#BlogTour ‘Her Last Breath’ by Alison Belsham

About the book…

Published in paperback by Trapeze on April 21st, hugest thanks to blogtour organiser Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the blogtour invite and gifted copy of ‘Her Last Breath’ by Alison Belsham.

The body count is rising…and the clock is ticking.

When a young woman is attacked and left fighting to survive in hospital, the police are pulled into a race against time to save her life. But just 24 hours later, she dies and a deadly tattoo is discovered on her body.

And when another young woman disappears, Detective Francis Sullivan and his team fear a serial killer walks the streets of Brighton.

His team identify a suspect, Alex Mullins, son of Francis’s lover, Marni. Can Francis forget their shared past and save the next victim before it is too late?

A gripping crime thriller from the author of The Tattoo Thief.

It’s not necessary to have read ‘The Tattoo Thief’ prior to reading ‘Her Last Breath’, but I would recommend doing so as it is such a great book!
Having introduced her team of characters-Marni Mullins, Francis Sullivan and associated family-Alison lets Marni’s son,Alex, take center stage in this investigation.

He gets into a situation that is partly of his making, and his guilt at the situation has everyone around him thinking that his is somehow responsible for the death of his girlfriend. When they become seperated after an argument at a party, something which happens easily enough in everyday life, the consequences are deadly.

Tattoos once again feature as a USP of the novel, not only because of Marni’s profession, but another link with the crimes being comitted in Brighton at the height of summer. The narrative flips between Francis, Marni, Alex and a girl named Aimee, who is in the summer of 1982 onwards, experiencing an increasingly horrific childhood.

Having become familiar with these people, you are wrong footed by the sudden suspicions thrown towards Alex as a murderer-after all, do we really know him? Are we so willing to believe he is innocent because of Marni’s involvement in the Tattoo Thief case?

There is an excellent sleight of hand at play as all the characters you are emotionally attached to become uprooted through loss, grief and guilt. We reassess our relationship with them, and the truth, the same as Francis does with Marni-their relationship seemed to be going somewhere, but stalled as they simultaneously realise that they do not know each other. Being thrown together by circumstance is not a solid foundation for a relationship, however that doesn’t stop the reader -me!- screaming at the page for them to realise they really, really need each other.

Being pulled in so many different directions, but ultimately trying to tackle another serial killer who is stalking the streets of Brighton, these guys are finding information drops at the same time as we are-be warned though, this is not for the faint of heart.

The level of anatomical detail included in the murders/autopsies are brilliantly realised but gory-this is an unflinching display of violence, and as such, we readers have a front row seat to the savagery. After all, real life is nasty, mean and brutish, so why flinch on the details? It brings a sense of intimacy and urgency which is in no way gratuitous, but brings home just what the violence suffered by women looks like.

It’s a gripping cat and mouse tale by an author who teases out all your emotions, this is a series which can only grow more compelling with each instalment-brava!!!

About the author…

Alison Belsham initially started writing with the ambition of becoming a screenwriter — and in 2000 was commended for her visual storytelling in the Orange Prize for Screenwriting. In 2001 she was shortlisted in a BBC Drama Writer competition. Life and children intervened but, switching to fiction, in 2009 her novel Domino was selected for the prestigious Adventures in Fiction mentoring scheme. In 2016 she pitched her first crime novel, ‘The Tattoo Thief’, at the Pitch Perfect event at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival and was judged the winner.

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

https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

Twitter @AlisonBelsham @Tr4cyF3nt0n @TrapezeBooks