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Ellis, Kate - 'The Cadaver Game'
Hardback: 384 pages (Feb. 2012) Publisher: Piatkus Books ISBN: 0749953675

An anonymous telephone call points the police to the discovery of a dead body at a cottage in Morbay. The place is rented to a Tessa Trencham but the body has been lying there a while, and the maggots have been busy so visual identification is not possible. Investigating are DI Wesley Peterson and his boss DCI Gerry Heffernan. Whilst they are seeking dental records, the bodies of two teenagers are found naked and shot.

Always short of money for his digs archaeologist Neil Watson, Wesley's university friend, has reluctantly accepted a bizarre commission from an artist, who has permission from the son of the owner of Catton Hall to dig up a 'Feast of Art' in one of his fields, but Neil is having a hard job, keeping his volunteers motivated.

Running along side the current investigations is a separate story of manhunts in 1815 and is related through two journals, one kept by John Tandy, a jester and the other by Christopher Wells, steward to Squire Edward Catton, an ancestor of the current owner of Catton Hall...

Searching for a motive for the killing of the teenagers, Wesley discovers that they were both playing an online game, Blood Hunt. Could they be playing this online game for real? And if so, who is the organiser?

Intricately plotted, THE CADAVER GAME, is an absorbing tale, as the past merges into the present. Who could be running human hunts? How fascinating is it that history could be repeating it self.

A tale of human hunting that gives us pause for thought. Can this happen today?

Highly recommended.

Read another review of THE CADAVER GAME.

Lizzie Hayes, England
February 2012

Lizzie blogs at Promoting Crime Fiction.

Details of the author's other books with links to reviews can be found on the Books page.
More European crime fiction reviews can be found on the Reviews page.



last updated 19/08/2012 19:31