The seventh gripping installment in Matthew Hall’s twice CWA Gold Dagger-nominated series – soon to be a CBC Television Original Drama, Coroner, starring Serinda Swan, Roger Cross, and Ehren Kassam.

The day they’ve all been waiting for is at hand. The last British combat soldiers in the Helmand province of Afghanistan are counting the minutes until their departure home to Highcliffe: a small town in the south of England. For their families, it spells the end of an agonizing six month wait.

But in the final hours, disaster strikes. Nineteen-year-old Private Pete ‘Skippy’ Lyons is taken hostage in the night and the patrol sent out to locate him is ambushed. One killed, two injured. And one still missing in action.

Their loved ones are left desperate for answers the Army is reluctant to provide. How was Private Lyons abducted from a heavily fortified command post? And why are officers trying to disguise what happened during the mission to save him?

Their only hope lies with Coroner Jenny Cooper, who must take on the full might of the military to stop the truth being buried along with the boy soldiers. But in a town filled with secrets and rumours, it’s not only the Army that has something to hide.

Review:

Compulsive, astute, and timely!

In this latest novel in the Coroner Jenny Cooper series, A Life to Kill, Hall immerses us in a complicated, emotional case involving a missing Private, a dead soldier, two critically injured, and a military that seems determined to keep their skeletons in the closet.

The writing is tight and crisp. The characters are flawed, secretive, and loyal. And the plot is an intricate, exceptionally paced mystery full of twists, turns, revelations, deception, corruption, allegiances, power, combat, violence, the ins and outs of military life, and murder.

A Life to Kill is a without a doubt an intelligent, masterfully plotted, absorbing page-turner that had me hooked from the very first page. It’s fascinating, shocking, at times even disturbing, and definitely one of my favourite reads of the year.

This novel is available now.

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