#IncidentReport | #BookReview | DEAD LIKE YOU (Roy Grace #6) by Peter James @peterjamesuk (May 26th 2010, Pan Macmillan @panmacmillan)

DEAD LIKE YOU (Roy Grace #6) by Peter James
26th May 2010, Pan Macmillan

The Metropole Hotel, Brighton. After a heady New Year’s Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room. A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims’ shoes are taken by the offender.

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace soon realizes that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed ‘Shoe Man’ and was believed to have raped five women before murdering his sixth victim and vanishing. Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced?

When more women are assaulted, Grace becomes increasingly certain that they are dealing with the same man. And that by delving back into the past—a time in which we see Grace and his missing wife Sandy still apparently happy together—he may find the key to unlocking the current mystery.

Soon Grace and his team will find themselves in a desperate race against the clock to identify and save the life of the new sixth victim.

Well what can I say except Peter James has done it again! We are now onto the 6th book in the series and they do not seem to stop surprising me!

DEAD LIKE YOU yet again has lots of different paths that keep us on the edge of our seat until we see where they all lead and come together. As we are introduced to different characters that all could be the culprit we still have our favourites that remain constant throughout the series. The difference with this book than the previous five is although this was a whodunit with several options I did have a fairly good idea of who it was but there was a little shock at the end when it all falls together in the last few pages.

I did feel like DEAD LIKE YOU isn’t quite finished and that some of these characters may re appear in future books maybe. I do like how previous cases are mentioned and we get to see how these are developing after the stories ended, I like how the case isn’t just forgotten about.

I am very frustrated with not getting any answers to the Sandy situation. We seem to be given little teasers and then she is forgotten about apart a brief mention in this book. I hope we get more than the little snippets we are being offered in future books. There seems to be less about Roy’s personal life in this story although he seems blissfully happy.

A lot of the side characters that we know and love are also in this book, with Roy’s friend Branson struggling with marriage problems and Nick Nicholl having lack of sleep due to his baby, I like how we get to see what makes some of these police officers work and I hope we get to discover more about these characters as the stories progress.

I like how each book so far has been a completely different case and they haven’t been very repetitive so far which definitely keeps me interesting. I cannot wait to read the rest of the series to see what else happens.

You can buy DEAD LIKE YOU (Roy Grace #6) from the following booksellers (and obviously many more!)

Amazon (UK) | Amazon (US) | Book Depository | Waterstones

*L*