#Review The Blood Promise (The Solanki and McQueen Crime Series, #1) by Liz Mistry
The Blood Promise
A deadly gift
Imogen Clark wakes up on her 16th birthday to find her parents dead at the breakfast table, along with a message from their killer.
A twist of fate
Detectives Jazzy Solanki and Annie McQueen join the investigation, but the more they discover, the more Jazzy suspects that the killing is a twisted message for her. Jazzy shares the same birthday as Imogen, and believes that this is more than a coincidence.
A race to catch a killer
When Jazzy discovers the connection between the killer and the stalker who has been following her for years, she is forced to confront the dark past she was desperate to keep hidden. She must stop at nothing to solve the case, before she becomes the next victim…
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REVIEW
I loved that this was set in my neck of the woods in Scotland! Never really read one so close to home usually they are all set in Glasgow or Edinburgh! I enjoyed the story and that characters however, I found this hard to read in the sense that there would be a sudden shift in who was telling the story – one min we were having Jazzy POV then suddenly it shifted to someone else’s without any warning making it mess with the flow and my focus!
Detectives Jasmine ‘Jazzy’ Solanki and Annie ‘Queenie’ McQueen were quite the quirky characters, which I rather enjoyed – though for some reason we were constantly reminded that Jazzy was a POC, it felt unnecessary at times and overused. However they had a great rapport and the banter between them was enjoyable and a welcome break from all the gruesomeness going on. Jazzy has something going on from her past that she doesn’t want anyone knowing about, but the murders that have been happening seem to have some correlation to her past. There were plenty twists, gruesome murders ( I mean first crime scene had heads on the table!) and overall a good start to this series, the only thing I think would make this better would be a huge tweak on the editing front to differentiate which character was speaking so it make the story flow better.
Author Bio –
Liz Mistry moved to West Yorkshire in the late 1980s. Her gritty crime fiction police procedural novels set in Bradford embrace the city she describes as ‘Warm, Rich and Fearless’ whilst exploring the darkness that lurks beneath. Yet, her heart remains in Scotland, where childhood tales of bogey men, Bible John and grey lady ghosts fed her imagination.
Her latest work, The Solanki and McQueen crime series is set around West Lothian, where she uses the distinctive landscape, historic heritage and Scottish culture as a backdrop to her gritty yet often humorous stories.
Struggling with clinical depression and anxiety for many years, Liz often includes mental health themes in her writing. She credits her MA in Creative Writing from Leeds Trinity University with helping her find a way of using her writing to navigate her ongoing mental health struggles. The synergy been creative and academic writing led Liz to complete a doctorate in creative writing researching the importance of representation of marginalised groups within the genre she loves.
Her husband, three children and huge extended British Indian family are a constant support to her. In her spare time, Liz loves visiting the varied Scottish and Yorkshire landscape, travelling, listening to music, reading and blogging about all things crime fiction on her website blog, The Crime Warp.
Social Media Links –
Website: lizmistry.com/
X (Twitter): LizMistryAuthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LizMistrybooks
