The Blurb
To catch a killer… Maybe you’ve got to be one…
Acacia Pines, USA. Sheriff Cohen’s life is falling apart – his father accidently burned down the retirement home, his wife has moved out, and his son is bullying other kids at school. When high-school student, Lucas Connor, is abducted, Cohen sees a chance to get his life back on track – to win back his wife and scoop the reward money offered for Lucas’ safe return. But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Cohen’s going to have to make the kind of decision from which there’s no coming back … a decision with deadly consequences…
A furiously paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller exposing the dark underbelly
of small-town life, His Favourite Graves is also a twisted and twisty story
of father and son relationships, and the one last gamble of a desperate man to save everything
My Review
If there was one thing I learnt after reading His Favourite Graves it was that I definitely did not want to live in Acacia Pines, way too full of people with grudges and murder in mind.
To keep them all in check was Sheriff Cohen or so we thought, as Cleave heaped the poor man with a whole lot of personal issues. What to do with a father who burnt down his care home and a son who was a truly nasty bully. Not great and you did wonder how Cohen would keep it all together, but where would the drama be if he was perfect?
Cohen’s troubles got a whole lot worse when oddball teenager Lucas went missing. A young lad relentlessly bullied and when we met him unceremoniously locked in a locker. Even worse was his bad luck to be let free by the schools caretaker Simon Grove, and then they both disappeared
Cohen was the man to find them, his trusty deputies in tow as he tried to calm Lucas’s distraught father. A father who just happened to be a crime novelist who of course imagined all the horrors that could be happening to his son, a genius idea from Cleave.
What was really happening was a nerve biting battle of wills and strength, Cohen right in the middle but not necessarily for the right reasons.
Cleave was not following the usual crime novel manual and I loved it. Part of me admired Cohen, the other part wanted him to be the responsible person he should have been. And then there was more and not from the character you expected, this reader was now on the edge of her seat wondering just where Cleave would take us next.
The pace was relentless, the twist and turns never ending and the heart rate somewhat erratic as Cleave hurtled his characters to potential disaster.
The darkest secrets unravelled and I couldn’t decide if I felt sorrow or just sheer horror at the acts of certain characters, perhaps victims of circumstances. I do know that Cohen had somehow won me over and I wanted Cleave to give him a happy or satisfactory ending
Acacia Pines would be a town that took time to recover, but you did wonder if there was more that lurked amongst its citizens, its pine trees.
If it did then I for one would be intrigued to discover more, to see Cohen in the future, to read what Cleave would have him do next.
I would like to thank Orenda Books for a copy of His Favourite Graves to read and review and to Random Things Tours for inviting My Bookish Blogspot to participate in the blogtour.
About the author
Paul is an award-winning author who often divides his time between his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where most of his novels are set, and Europe. He’s won the New Zealand Ngaio Marsh Award three times, the Saint-Maur book festival’s crime novel of the year award in France, and has been shortlisted for the Edgar and the Barry in the US and the Ned Kelly in Australia. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He’s thrown his Frisbee in more than forty countries, plays tennis badly, golf even worse, and has two cats – which is often two too many. The critically acclaimed The
Quiet People was published in 2021 and was followed in 2022 by The Pain Tourist – a number-one bestseller in three countries.
His Favourite Graves was published in paperback or eBook on 9th November 2024 and can be purchased at:
https://orendabooks.co.uk/product/his-favourite-graves
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