Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Dr Augusta Bloom is a psychologist, a profiler and a private investigator in partnership with Marcus Jameson, an ex-MI6 operative. Both have their (considerable) private demons and this book has links back to both Gone and Lost in the person of Seraphine Walker, a manipulative high functioning psychopath with a network of ‘followers across government and society.
Walker is about to go on trial and Bloom about to give evidence against her when she is summoned to the presence of the Foreign Secretary, secretly being detained in an MOD Whitehall basement suite under the Terrorism Act, by a shadowy Police unit tasked with dealing with crime and corruption at the highest levels of government – they must be incredibly busy! Bloom is the only one he will talk to.
From this slightly implausible premise, Bloom is tasked with finding the Foreign Secretary’s niece who disappeared some 9 years previously, with her £2,000,000 inheritance and it is suspected that she has fallen in with a self-improvement group called ‘Artemis’. Bloom believes this may be a cult and goes undercover to discover the truth putting herself at considerable risk as she attends a ‘Spa treatment’ weekend and introduction to Artemis, its aims and values - or at least its purported aims and values.
Jameson is, meanwhile, carrying-on his research into Artemis and using his SIS training to infiltrate and ‘spy-out’ the isolated village in Scotland which Artemis has bought–up lock, stock and barrel and erected a large fence around – a fence which looks designed to keep people in, rather than out!
Deakin’s background as a police and now an occupational psychologist is put to good use in spinning the plot around high functioning psychopaths, manipulative organisations and how they recruit and ‘brainwash’ their new members as well as those leaders with God delusions. Occasionally, technical explanations can feel slightly didactic, and equally occasional suspensions of disbelief are necessary but they are wrapped into a tightly woven plot which bowls along at a fast pace to a conclusion, which is far from what it seems at the outset.
Sub-plots and incidents , some apparently unconnected, are tidied into the dénouement in an effective and dramatic manner.
A last minute appearance by Walker adds to the tension and lays the foundations of further conflicts to be revealed in the next book. She is also responsible for adding to the aforementioned demons for both Jameson and Bloom as well as re-awakening long suppressed trauma.
A good thriller, well worth reading! This is the second Leona Deakin book, featuring Dr. Augusta Bloom that I have reviewed and somehow I missed Lost in 2020 – and there is a fourth The Fall Guy coming in 2022. I will now hunt down a copy of Lost and put in an advance order for The Fall Guy.
