Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
A year after he escaped from prison, Vindici - a serial killer who dispensed his own form of justice to paedophiles on the streets of Liverpool, is back in business. The videos of his crimes placed online have made him into a folk hero to many.
DCI Eve Clay and her team think they’ve started to make progress in their investigation, when matters take an unexpected turn. They receive a photograph of Vindici taken at a Mexican Day of the Dead parade. If their prime suspect is 5,000 miles away, then who is behind the latest killings?
Day of the Dead would be worth reading as a superbly constructed thriller, even if it didn’t have much more to it than that – an elegant novel. As it happens it has some even more intriguing aspects [even if somewhat disturbing]; thought-provoking social commentary about the direction our society appears to be headed.
Roberts makes the city of Liverpool a character in its own right; one with a multi-layered and often troubled past. Roberts is also a master at creating tension pulling a couple of neat tricks on his readers and crafting a genuinely gripping finale.
In Eve Clay he has a strong lead character, forever balancing the demands of her job, the ghosts of her past and the responsibilities of being a mother in a way that is convincing and sometimes touching. She is backed by an equally well drawn supporting cast with detailed back-stories of their own.
What lifts this book above most similar fare is the clear-eyed way Roberts looks at how the internet and social media are changing our society; in particular the way moral boundaries are becoming ever more blurred and the online world’s capacity to make heroes out of monsters.
This is a thoughtful, well-constructed thriller that tackles the darkness that lurks upon the damp floor of the Internet’s shiny appeal.
