Skip to main content

After He Died by Michael J Malone #BlogTour

Hello dear friend, oh how I have missed you!

I have read some fantastic books recently, however a few chapters in to After He Died I realised how long it has been since I had read a gripping suspense thriller  - Gone Girl, Girl on A Train, Before I Go To Sleep, all released years ago now and I hadn't realised how much I had missed stonking examples of this genre until the beginning of After He Died awoke something in me. I relished the chance to read further.

"When Paula Gadd’s husband of almost thirty years dies, just days away from the seventh anniversary of their son, Christopher’s death, her world falls apart. Grieving and bereft, she is stunned when a young woman approaches her at the funeral service, and slips something into her pocket. A note suggesting that Paula’s husband was not all that he seemed…

When the two women eventually meet, a series of revelations challenges everything Paula thought they knew, and it becomes immediately clear that both women’s lives are in very real danger.
Both a dark, twisty slice of domestic noir and taut, explosive psychological thriller, After He Died is also a chilling reminder that the people we trust the most can harbour the deadliest secrets…"

As with all good books in this genre I had no idea who to trust and suspected just about everyone as the chapters progressed (could it have been the pot plant?!) The ending was climactic and I found myself genuinely liking Paula, Father Joe and the "other woman" Cara.

I was most surprised by how evocative Paula's grief was. An unusual theme to be tackled in such depth by a book of this genre, it was really well written and Malone dealt with it realistically and sympathetically.

As with anything remotely Scottish I loved the setting having also taken a ferry from Gourock! (totally unrelated but Western Ferries provide an excellent service and humorous twitter feed). 

I liked how Paula and Cara's relationship developed and whereas Malone illustrated the contrast between their two worlds perfectly, I did at times feel like Cara's chip on her shoulder about rich people felt slightly too pushed upon the reader. Not to give too much away I also didn't think the Enterprise Initiative fitted in with what we knew about Thomas (Paula's husband), but that's me knit picking.

It was tense, twisty and everything a soul starved of suspense thrillers needed but with a little bit extra.

My thanks go to Orenda Books who courtesy of Anne Carter at Random Things Through My Letterbox provided me with a copy of the book in return for an honest review.

My companions on the blog tour today are @destinylover09 and @katiejones88. Go check them out.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lock down book club - books from a different country

So we continued with the Zoom version of book club this month and it was lovely to see so many of us tackle it. The theme was books set in a different country (if you can't travel, let a book take you).  I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet, a detective story with an element of tricksy fiction set in France. I really enjoyed it and you can read my full review here. We travelled to America a couple of times most interestingly to see whether Hilary Clinton (or Bill for that fact) would have made President if they had not got married. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is out in hardback now. Norway was a popular spot - Norwegian Nights by Derek B Miller about a retired american marine who moves to Norway and intervenes to save a young boys life sounded interesting. So much so that at least one member of the group has gone on to buy the first in the series, American By Day. We even made it as far as Japan and Botswana (and discovered a Scottish connection for Alexander McCa

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

"In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year. The beautiful one The golden couple The volatile one The new parents The quiet one The city boy The outsider The victim. Not an accident – a murder among friends." We had all read the book and all agreed we hadn't really read a book where the victim was revealed at the same time as the murderer. We liked this and found it a definite page turner. The victim not being revealed so late however meant that everyone had to, theoretically, be capable of wanting to murder everyone else which made for a whole host of not nice characters. We all struggled with the characters in someway. We didn't like them. There were too many. They were too self-centered, too two dimensional. Not liking the characters often means we don't like the book and there is no denying it was definitely a hindrance. A few of the group also commented on a plot hole or two. When exactly did

Lock down book club - autobiographies

After what felt like 13 million weeks in lock down we attempted to conduct our first online meeting via Zoom. We chose a broad theme of 'autobiographies' to give as many of us as possible a chance at obtaining a book without too much difficulty. I actually didn't have an autobiography on my shelf and so borrowed The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert. The book was all about raccoon eating, teepee living, deer skin wearing Eustace Conway. He has lived a fascinating life and Gilbert had carried out interviews with a wide range of friends and family but I found the lack of pictures puzzling. You gotta have pictures in an autobiography. The group had chosen autobiographies from a real wide range of people. Partly due to availability, partly due to differing interests. We had Gok Wan and his troubled childhood as a non white gay person. Louis XIV (the Sun King) and his debauched court and two Michelle Obamas one of which was given up on. I think the broad topic made fo