The Two O’Clock Boy by Mark Hill #BookReview #WeekendBlogShare @markhillwriter @LittleBrownUK

About this book…

TWO CHILDHOOD FRIENDS… ONE BECAME A DETECTIVE… ONE BECAME A KILLER…

One night changed their lives

Thirty years ago, the Longacre Children’s Home stood on a London street where once-grand Victorian homes lay derelict. There its children lived in terror of Gordon Tallis, the home’s manager.

Cries in the fire and smoke

Then Connor Laird arrived: a frighteningly intense boy who quickly became Tallis’ favourite criminal helper. Soon after, destruction befell the Longacre, and the facts of that night have lain buried . . . until today.

A truth both must hide

Now, a mysterious figure, the Two O’Clock Boy, is killing all who grew up there, one by one. DI Ray Drake will do whatever it take to stop the murders – but he will go even further to cover up the truth.

Discover the gripping, twist-filled start to a fantastic new London-set crime thriller series starring morally corrupt DI Ray Drake – the perfect new addiction for fans of Luther.

My review…

I have to admit that when I first started reading this book, I nearly put it down. I read so many crime books that I have pretty high standards nowadays and if a story doesn’t grab me straight away then I do sometimes walk away. But this one slowly started to intrigued me so I kept going…and then going some more….until I physically couldn’t put it down! Honestly, the more I read the more I had to read! And it was pretty much going to be a 4* review but that last quarter of the book just blew me away!! How many twists and turns could one writer throw at me in one book?! Plenty it seemed as I raced to the end! And so a fabulous 5 stars have been awarded!

I’m assuming that as this book is being marketed as Ray Drake #1 this will hopefully be the start of a new series and I for one will be preordering the next book just as soon as I can! I really REALLY loved Ray Drake! He was dark, unconventional and with a depths so hidden I doubt we will get to the bottom of them in book #2 either! His relationship with his daughter especially, gave new meaning to the word intense but I loved his brooding personality and found myself practically hypnotised by him whenever he was on the page. His colleague Flick was also a character that I found myself taking to far more than I had expected from meeting her in the first few pages. Her personal life gave her a likeability that Drake didn’t appear to have so it was interesting that my preconceptions had changed quite a lot by the end of the book!

This is a twisty, addictive crime read with some absolutely brilliant characterisations that lifted it to levels I hadn’t expected. I like to be surprised and The Two O’Clock Boy definitely did that. An impressive debut that comes highly recommended by me!

I received a review copy of this book via netgalley.

The Two O’Clock Boy (DI Ray Drake) was published by Little Brown Uk in ebook on 22nd September 2016 and will be available in paperback April 2017.

About the author…

Mark Hill is a London-based full-time writer of novels and scripts. Formerly he was a journalist and a producer at BBC Radio 2 across a range of major daytime shows and projects. He has won two Sony Gold Awards.