BOOK REVIEW – Play Dead by Angela Marsons

Many thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for my advance copy of this book in return for my honest review.

Picking up a Kim Stone book is like catching up with an old friend who you haven’t seen for a while. You’re immediately comfortable with each other, and you pick up right where you left off. That’s exactly how I felt as soon as I started reading Play Dead.

Angela Marsons has created a complex character in Kim; someone with a horrific background, who’s managed to create some sort of a life for herself, while attempting to keep these dark recollections boxed somewhere in a corner of her memory. With each new instalment of her books, Marsons uncovers a little bit more of Stone’s dark past, and scratches away some more of the hard shell she’s created to protect herself.

This time Kim and her trusted team are off to a body farm, well actually it’s a type of reward for work well done! For most of us, it doesn’t bear thinking about, but for people in their line of work, it’s just one more way to get some more experience in their already complex field. How exactly do researchers and CSI’s discover what they know about bodies and decomposition – well they learn all about stuff like that here at Westerley research facility. Except that they’re meant to learn it from old bodies in differing stages of decay, so when a brand new body turns up on the premises, things take a turn for the peculiar. Then another fresh body is discovered and it seems a serial killer is on the loose dumping bodies at the facility, which is meant to be a secret location and unknown to any members of the public.

The team is under pressure to keep the entire case under wraps – here comes Kim’s nemesis, nosy journalist Tracy Frost, who just knows how to press all of Kim’s buttons. But this time, something just doesn’t sit right. Why is Tracy bugging Kim about a cold case from years ago? It’s niggling at Kim and it just won’t go away. So in her usual stubborn way Kim attempts to work on the two cases in parallel, against the wishes of her boss and against serious opposition from the internal powers that be.

And the body count rises.

Once again, Angela Marsons manages to maintain, if not improve on, the incredibly high standard that Kim Stone fans have come to expect and anticipate. This is a fast-paced page-turner, and a welcome addition to an absolutely addictive series!