Judas Child: a compulsive and gripping thriller with a twist to take your breath away - Softcover

O'Connell, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472212819 ISBN 13: 9781472212818

Publisher: Headline, 2015

Sadie Green's purple bicycle was found abandoned at the bus stop. Then her friend, Gwen, disappeared, which led the police to propose a runaway theory to the press.

But State Police Investigator Rouge Kendall wasn't convinced.

On a barstool in Dame's tavern, where Kendall spent a little too much time, he remembered his own mother, begging for the life of his twin sister, Susan. That was fifteen years ago. And a man had been imprisioned for that murder - a priest, barely in his twenties. Father Paul Marie continued to proclaim his innocence.

And current events might prove that he was telling the truth, that someone else might be responsible for all three crimes . . .

Review:

Everyone knows that they caught the local child killer, and that formerly popular local priest Father Paul Marie is doing hard time. Everyone is so sure that, when 15 years later two little girls disappear, the police are sure that they have run away and will turn up soon. Everyone, that is, except for state police investigator Rouge, whose sister was the victim 15 years ago, and scarred beautiful criminologist Ali, who believes Father Paul Marie's claims of innocence. They have their own problems--why is his family broke, and what caused her scar? Things are not going as well as they might for the killer either; this particular pair of children have resources of pluck and ingenuity that constantly baffle him.

This is a departure for O'Connell; she has abandoned her usual detective, high-tech psychopath Mallory and her crew of misfits, for people less obviously extraordinary and brings the same skewed intelligent vision of human capability to bear on them. The switches between investigators trying to unravel past and present, and victims surviving against the odds, successfully wind up the tension to an almost unendurable pitch; O'Connell turns in a virtuoso combination of detection and suspense that is her best book yet. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

A heart-stopping, twist-in-the-tail novel of intelligence and suspense (Frances Fyfield Mail on Sunday)

• Publisher: Headline
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1472212819
• ISBN 13: 9781472212818
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416