Blurb:

The dead don’t tell secrets… unless you listen. 

The girl’s smashed-in face stared unseeing up to the blue sky, soil spilling out of her mouth. A hundred flies hovered above the bloodied mess. Westerley research facility is not for the faint-hearted. A ‘body farm’ investigating human decomposition, its inhabitants are corpses in various states of decay. But when Detective Kim Stone and her team discover the fresh body of a young woman, it seems a killer has discovered the perfect cover to bury their crime.

Then a second girl is attacked and left for dead, her body drugged and mouth filled with soil. It’s clear to Stone and the team that a serial killer is at work – but just ho

w many bodies will they uncover? And who is next? As local reporter, Tracy Frost, disappears, the stakes are raised. The past seems to hold the key to the killer’s secrets – but can Kim uncover the truth before a twisted, damaged mind claims another victim …?

Review:

I loved buddy reading this book with Gemma from Between The Pages Book Club Blog.

After reading the first four books in the series, Detective Inspector (DI) Kim Stone and her team have become like close friends. Her team work brilliantly together and show huge empathy for the people with whom they work and this always gives me great faith that they will find the perpetrators of the awful crimes they investigate.

I think it is wonderfully inventive that Marsons chose to set Play Dead on a body farm. It makes the novel incredibly atmospheric and creepy, and created a lot of tension for Gemma and me as we chatted about what we thought might happen next.

There are a few chapters written from the perspective of the killer, and these were very intriguing, but I still didn’t guess how Play Dead would end. There is a huge twist that made both our jaws drop.

I’m looking forward to continuing the series next month.

Play Dead is available from Amazon