Fabulous reads – Mystery thriller is deathly addictive

Little Boy Blue (Helen Grace #5), Penguin, RRP R230 (ISBN: 978 0 7181 8083 6)

A SERIAL killer is on the loose in Southampton, targeting members of the BDSM community, and DI Helen Grace is tasked with apprehending the sadistic criminal.

The first victim is someone she knows, but in her life outside the precinct – a life she would prefer remain a secret. To protect herself, she keeps the information from her team and continues digging into the case around the clock.

Helen is a flawed character but is still appealing, interesting and deep with a brush of darkness that sets her apart from the generic hero protagonists. Her past comes back to haunt her in a big way in this novel and Arlidge gives the reader titbits of information dotted throughout the page-turner of a book to keep them sated, but not quite enough to foresee the ending.

The chapters will breeze by you as they are each between three to five pages in length, seamlessly swapping between characters to give the story a more fleshed-out feel as you view the world through their eyes and minds. While it may be the fifth book in the series, the book does well as a standalone novel and it is not a necessity to have read the previous titles. It has a wickedly satisfying read but be warned, it has one nail-biting cliff-hanger of an ending.