A Line of Blood
A Novel
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
In one of the most entertaining and twisty thrillers of the year a London family, a mother, father and young son, must deal with the murder of their secretive next door neighbor and the intrusive police investigation that follows. Readers will be faced with ever shifting and increasingly frightening suspicions that one or all of them had something to do with it.
Alex Mercer loves his family more than anything. His wife Millicent and their precocious eleven-year-old son Max are everything to him, his little tribe. When he is with them all is right with the world. But when he and Max find their next door neighbour dead in his bathtub, their lives are suddenly and irrevocably changed. Max is surprisingly fascinated by the dead body, and Alex is understandably anxious about how Max will react later, once he takes it all in. And Alex is increasingly impatient for the police to conclude their investigation and call this the suicide that it so clearly was.
But as new information surfaces, it becomes clear that there is more to this than anyone is saying... Why was the neighbour charging his home improvements to the Mercers’ address? How did Millicent’s bracelet end up in his apartment? And why, in fact, did Max lead his father into the house on the quiet summer night that they found the corpse? As suspicion grows between the three, the once close-knit family starts to disintegrate. Is Alex really the loving husband we believe him to be? And where is Millicent really going when she disappears for hours, walking the parks of London, stewing over something that she can’t forget?
Each of them is suffering. Each has something to hide. And as each questions how well they really know each other, they must decide how far they’ll go to protect themselves-and each other-from investigators who are watching every move they make. Just waiting for someone to make a mistake.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in London, British TV producer McPherson's slick suspense debut offers no psychological insights. When Alex Mercer and his 11-year-old son, Max, go chasing after their cat, they find their next-door neighbor, Mr. Bryce, electrocuted by an iron in the bathtub. Is it a suicide or a homicide? A short while before this discovery, Alex's wife, Millicent, lost a daughter in utero. In the aftermath, Max suffered extreme signs of anxiety, would not allow his mother near him and had to see a psychiatrist. Once he stabilized, Millicent refused to deal with or talk about her feelings, disappearing for long periods, not functioning as a wife or a mother and burying herself in her work. Alex fears that the impact of finding the body may cause Max to regress. When a bracelet of Millicent's turns up in Bryce's house, both husband and wife fall under suspicion for murder. The simple, linear plot builds to a predictable and unsatisfying ending.
Customer Reviews
Decent
Decent read but the lead male character seemed a bit too emotionally weak to me.
THE OTHER GUY WAS RIGHT...
...I also despised every single character in this book and thought they were self centered ####s.
It was the worst book I've ever forced myself to finish. Boring tedium without mercy or letup and no redeeming....anything, really. I disrespect myself for finishing it but was desperate for something to read.
Dear reader, don't go down this road - it will lead nowhere and put you in a coma in the bargain.