Seven Days

Jack is back! I really enjoyed this book. Once again we have more adventures with DI Jack MacIntosh and his team, plus his brother Stuart (Mac) and the new DS Carmichael, who’s not exactly making himself very popular. A lot less complicated than the first book in the series – The Phoenix Project – there is a cross-over and while it helps to have read the first book, it isn’t totally necessary.

Isabel Faraday was the subject of the first novel, but we see her now, some four years later, owning a coffee shop in the Kings Road (the rent and rates must be ridiculously expensive – she’ll need to sell a lot of cappuccinos) with an art studio at the back which she rents out. Now as a bit of a budding artist I’m up for renting an easel in her studio. She even provides the paint (oil and cold wax for me please) and brushes. I could just paint while she keeps me in coffee and pain au raisins. Luxury!

The new book opens with a grisly murder – a body found in the park – and then another one. Both strangled with a ligature. One victim is in her forties, the other just twenty-one. The first victim is wearing only one shoe, but another shoe – a totally different one – lies close by. It’s a clue. If the second victim is wearing the matching shoe and another mismatched shoe lies close by, then there will be a third victim and we have a serial killer on the loose. And only seven days before the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

The clock is ticking and there appears to be no connection between the victims. Jack and the team are on to it, but can they catch the killer in time? And how many more will die before they do?

There are other characters involved as well, each with their own story, and look out for Dominic, a young man who helps out in the coffee shop. He is ‘on the spectrum’ and keeps a diarised record of everything that happens in detail, every day. Excessive? OCD? But so useful!

I love that this book is part of a series and I am look forward to reading the next in the series. Book three is called The Fifteen and I shall no doubt be reviewing it later in the year.