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EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE
by Sheila Quigley
Century, May 2007
400 pages
11.99 GBP
ISBN: 1844138496


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Sheila Quigley blasts through the crime fiction genre like a gust of fresh air. On the surface she's turning out police procedurals where there's often a serial killer at large. But beneath this is an utterly engrossing sprawling cast of people you feel you know like your neighbours.

It looks like DI Lorraine Hunt and DS Luke Daniels have finally got their act together and started a relationship. For the past two or three books, they've been skirting round each other as they battle crime in a deprived part of the north east of England. Lorraine's got a divorce behind her – her ex-husband turned out to be gay – and is now wary. And she's got her mother Mavis and Mavis's friend Peggy taking an inordinate amount of interest in her private life.

As EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE opens, though, things are looking rocky. Luke's 16-year-old former drug addict daughter Selina has run away from home after a row with her dad and has fetched up in Dublin. The Irish police want her collected.

Meanwhile, there's a killer on the loose, who leaves a white rose as his calling card. And it looks like he's got his eye on Selina, who has a dark past she's trying to forget.

As with earlier books in the series, the police procedural element is the least satisfying, with some odd leaps of deduction and a few people getting their exercise in jumping to conclusions. Fortunately the not very convincing female PC is out of the picture, having been suspended for her escapades last time out. The killer won't come as much of a surprise to you either, although there's some real menace in the final scenes as the police criss-cross town in driving rain.

But the attraction of this page-turner is seeing how Quigley's eclectic cast react to what's going on around them. Her books often focus on outsiders threatening the close-knit community. Selina's new boyfriend Micky and his friends stand out, and you can really hear them talking and arguing! And Quigley's strong on Luke's burgeoning relationship with the daughter he'd lost contact with for so many years.

Quigley's writing is sometimes rough around the edges, but that's part of the charm of the books. These aren't over-written and formulaic – the people are real, and so's the setting they're in. EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE isn't the best in the series, so go back and read the earlier books first, and then see where Quigley is taking her memorable characters.

Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, May 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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