Book Review: Lie To Me by D. S. Butler

 Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from Bookoutre Publishing via #netgalley, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it. All opinions are my own

As soon as he picks up the phone, Arnie knows something is terribly wrong. ‘We’ve found him. Damon’s finally been found.’ For thirty-five years, DS Arnie Hodgson believed his childhood friend was dead. But he didn’t die back then. He was murdered yesterday.

Synopsis:

DS Karen Hart’s heart breaks for her colleague as she joins the investigation, but soon the case takes a darker turn. Burned into Damon’s chest is a vivid scarlet mark—a Victorian branding iron shaped like a scythe. Why did Damon vanish that night? And why has someone killed him now?

As Karen and Arnie track down his old friends in the small coastal town of Humberston, they become sure answers lie buried in Arnie’s past; they were all together at the fairground that summer night thirty-five years ago when Damon disappeared. And when the detectives uncover another body, it’s clear someone will kill to keep their secrets buried.

Then another person close to Arnie is brutally murdered—with the same vivid scarlet mark seared into their skin. And when a driver tries to run Arnie down in a car, he must finally confront a terrifying question: is one of his old friends a killer? And if so, can he bring them to justice before they turn on him next?

Review:

What would you do if your best friend from high school who disappeared and was presumed dead, suddenly turned up? But then he turns up deceased and you're actually a copper who can work the case? For Arnie that's the reality that he's now looking at. He thinks it's going to be simple but nothing is simple in the town he grew up in. As he and Karen navigate his friend group, and the secrets they are all keeping, they soon realized what happened that night when they were in high school, is still influencing things today, and the friend group that he thought he knew kept secrets from him. This is more of a slower read from Butler, but it allows him to build up the tension very well making this one more of a procedural thriller than a procedural mystery. This is a great introduction to the series and to the characters and if you haven't read it I would suggest this is your book to get into the series.

About the Author:

Born in Kent, D. S. Butler grew up as an avid reader with a love for crime fiction and mysteries. She has worked as a scientific officer in a hospital pathology laboratory and as a research scientist. After obtaining a PhD in biochemistry, she worked at the University of Oxford for four years before moving to the Middle East. While living in Bahrain, she wrote her first novel and hasn't stopped writing since. She now lives in Lincolnshire with her husband.