Left You Dead: A Realistically Creepy Crime Thriller (Roy Grace Book 17)

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Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, creation of the CWA Diamond Dagger award-winning author Peter James, faces his most engrossing case yet in Left You Dead. What made this book special and entertaining is not just the mystery, but the relationship dynamics between the characters. I loved the witty banter between the investigators. There’s also a tragedy in the life of one of the investigators that brings an added heartbreaking dimension. I like my detectives complicated and enjoy hearing some of their stories apart from the investigation. Although a bit long, the short chapters and a riveting plot kept the story moving along at a brisk pace.

When D.Supt Grace is called in to investigate, it doesn’t take long for him and his team to realise that nothing is quite as it seems – and this might be his most mysterious case yet . . . Dead Man’s Time calls Roy Grace in once more. This time it’s for a burglary that has taken over a million pounds worth of loot. It has also left an elderly man who lives there dying. As Grace shows up on the scene, it’s clear that the family does not care so much about the valuables so much as one valuable in particular. They will do anything to get it. They don’t care about breaking the law and Grace is thrown into a hot pursuit that takes him through Europe and eventually all the way to New York. Le Prix Cœur Noir at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines festival, Comme Une Tombe (French translation of Dead Simple)His father ran the business as well as an accountant. His sister Genevieve now runs the company along with her husband. He attended Charterhouse School and later attended Ravensbourne Film School. James spent a few years working in North America as a film producer and screenwriter. He got his start in 1970 on the Canadian children’s television show Polka Dot Door as an errand boy and later writer. He cofounded Movision Pictures in the nineties. Peter said he was delighted with the way the city looked in the first show, which amassed 8.8 million viewers when it aired earlier this year. All the signature elements that makes this series great is included - I always enjoy Norman Potting's ill timed quips whilst Grace and ACC Cassian Pewe's frosty relationship is also explored. Niall Paternoster drops his wife Eden at Tesco in Brighton while he parks and waits in the car and that’s the last he sees of her. He duly reports her missing the following day. Meanwhile Detective Superintendent Roy Grace visits Ford Prison and obtains some interesting information about his arch nemesis Assistant Chief Constable Cassian Pewe. .

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is brought on to the case and grows suspicious when the one friend who wasn’t out celebrating refuses to collaborate on the case. All of a sudden, a motive surfaces, and Michael’s near accident may not be so accidental after all. In Looking Good Dead, published in 2006, Tom Bryce finds an apparently lost cd and decides to try to return it to its owner. But when his mission to return the cd leads to him witnessing a ghastly homicide, his family is threatened if he decides to go to the police. Meanwhile, Roy Grace is still haunted by his missing wife. It’s been nearly ten years since she disappeared. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, creation of the CWA Diamond Dagger award-winning author Peter James, faces his most engrossing case yet in Left You Dead .

What is the next book in Peter James's Roy Grace series?

I spent the start of Left You Dead faintly distracted by the names Niall and Eden Paternoster. This may be because of being traumatised for life by an incident getting out of a paternoster (one of those moving series of compartments now outlawed on health and safety grounds) at the University of Leicester … OK, I digress. Once I was past the names, I was on firmer ground with the 17th book in Peter James’ Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series. This is one of the few ongoing sagas that still has me gripped, although the previous outing, Find Them Dead, left me feeling rather dissatisfied as the main character seemed to have been sidelined.

The novel opens with a recounting of Eden’s disappearance from Niall Paternoster’s point of view and this sets the tone, a relatively straightforward account that seems true until the doubts creep in and the reader is unsure what to believe. This happens throughout the novel. It’s skilfully done and insidiously clever. Roy Grace’s attention is not wholly on the case as he has some other things going on, offering both heartbreak and potential joy, and yet he’s still the one to connect all the dots. The upshot is that this novel is a rollercoaster. I was continually on edge trying to work out what exactly was going on, then it had me in tears when tragedy strikes and finally I felt uplifted as hope blooms at the last minute, setting up the next novel nicely. Meanwhile, there’s the usual sideshows that we associate with a James novel – his private life with wife Cleo and strange young son Bruno, problems for his loyal supporting cast of hard-working cops, and the malign presence of ACC Cassian Pewe looming over it all.I'm always eagerly awaiting my yearly dose of Roy Grace ever since I first started reading them during the series infancy - I was always going to be hooked on a crime drama set in my hometown of Brighton. James is patron of the Sussex Police Charitable Trust, patron of Brighton & Hove Samaritans, patron of the Brighton Greyhound Owners Association Retired Greyhound Trust, patron of Brighton and Hove Independent Mediation Service, patron of Relate in Sussex, patron of Terrys Cross House, patron of Little Green Pig, national co-patron of Neighbourhood Watch, co-patron of Sussex Crimestoppers, honorary patron for the South Mid Sussex Community First Responders, vice-president of The Old Police Cells Museum in Brighton. He is an ambassador for the University of Brighton, and a Martlets Hospice Champion (which he also supports through his annual Peter James Golf Classic). He supports Action Medical Research. [6] He also supports and works with The Reading Agency, a charity with a mission to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. He said: "I've never seen Brighton look so good on film - I'm so happy as I'm passionate about the city.

James was educated at Charterhouse and went on to Ravensbourne Film School. For a brief period of time whilst at film school, James worked as Orson Welles's house cleaner. Subsequently, he spent several years in North America, working as a screenwriter and film producer, beginning in Canada in 1970 working first as a gofer, then writer, on the children's television series Polka Dot Door. [1] Personal life [ edit ] Thankyou to Macmillan Australia for providing me with a copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review. In a nutshell, it’s a did he/didn’t he set-up, but James, one of the best storytellers around, keeps the clever plot motoring. And the very scary ending will put you off going out on a dark night … There is a second plot that explores the deep and emotional theme of organ donation and how vital it is.I would like to thank Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of Left You Dead, the seventeenth novel to feature Detective Roy Grace of the Sussex Police Major Crimes Unit.