The Jigsaw Man has been optioned for TV by Monumental Television.

Links-http://www.nadinematheson.com/

Twitter @HQStories @nadinemetheson