Book Review: THE KILLING KIND by Jane Casey

 

Title: THE KILLING KIND

Author:  Jane Casey

Read: June 2021

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!

 

Book Description:

 

He tells you you’re special…
As a barrister, Ingrid Lewis is used to dealing with tricky clients, but no one has ever come close to John Webster. After Ingrid defended Webster against a stalking charge, he then turned on her – following her, ruining her relationship, even destroying her home.

He tells you he wants to protect you…

Now, Ingrid believes she has finally escaped his clutches. But when one of her colleagues is run down on a busy London road, Ingrid is sure she was the intended victim. And then Webster shows up at her door…

What attracted me to this book:

 

Jane Casey is one of my favourite authors and I have devoured every single instalment of her Maeve Kerrigan series. I was absolutely stoked to find out that she had a new standalone thriller out and read it as soon as it became available. You might gather from the five stars in my galaxy that I adored this book as much as all her others!

My musings:

 

Casey knows how to write a riveting, clever, multi-layered psychological thriller that has as many twists and blind alleys as trying to navigate the streets of Venice at night, blindfolded – there is a good chance that you are going to fall into a canal and drown. I had so many theories that got blasted out of the court one by one, in gob-smacking twists that met me around blind corners whenever I thought I was on track.

 

Ingrid Lewis is a young barrister whose life has been ruined by the unwanted attentions of one of her former clients, conman John Webster, who has been stalking her mercilessly for years. Being cunning and clever, he has been able to evade law enforcement all this time. When one of Ingrid’s colleagues dies tragically in suspicious circumstances, she is afraid that Webster is behind it, and that she had been the intended target. The stakes have just become a lot higher ...

 

Casey paints a grim picture of being stalked by a sociopath, and the clever ways in which Webster torments Ingrid without enough evidence to ever pin a charge on him. It was scary imagine the powerlessness Ingrid would feel, relentlessly haunted by this awful man. Once people started dying, the undercurrent of menace and danger rose to new levels, and I absolutely couldn’t put the book down! Then came Casey’s first major twist, blazing across the horizon and bam! All my theories were out the window again. This proved to be an ongoing theme in this clever book, and I loved being proven wrong as the twists kept coming.

 

THE KILLING KIND is exactly the kind of multi-layered thriller I love. It contained everything a book needs to be unputdownable: an enigmatic lead (who may or may not be just a tiny little bit dishonest in her telling of events), a villain in relentless pursuit, some side characters who will all have a few surprises in store (boy oh boy, didn’t they ever!) and a mounting body count. This was such an adrenaline fuelled read, even in the scenes where Ingrid just goes about her daily life. I will not say any more about the plot, because you’re best to go into this blind and let the story sweep you along.

 

Summary:

 

All in all, THE KILLING KIND is a stalker suspense story of the highest order. Multi-layered, clever and original, it shows Casey as a master of the genre and will keep you guessing to the end. One of my favourite reads this year (no surprises here) and one I very highly recommend!