A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about Noelle Holten’s book DEAD INSIDE. When I tweeted a link to the blog I said this is the best debut novel I’ve ever read.
It is, this is one hell of a book
I quite often say a book had me hooked, but never has the hook been so deep. I know people have different tastes, and that some people will read the book and have a different opinion, but if you like Crime Thrillers, which really are Thrillers; and if you like crimes that make you flinch and gasp out loud, you are going to love this.
My original review is below. Have a look, read the book, and join me at the start of this journey.
Dead Inside Noelle Holten
A few months ago I heard that one of the staff at a publishers I follow had written a book. In fact I began to hear a few mentions of DEAD INSIDE by Noelle Holten.
I had to read it, but I was worried, what if I didn’t like it. I talk to this woman a lot and do book reviews for some of the authors she’s responsible for. This could have been nasty.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. I should have known better. If you represent the authors Noelle represents, and write the reviews she puts on line of other books she reads, I should have known she loves the same type of fiction as I do.
But she’s gone one step further than me, she’s written a book, and what a book!
Dead Inside is going to be up there with this year’s top releases.
Noelle has written this book in a way that not many, if any, other books I’ve read have been written before. Although it is billed as “Maggie Jamieson Crime Thriller Book 1” there is no real lead character. Everybody seems to get equal billing and the story is brilliant for it.
I was trying to find a way of explaining this and eventually came up with the analogy that the books characters are like those from a TV soap, everybody is important to the story, when it’s their turn they are front and centre, but it’s the story that takes precedent. The plot is lead chronologically by the character that means the most at that time. So although Maggie is a thread throughout, she gets no more or less page time than anybody else. I really like this style.
So who is Maggie, well she’s a DC who has been moved from a Murder Investigation Team in Staffordshire Police to a new unit. Why has she been moved? Her back story indicates that she was heavily involved in a serial killer investigation, and that maybe she suffered a bit during that investigation.
The newly formed team is the Domestic Abuse and Homicide Unit, and is a multi-agency team set up to quell the growing problem of Domestic Violence, and the deaths associated with it, across Staffordshire.
When the team was set up I would imagine that they thought the Homicides would be mainly women who had suffered abuse at the hands of their partners. So on Maggie’s first day it’s a bit of a shock when the body of a man who was an abuser turns up.
The team start an investigation as the man was known to them and involve the Probation Service in their inquiry, as he was also known to them.
A big part of this story is a group of people that represent a section of society we all know exists but hopefully never have an involvement with.
Women, a lot with drink or drugs problems, gravitating to men with the same problems, or men who will exploit those women when they are at their lowest ebb. Women who get abused physically and mentally, and when they find the courage to move on, nearly always end up in another abusive relationship.
In this story one woman should not be in that category, she should know better, she works with women that suffer abuse, then she goes home and behind closed doors she becomes one of the abused. At times the sections of the story that looks at Lucy and her Husband are hard to read but compelling at the same time.
As the bodies start to pile up another character is introduced to the team. Dr Kate Maloney is a Criminal Psychiatrist, a young Irish woman who dresses in full Goth clothing and has a tongue as sharp as a knife. What a character.
Maggie works the case and introduces the rest of the team as the investigation continues. All of the team have their opinions, and as the book moves on their individual characters are laid open for the reader. Each of them is realistic and everybody who has ever worked in a team will recognise the dynamics, there are some we will love, and there are others who will infuriate.
The story continues with more violence in the almost incestuous community of abusers and victims.
The Police battle against the closed nature of the group and the absolute denial of some of the victims.
But somebody out there is doing something about it, and the way they’re doing it is murderous. Spine-tingly murderous.
So now the abusers are becoming victims will anybody have any sympathy for them. How will the investigating team deal with looking out for peoples safety, when they have been trying to take them off the streets for years.
This book had me hooked from start to finish. It had me holding my breath and making out-loud exclamations. It had me reading way past my usual bedtime and then waking up early to carry on and find out who was safe and who wasn’t.
I had sympathy for the victims of abuse, and at the same time I was frustrated by their lack of helping themselves, and their constant denial of there actually being a problem. Yes, it is very real.
Like all good books it ends on a cliff hanger. One that I really didn’t see coming, but which opens the door for Maggie Jamieson Book 2.
In a strange way I would love to have come across this book after 3 or 4 had been published so that I could have binge read them.
But I am really chuffed to have been in from the start. I hope I’m about to ride a wave that includes many a venture for Maggie and her team.
Noelle Hurry up and write the next one please.
Pages: 293
Publisher: Killer Reads
Publishing Date: 31st May 2019….Just in time to buy for a the summer holiday books.
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