Today I’m joining the blog tour for Five Down. My review is written with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the blog tour and Red Dragon Publishing for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

Following a horrific murder in a sleepy suburb of York, a local journalist receives a cryptic clue from someone claiming to be the killer. The clue hints at where the next murder will take place.
Teaming up with the Senior Investigating Officer, Gene Garland, they discover the email is genuine. They face a race against the clock to stop a sadistic killer…
Five Down is a stunning debut from a new voice in crime writing.
Five Down is an absolutely gripping storyline.
This is amazing! Don’t miss this one…

Review:

There are so many police procedural novels around at the moment that it must be difficult to come up with original ideas, but Tom Sibson has done this really successfully. Although the police are involved, and Detective Constable Karen Parkinson, in particular plays an active role in the investigation, our protagonist is a journalist, Paul Dobson. It’s rare that fictional journalists are actually helpful, but I loved the relationship between Paul and Karen. It is also clear that Paul has a background story and I’d love to see that explored a little further if this novel becomes the first in a series. 

Five Down is set mostly in York and I loved the references to real streets and landmarks. As a former student in York, I lived there for three years and recognising the locations really helped me to picture the scenes about which Sibson was writing. 

The plotting in Five Down is absolutely brilliant and it’s clear that Sibson put a great deal of thought into making sure his clues worked perfectly. I didn’t get any of them, and it made the novel very tense as I wondered who the murderer was and why he was committing such awful crimes. 

I’m looking forward to reading more by this author! 

Five Down is available from Amazon.

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