Book Review: Worth Killing For (A DI Fenchurch Novel Book 2) by Ed James

After meeting, DI Simon Fenchurch in book 1: The Hope That Kills,  I was eager to return to the streets of London for his next case.

Book Description:

On a busy London street, a young woman is attacked in broad daylight and left bleeding to death on the pavement. Among the eyewitnesses are DI Simon Fenchurch and his wife.

Fenchurch pursues the attacker through a warren of backstreets and eventually arrests a young hoodie with a cache of stolen phones—an ‘Apple picker’ on the make. The case should be closed but something feels off…Was this really just about a smartphone? Why did the victim look nervous before she was targeted? And why don’t the prints on the murder weapon match the young man in custody?

Before Fenchurch can probe further, his superiors remove him from the case, convinced he has let the real culprit run free. But Fenchurch is determined to get to the truth and, before long, uncovers a conspiracy that reaches high above the street gangs of London.

My Thoughts:

One of the highlights of this book for me was the action started right away, within the first chapter, a women is bleeding to death on the pavement – this grabbed my attention, I was immediately pulled into the story. One of the things I loved about book 1 was how raw and hard-hitting the case was, this one was no different. I won’t go into any detail about the case as the synopsis tells you all you need to know before you begin reading, but I will say, James writes in such a realistic way;  the case itself, the characters and their actions are extremely believable. Each character has their own personality traits and they really gel well as a team.

James has created a great character in DI Fenchurch, I particularly like his love/hate (..no love, it’s pretty much just hate..) relationship with DI Dawn Mulholland, who was handed the case when Fenchurch was taken off it. A few lines that show Fenchurch’s distaste for Dawn did make me chuckle:

“Not so much a voice that could cut glass but make the stuff from sand.”

“Fenchurch locked eyes with her. Felt like she could steal his soul just by looking.”

Fenchurch still hears this ‘drumming noise’ when he’s worried/anxious, but I’m okay with it now, it didn’t feature as heavily in this book and you know what, nobody’s perfect 😉

As with most book series, if you want to follow the character’s backstories, you need to start with book 1. As here, Fenchurch is trying to move on and accept that Chloe, his missing daughter of 10 years, is gone, he is no longer searching for her and is back with his ex-wife, Abi. Although I suspect the hunt for Chloe, is not truly over.

To wrap up this review: I enjoyed this book more than I did book 1, going by that premise, I can’t wait to read book 3!

*Thank you to the author and publisher for granting me access to a digital copy of this book via Netgalley*

This book is available to pre-order from: Amazon UK (release date: 11/10/16)