the hanging shed – gordon ferris

The Hanging Shed

I bought this for £1 on Kindle back in April, and for some reason have never got around – even thought I bought (and read) Truth Dare Kill since getting this!

I have to say, I enjoyed this FAR more than Truth Dare Kill.

Set in 1946, Douglas Brodie is living in London and working as a journalist when a childhood friend’s desperate call takes him back home to Glasgow – but Glasgow has changed a lot over the war years.

His friend is about to be hung for a crime he swears he didn’t commit – but it is a crime so sick and twisted that the public and the media are braying for blood and justice.  four young boys have gone missing, including the son of the girl that both Brodie and his friend were once in love with.  He is the only boy who has been found, abused and murdered.

Can Brodie put aside his differences with his one-time friend and seek out the truth?  Is the truth actually what it seems?  How far will Brodie need to go?

I raced through the book, even though there were many layers to it, with lots of little sub-plots going on.  I loved the way that Ferris didn’t always go for the obvious – there were a couple of shocking twists to it that I really wasn’t expecting. That just made it all the more enjoyable!

Considering that though, I thought the ending was a little lame and obvious, which was a shame.

truth dare kill – gordon ferris

Truth Dare Kill

This is another bargain book on Kindle – just £1 if you’re interested!

This is the first ‘Danny McRae’ book, with Unquiet Heart being the second.  It is 1945 and Scottish Danny McRae is a private investigator in London – an ex-policeman, he has returned from the war after being captured by the Germans and suffering severe head trauma.

When he is approached by a glamorous woman to investigate the possible death of her married lover, who just happens to have been his commanding officer in France, and the one person able to help him piece together the missing fragments of his memory, he takes on the job.

At the same time, prostitutes are being murdered in Soho, and it seems that the brutal killings are being committed at the same time as Danny has experienced blackouts due to his head wound.

This was an enjoyable enough book, although I found Danny rather difficult to like, so I’m not sure whether I will read the next one.  There were some quite clever twists and turns, but I found the characters a little shallow, and the ending rather unbelievable.

Still, an interesting enough retro-thriller.