‘Dead Man’s Footsteps’ by Peter James

My Review (5 stars out of 5)

A man caught up in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 sets off a series of events that lead to a decomposing body in a Brighton storm drain six years later. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and his team have a mystery on their hands when a second body is found in an Australian river. Could the two deaths be linked and if so, do they have anything to do with a woman trapped in a Brighton lift?

This is book #4 in the Roy Grace series. This time, we find our hero jetting off to the US in a bid to piece together a complicated plot that could involve an insurance scam, two murders and several changes of identity. But Roy has other troubles to deal with. Initial findings with the body in the storm drain seem to point to the possibility of it being Roy’s missing wife. And with former Met cop Cassian Pewe trying to undermine him at every turn, finding the killer proves difficult.

With the story flicking back and forth between 2001 and 2007, we are given clues that gradually link several disparate events. Also, the writing is more about the perpetrators and victims of crime than the personal lives of Roy and his bedraggled DS Glen Branson, whose marital troubles continue to hound him.

With a more complex plot than the previous novels, this one grabbed me at the first page and didn’t let go.

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