Author: Alex North
Published by: Celadon Books on Feb. 28, 2023
Genres: Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 336
Format: ARC, Paperback
Source: Celadon Books
Book Rating: 8/10
A dark, suspenseful new thriller about the mysteries of fate, the unbreakable bond of siblings, and a notorious serial killer who was said to know the future.
Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever.
Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.
Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.
Review:
Dark, gritty, and spine-chilling!
The Angel Maker is a layered, unsettling, psychological thriller that delves into all the devastating emotional, psychological, and physical effects caused by violence on its victims, as well as their families, and highlights just how easily the most heinous of evil can often live comfortably amongst us merely hidden behind masks of normality.
The writing is sharp and crisp. The characters are secretive, cunning, and vulnerable. And the plot, told from multiple perspectives, builds quickly creating intensity and suspense as it unravels all the relationships, motivations, personalities, deception, and devious behaviours within it.
Overall, The Angel Maker is, ultimately, a story of lies, revelations, jealousy, obsession, familial drama, mental illness, depravity, guilt, manipulation, violence, and murder. It’s a tight, clever, disturbing thrill ride by North that had just the right amount of twists, turns, and surprises to keep me thoroughly engrossed from start to finish.
This novel is available now.
Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.
Thank you to Celadon Books for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.