Tastes Like Fear by Sarah Hilary

About this book..

You’ll never be out of Harm’s way

The young girl who causes the fatal car crash disappears from the scene.

A runaway who doesn’t want to be found, she only wants to go home.

To the one man who understands her.

Gives her shelter.

Just as he gives shelter to the other lost girls who live in his house.

He’s the head of her new family.

He’s Harm.

D.I. Marnie Rome has faced many dangerous criminals but she has never come up against a man like Harm. She thinks that she knows families, their secrets and their fault lines. But as she begins investigating the girl’s disappearance nothing can prepare her for what she’s about to face.

Because when Harm’s family is threatened, everything tastes like fear…

My review..

I was a bit of a latecomer to this series by Sarah Hilary having started with No Other Darkness last year then having to backtrack to read Someone Else’s Skin, both of which can be read as standalone novels and both of which I loved! So it was with great excitement (and rather a great deal of trepidation-those books had a lot to live up to!) that I got an ARC of Tastes Like Fear.

DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake become involved in a murder investigation when the body of a young girl is found. The girl had been involved in a traffic accident along with another teenager when they caused a fatal collision between two cars as they ran, seemingly terrified, across the road. It leads Marnie and Noah into the world of the teenage runaway, those seeking refuge from the world but what if that safe harbour is more evil than the problems they are running from?

What draws me to these books and this one especially is just how normal they seem. Sarah Hilary really seems to have her finger on the pulse of the social and economic problems in the UK and brings us a main character who feels very real to the reader. Both Marnie and Noah have very interesting back stories which are always there in the background moulding their personalities but never interfering in the main events-just making the way they deal with the job more understandable. The atmospheric backdrop of the towers at Battersea Power Station loomed darkly adding a real touch of menace to the crime scenes and the situation that the girls found themselves in.

This book is intricately plotted, perfectly paced and written with an empathetic understanding of the world in which Marnie finds herself. I think this author has now got into her literary stride and has created a very likeable detective pairing that makes readers look forward expectantly to where they go from here. If this is your first taste of Marnie Rome then you will need to clear some time in your schedule as you will want to read her other cases as soon as you can! A well deserved 5* from me!

I received a copy of this book via netgalley in return for an unbiased review.

Out on April 7th 2016

Available to pre-order here