It Never Goes Away
(Brighton's No.1 Private Detective #3)
by Tom Trott
From No.1 Private Detective to No.1 Suspect
From No.1 Private Detective to No.1 Suspect
A cryptic message from an old friend leads Joe Grabarz to an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of the South Downs. But Joe is too late, someone else has got there first: his friend is dead, and all the evidence points to him.
Ten years ago the farmhouse was the scene of three infamous murders when a young boy killed his mother, father, and little sister. Now an adult, he was released from prison with a new identity. Could he be involved? The farmhouse also sits on valuable land, fought over in a struggle between building houses and drilling for shale gas. But could it really be worth killing for? Whatever is going on, Joe knows one thing for sure: his friend’s murder is just a tiny part of it.
To bring the killer to justice Joe must dig up the past, and reckon with his own, because no matter how hard you work, it never goes away.
My Rating:
He had a strong nose with a bridge that could support haulage, a jaw that could grind stones, and a face that rested in a scowl.
He didn’t reply for a couple of minutes, going over the story in his head, different wrinkles twitching as though his face was being prickled with electricity.
That look could boil an egg.
We’re not all carnivores… not all the time. It’s the lifecycle of a lawyer, Mr Grabarz: you start out with morals, then pretty soon you have to pay your rent so you sell them, then before you know it you’ve got a Mercedes on the drive and you desperately try to buy them back.
She had a mass of curly red hair that spilled out in all directions, and wore a purple one of those fashionable but comfy Scandinavian jumpers under a blue Anorak. In the middle of it all sat the sort of face that instantly inspires friendly feelings. They should make her as a cuddly doll for children who can’t sleep.
My Review:
It Never Goes Away picked up three years after the end of the last book and Joe had been quite prosperous in between as he was enjoying a nicer apartment, better wardrobe with Italian leather shoes, a nice new office with associates, and was driving a Jag. He feared he had gotten soft, and too bad for him, this tale was none stop danger and high activity with car chases and crashes and running for his life from violent criminals while also dodging the police. The story has as many twists and turns as a nest of snakes and was as complicated as the highly compelling characters of Joe and his arch nemesis, Max. I will admit to falling into a fuzzy state of confusion more than once, but I’d follow the enigmatic Joe through a blizzard as he is like my mailman - he may occasionally be late but he always delivers.
New additions to my Brit word list include prang – which is British informal for a car crash; and near the knuckle – a risqué joke, typically about sex and likely to offend. Mr. Google was unable to help me with the idiom of a man being “far too wet” but I am assuming it means wimpy. But you know what usually happens when I ass/u/me…
Empress DJ
Author Bio
Born in Brighton, I went to school in here, worked many jobs here, and have never lived anywhere else. I first started writing at school, where I and a group of friends devised and performed comedy plays for assemblies, much to the amusement of our fellow pupils. The young ones would cheer (and the old ones would groan) as we stepped up onto the stage, the buzz was tangible. It has been with me ever since.
As an adult I have written a short comedy play that was performed at the Theatre Royal Brighton in May 2014 as part of the Brighton Festival; Daye's Work, a television pilot for the local Brighton channel; and won the Empire Award (thriller category) in the 2015 New York Screenplay Contest. I published my first novel, You Can't Make Old Friends, in 2016; my second, Choose Your Parents Wisely, in 2017, my third, The Benevolent Dictator, in 2018, and now my fourth, It Never Goes Away, in 2019. When I’m not writing books, I’m writing about writing, books, and film on Medium.
My inspirations as a writer come from a diverse range of storytellers, but I have a particular love for the works of Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Joel & Ethan Coen, Arthur Conan-Doyle, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Bryan Fuller, Ira Levin, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Towne, JRR Tolkien, and many many more books and films beside. If you can't find me, or I'm not answering my phone, I'm probably at the cinema.
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