Hobeck Books have produced some excellent novels this year, I have been very impressed with them and the wonderful talented authors they publish. I was therefore looking forward to reading their latest release – The Confession by Maureen Myant.
Julie Campbell is 45 and a music teacher in Scotland. When she is found dead at her desk, the police are shocked to find a confession on her laptop, admitting to a series of five murders. The first part of the book is written from Julie’s point of view, so you get to see what she does and how she feels about everything.
Then we move on to following the police investigation, seeing things from the viewpoint of DS Mark Nicholson. Married to Karen (Great name, ha!) with three children, Mark is overworked and very stressed, the pressures of his long working days spilling over into his marriage and causing problems.
Then a woman called Suzanne appears in the book and everything becomes even more intriguing…
I loved all the twists and turns of this story. There are lots of surprises and “oooh!” moments throughout the book. I loved trying to untangle the tangled web. The writing is really good and the characters are great, I especially loved Mark. He doesn’t have an easy time of it and you have to feel sorry for him.
I loved the pacing of this book. Sometimes books in this genre whizz along at super-speed, but this one has perfect pacing – slow enough to let us meet the characters and get to know them, but still being a page turner. If I’d been able to have a lie in this morning, I’d have stayed up until the early hours reading this. It’s really clever, intriguing, draws you in and holds you there…
9 out of 10
BLURB
A house on a quiet street on the southside of Glasgow. Neat, terraced homes with manicured lawns and pruned trees. Not the sort of place that reeks of decay or where dead bluebottles pile up on a windowsill.
When the police break in, there’s a surprise in store for them. They find Julie Campbell’s decaying body at her desk, her laptop open beside her. She’s a well-liked, respectable woman. On the laptop is a confession – to five murders. There’s one major problem though – only one of the victims she names is actually dead.
DI Mark Nicholson is persuaded by his boss DCI Alex Scrimgeour that the confession is a fantasy, and to drop the case, but Mark senses there’s more to it than meets the eye. As he delves further, the darkest of secrets are revealed, and everyone around him is dragged into a vortex of fear, danger and murder. No one is beyond suspicion as The Confession becomes a murderous reality.
I Heart Books 