I’m excited to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for brilliant psychological thriller The Last Party (A DC Ffion Morgan Mystery), first in a brand new police procedural series by Clare Mackintosh. Thank you to Anne Cater and Sphere for giving me the opportunity to read and review this wonderful book.
About the book:
On New Year’s Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests.
His lakeside holiday homes are a success, and he’s generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbours. This will be the party to end all parties.
But not everyone is there to celebrate. By midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake.
On New Year’s Day, DC Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects.
The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbours, friends and family – and Ffion has her own secrets to protect.
With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn’t who wanted Rhys dead . . . but who finally killed him. In a village with this many secrets, a murder is just the beginning.
The Last Party is a mystery with echoes of Agatha Christie and Scandi-noir but with a modern edge all of Mackintosh’s own, and features her signature strong characters, heartfelt emotion and unpredictable twists and turns. It also draws upon her own experiences as a former police officer.
About the author:
Clare Mackintosh is the multi-award-winning author of five Sunday Times bestselling novels, including I Let You Go, which was the fastest- selling debut thriller in the year it was released.
Translated into forty languages, her books have sold more than two million copies worldwide, have been New York Times and international bestsellers and have spent a combined total of 64 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller chart.
Clare spent twelve years in the police force, including time on CID, and as a public order commander. She left the police in 2011 to work as a freelance journalist and social media consultant and is the founder of the Chipping Norton Literary
Festival. She now writes full time and lives in Wales with her husband and their three children.
http://www.claremackintosh.com /
http://www.facebook.com/ClareMackWrites /
@ClareMackint0sh
My Review:
The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh is the first in a brand new series featuring DC Ffion Morgan. Predominantly set in beautiful Wales, this is a police procedural thriller that will keep you guessing throughout. Although different to her previous novels, The Last Party does however feature the many twists, turns, shocks and surprises I’ve come to expect from a Clare Mackintosh book.
It’s New Year’s Day and the tiny Welsh community of Cwm Coed have gathered for their annual swim. But no sooner have they taken to the water of the freezing cold Mirror Lake than an alarmed cry rings out. The body of a man has been found floating face down in the water. But who is he? And why on earth would anyone want him dead?
DC Ffion Morgan soon finds herself working alongside DC Leo Brady as the hunt for a killer gets underway. The dead man is the wealthy co-owner of The Shore, a lakeside complex that comes under the jurisdiction of the English side of the border. But following a lively New Year’s Eve party at the complex the night before, there are witnesses who fall on both sides of the border, making it a joint investigation between the Welsh and English police.
The story is told from various points of view, the narrative moving between the past and the present as more and more details are slowly revealed. As the list of murder suspects grows longer, long held secrets begin to emerge that could blow the whole case wide apart…
The Last Party is a clever page turner of a psychological thriller that kept me on my toes from beginning to end, throwing in curveballs along the way that took me completely by surprise, changing everything I thought I knew and turning the story completely on its head.
With strong characters and an emotive storyline, Clare Mackintosh has surpassed herself once again. Wales was very much a character in its own right, with the tension between the Welsh community of Cwm Coed and the English lakeside lodge owners becoming more and more palpable as the story continued. I loved the growing partnership between Ffion Morgan and Leo Brady and can’t wait to see where the series is going to take these two complicated but likeable characters next.
Writing a review of The Last Party without giving anything away isn’t easy, so all I will say is that it’s a fantastic read with complex, interesting characters who never fail to surprise right up until the final page has been turned.
The Last Party is everything I hoped it would be and more and is a stunning crime thriller that I would highly recommend.
The Last Party by Clare Mackintosh is available to purchase now:
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Cal Turner Reviews 