I'm trying to read more this year as I massively failed my reading challenge last year. I'm going to beast it this year. The title and the cover of this book intrigued me.



"Mr Marseille is polite, elegant, and erudite. He would do anything for his genteel true love Anabelle. And he is a psychopath.

A quiet Philadelphia suburb. A woman cycles past a train depot with her young daughter. And there she finds a murdered girl posed on a newly painted bench. Strangled. Beside her is a formal invite to a tea dance in a week's time.

Seven days later, two more young victims are discovered in a disused house, posed on painted swings. At the scene is an identical invite. This time, though, there is something extra waiting for Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano.

A delicate porcelain doll. It's a message. And a threat.

With Marseille and Anabelle stalking the city, Detectives Byrne and Balzano have just seven days to find the link between the murders before another innocent child is snatched from its streets."

I didn't really enjoy this book. I nearly gave up but I wanted to know what happened and why etc but it was hard work.

The storyline was okay. It starts with a pretty grim murder but then you don't really hear about that again until near the end which was a bit confusing. Mr Marseille and Anabelle are odd characters and even weirder bad guys.

This book just seemed to drag in some places and I kinda lost the will to keep reading. Then towards the end they just kind of chuck all these links at you to explain the who and the why. I feel like some of these links could have come earlier on so that it made more sense. It just felt a bit fractured with the different parts of the story.

I loved the detectives Byrne and Balzano but I'm not sure I would want to give anymore of this series a read.

Have you read any of Richard Montanari's books?

Beth...x