Book Review: Truth or Die

By Becky Gulc

‘Their darkest secrets won’t stay buried forever…

The butchered body of a professor is found in a private office of Exeter University. It is the first in a spate of horrific murders that shakes the city to its core.

Who would target a seemingly innocent man, and why? DS Imogen Grey and DS Adrian Miles turn to his students for answers, but their investigation turns up no leads. Someone must know more than they’re letting on…

As the body count rises, the police have to look into the past to uncover the person responsible before it’s too late.

But are they brave enough to face up to the truth?’ (Synopsis from the back cover.)

So as you can tell from the synopsis, Truth or Die isn’t a chick-lit novel but crime fiction! It’s always good to try and mix up genres once in a while though, so I embraced reading something a bit different. So, what did I think?

This novel has a lot of strengths. The opening chapter stirred my interest, I immediately felt for student Toby who experiences an untimely and unfortunate death. We’re then quick to move on to meeting the main characters of Adrian and Imogen, the detectives assigned with investigating the murder of a university professor. These two characters, and the dynamic between them, were key factors in my enjoyment and interest in the novel. I found them both to be flawed; strong but at the same time, vulnerable. The fact that we learn (in time) they are keeping a secret which could jeopardize their careers added to the intrigue of how it would all pan out.

I admit it took me a while to get into the crime investigation itself, I didn’t always feel the burning desire to solve the case with the characters which I wanted to. I think this changed when something happened to a more vulnerable character in the novel, someone we’d met, then I wondered who did it. In this respect, I enjoyed the last third of the novel the most. As a reader I started to feel vested in some of the characters (even if none are particularly likable as such!) and what the conclusion would be. I just didn’t find it to be edge-of-your-seat reading that I maybe thought would come with this kind of novel.

I learnt afterwards this is one book in a series of novels featuring Adrian and Imogen and that some of the other characters have featured in previous novels, whilst this book can be read as stand-alone, on reflection I would certainly be intrigued to have started at the beginning to see how the characters have evolved. If you want to try something different and don’t mind some graphic descriptions at time this one may be worth a read.

Thanks to Avon for the book in exchange for an honest review. Check out the other stops on Katerina's blog tours.