Looking Good Dead

MY REVIEW 📙📘📗📕 This is the second in this series (DS Roy Grace)and this one does not disappoint! I'm in the process of reading all of them in the order they were written. I told myself i was not going to start them till i had them all. But i could not wait any longer. It has took me several mounths to get the ones i have. (Peter James books are very hard to find in the States). I still need a few more and i am going to have to wait a long time before i can get them. But this book was well worth the wait. I loved , loved , loved this book ! The characters are well developed and interesting. Peter James is such an amazing writer. Looking Good Dead is Gripping from the first page right up until the last. I Could not put it down ! The plot is really good and the twists and turns keep you turning the pages as fast as you can. It just sucks you in and dont let you go. I could not turn the pages fast enough. Sometimes I find myself reading so fast and holding my breath. I love the setting of Brighton . Even though i have never been there he writes with so much detail i can picture what everything looks like. Needless to say I can't wait to read the third book. They are extremely well written and the more i read, the more i want! I would love to own every book Peter James writes in hardback. I am looking foward to making my collection grow. If you love murder mysteries you should try Peter James Roy Grace series.

I really enjoyed reading this thriller and I like the way Peter James writes. I've not read him before but in this novel the characters felt like real people, not extreme or too perfect. Writing about where you live obviously pays off as well because it transported me back to England, where I used to live. I just hope the author doesn't actually know any of 'bad guys' in this novel, talk about nasty. However as I had recently watched a news story about the internet's underbelly, it didn't take any leap of my imagination to believe in the depravity of some people and the plot line. As soon as I finished this book I was ready to find my next Peter James novel and go do some more Sussex police work.

A great 'do-as-they-say-and-protect-my-family-OR-do-what-is-right-and-inform-the-police' storyline. I wondered if it was going to be a bit 'waffly' with it being over 500 pages but it wasn't and I absolutely flew through it. The murders were shocking enough to satisfy the gruesome but realistic enough to be scary and believable. How anonymous the Internet can be...and how your computer can both access information yet also have it's hard drive destroyed in seconds. There is also a subplot where Detective Tom Bryce is contemplating a new relationship..ten years after his wife Sandy disappeared. This was nicely done and I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops in his next novel.

Peter James is the author of several very successful thrillers, two of which have been made into successful TV films. More are in production now. He was born in 1948 and educated at Charterhouse. He lives in Sussex near Lewes. I had forgotten how refreshing it was to read a crime thriller by a British author with British people and British places. I am a little tired of reading about New York `cops' or small American towns that have no meaning to the average British reader. Tom Brice was doing what he assumed any other law abiding citizen would do, trying to return someone's lost property to them. The CD had been left on the train seat next to his own and in attempting to return it to its rightful owner he becomes the sole witness to a vicious murder. Worse it yet to come his young family are threatened with violence of the worst kind if he goes to the police. But supported by his wife, Kellie, he bravely makes a statement to the murder inquiry team that is headed by Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. The police make all the right noises, but could this be the worst mistake Tom has ever made . . .

First Sentence: The front door of the one-proud terraced house opened, and a long-legged young woman, in a short silk dress that seemed to both cling and float at the same time, stepped out into the fine June sunshine on the last morning of her life. On his way home from work, Tom Bryce finds a CD left behind by a passenger on the train. In an effort to identify the CD's owner, Tom opens it in his computer and witnesses the brutal murder of a young woman. When he tries to open it again, he receives a threat against himself and his family. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is called to the scene where the dismembered body of a young woman, sans her head, has been found. Grace's team must first identify the body and catch the killer before more die. This book is good; really good. I was captivated on page one and held until the very last page way too late that same night. The story is exciting, human, grisly, sexy, profane and I enjoyed every bit of it. All of the characters are very well developed; Tom's struggle to keep his business going, his wife's feeling of desperation, Roy's still coping with his wife's disappearance yet trying to move forward while trying to keep his job on track. It's a well-rounded plot with good sense of place and great dialogue, both verbal and internal. Thank heaven book three is due out very soon. Highly recommended.

Peter James's "Looking Good Dead" is a grisly page-turner with some creative twists. Tom Bryce is a struggling British businessman who has a beautiful but troubled wife and two adorable kids. His life takes a horrendous turn when he looks at a CD that a fellow commuter accidentally leaves behind on a train. When Tom plays the disk in his computer, he is horrified to see a beautiful woman being slashed to death. This scene couldn't possibly be real, Tom hopes. Much to his dismay, he learns that not only has he witnessed a woman's murder, but that he has also inadvertently placed himself and his family in grave danger. Thirty-eight year old Detective Superintendant Roy Grace, the Senior Investigating Officer for the Sussex CID, has a great deal on his plate. He has still not come to terms with the mysterious disappearance of his wife, Sandy, who went missing nine years earlier. In addition, his job is on the line, since his superiors have not been satisfied with his performance of late. Another black mark on Grace's record is habit of visiting mediums in an effort to find out what happened to Sandy, and to give him tips that will help him solve difficult crimes. Now, he is in charge of investigating the homicide of a woman whose mutilated torso was found by a dog-walker. There are few promising leads, and as the days go by, Grace fears that the case will become impossible to break. The only bright spot in his life is his upcoming date with Cleo Morey, a Senior Pathology Technician who seems to reciprocate his interest. Grace has been intensely lonely for years, and he desperately wants a satisfying relationship with this desirable woman. "Looking Good Dead" is an engrossing police procedural that explores a dark underworld populated by sadists and sociopaths. To identify and apprehend these individuals, Grace and his team face many hours of door-to-door canvassing, phone calls, viewing tapes from closed-circuit television cameras, and other time-consuming tasks that deprive them of free time to spend with their loved ones. Marriages are strained to the breaking point as the police desperately try to unmask a killer whose signature is a scarab (a beetle with arcane symbolic significance). James presents a realistic look at how frustrating and plodding detective work can be. Grace faces pressure from his bosses, from the media (who are only too happy to crucify the police when they fail to arrest a suspect swiftly) and from himself. He fears that what happened to this young woman may have happened to Sandy. What if someone savagely butchered his wife and dumped her body somewhere, never to be seen again? For the sake of all the unfortunate victims, Grace tirelessly drives the men and women who work with him to get results, but as time passes, there is little to show for their efforts. Let the reader beware. This book is not for the faint-hearted; it contains coarse language, graphic sexuality, and scenes of explicit violence.