Release date: July 11, 2019
Publisher: Bookouture
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Blurb:
Late one summer evening, Detective Kim Stone arrives at Haden Hill Park to the scene of a horrific crime: a woman in her sixties tied to a swing with barbed wire and an X carved into the back of her neck.
The victim, Belinda Evans, was a retired college Professor of Child Psychology. As Kim and her team search her home, they find an overnight bag packed and begin to unravel a complex relationship between Belinda and her sister Veronica.
Then two more bodies are found bearing the same distinctive markings, and Kim knows she is on the hunt for a ritualistic serial killer. Linking the victims, Kim discovers they were involved in annual tournaments for gifted children and were on their way to the next event.
With DS Penn immersed in the murder case of a young man, Kim and her team are already stretched and up against one of the most ruthless killers they’ve ever encountered. The clues lie in investigating every child who attended the tournaments, dating back decades.
Faced with hundreds of potential leads and a bereaved sister who is refusing to talk, can Kim get inside the mind of a killer and stop another murder before it’s too late?
The addictive new crime thriller from multi-million copy, number one bestseller Angela Marsons explores the dark side of child prodigies and will have you absolutely hooked.
Review:
If over the years my raving and gushing over this superb series hasn’t somehow already convinced you to read them, let me try and persuade you one more time. This is the eleventh book in the incomparable Kim Stone series, and yes you could technically read any of them as standalones, but I don’t recommend doing so because every single dang book is phenomenal. This is quite the feat because usually after only a handful of books a series can get boring but there is absolutely none of that here. Each installment raises the bar somehow and just solidified Marsons spot as one of my favorite crime writers on the planet.
As usual Kim and her team have several things going on at all once. Of course they have the main investigation where someone is killing people linked to child prodigies which is a subject that I found endlessly fascinating and was obviously well researched by the author. All of the members of the team has separate personal issues cropping up as well, Penn is called back to his old team during a trial leaving Kim and crew a man down, Stacey is having some sort of issue at home but is keeping quiet, Bryant is just good old Bryant, driving Kim and his wife crazy, and then a new temporary member joins the team just to keep things interesting. It may sound like a lot, and it is, for sure, but it’s not too much. In fact, it’s the perfect balance between personal and professional life that makes these characters feel like my own dear friends.
Marsons is one of the few crime writers left who always, without fail, manages to surprise me. I never work out what direction the case will take, much less who the actual killer is and the excitement and action is nonstop. You cannot put one of her books down once you get started and this was no exception, another highly impressive addition to a fantastic series that I cannot recommend highly enough!
Child’s Play in three words: Thrilling, Complex, and Pacey
Overall rating: 5/5
Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.
Novelgossip 
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