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.
Nicola Fischer’s life has fallen apart, in short order her father has been arrested for the murder of five young women, she has lost her job and been ostracized by her neighbours. Out of the blue she is offered membership of an exclusive club for the children of serial killers and run by the host of the TV show that unmasked her father.
Persuaded to attend a retreat in a luxurious, but remote, location run by the Death Row Club Nicola encounters more trouble when one of the other members is murdered. In a closed community where everyone is related to a murderer, is the compulsion to kill something people can inherit?
This is a brilliant debut novel that makes inventive use of the familiar trope of assembling a group of disparate strangers in a remote place, bumping one off, and making everyone else a suspect. V.A. Vazquez keeps her readers guessing as to the identity of the killer to the end, providing a suitably dramatic conclusion with plenty of surprising revelations along the way.
She also has some interesting things to say about our seemingly limitless fascination with serial killers. The way cheap paperbacks, TV shows and now podcasts work to make our flesh creep in the most delightfully lurid way, whilst ignoring the devastation being touched by murder brings to the families of victims and perpetrators alike.
V.A Vazquez has the potential, based on this debut, to be one of the most original voices in contemporary crime fiction, an already appreciative body of readers will be keenly anticipating her next book.
