Today I’m joining the blog tour for Absent Victim. My review is written with thanks to Zoe O’Farrell for inviting me on the blog tour.

Blurb:

No body, no motive, no name…so who did she kill?

When wealthy divorcee Stephanie Kuler asked a private detective to investigate a murder, he told her to go to the police instead. But when she told the rest of the story, he took the case. There was no body, no reason to kill and no name for her supposed victim, but she knew she was the murderer. Solving the mystery meant jail for her and a headache for him. Premonition, false memories, déjà vu…the mind playing tricks or reality distorted through time? The unmissable new thriller from David Roy explores the dark side of memory and its impact on us all.

Review:

It was the premise of this novel that encouraged me to sign up for this tour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it, yet Roy pulls it off perfectly. I was so intrigued from the moment our protagonist met Stephanie and I did not want to stop reading until I knew everything. 

Our protagonist and narrator is a private detective employed to help Stephanie in her predicament. I actually found him quite a likeable character and I appreciated the humour in Roy’s writing which helped to convey the narrator’s personality. However, his sidekick, Billy, was definitely my favourite character. I loved his sense of humour and the way he mixed up different metaphors and idioms. I do that quite a lot myself so I related to him well! 

Absent Victim is set in the height of the Covid pandemic, when social distancing and restrictions on social contact were still in place. I understand that this helps to ground the novel in a particular time and place, but I do feel that the references to it slowed the pace in what is otherwise a fast paced story. 

As the plot comes together, it does not go in the direction I expected. There are several twists and turns and I was kept guessing until the very end. 

I would definitely read more by this author! 

Absent Victim is available from Amazon.

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