The Hidden Island: an edge of your seat crime thriller
Sex. Drugs. Murder.
Hidden behind the crystal seas and beautiful beaches of a Greek Island dark and dangerous secrets lurk. Beckett has had his fill of adrenaline fuelled criminal investigation and with a broken body and damaged career goes to the Greek Island of Farou to head up the Criminal Investigation Bureau. Serious crime is rare, the weather is great and the beer is cold but his ‘retirement’ is cut short when a pagan cult resurrects and bodies start showing up.
With doubts about his mental and physical ability to do the job, a British police detective is sent to help with the investigation. DI Lee Harper is everything Beckett is not – young, ambitious and by the book.
As well as tackling the new case Beckett must overcome the demons from his past.
Family loyalty, power and money are at the source of the investigation where appearance is everything and nothing is what is seems.
Can Beckett and Harper work together to find justice for the victims?
Will the idyllic island ever be the same again?
Sometimes paradise can be hell.
I read the synopsis of this book and it really did intrigue me. The synopsis promised so much. Sun, sea, sand, murder, the occult and a detective, who wishes to see out the rest of his police career on this holiday island. Little does he know………..
The plot itself is rather dark and mysterious with more than one surprise and twist along the way. I don’t really want to say too much about the plot as I don’t want to spoil it for anybody. A young woman on her hen week disappears and a body washes up but to find out if they are both one and the same or two unrelated people you really will need to read the book.
I loved the character of Inspector Beckett Kyriakoulis. He is a man of a certain age, who has experienced a lot over the course of his police career. He is dedicated to his work and is determined to solve the crimes, although sometimes his methods are a bit questionable. It’s obvious that Beckett has experienced deep trauma and has undergone a horrifying ordeal in a previous case. He can’t forget the case in question because not only has he the mental scars but he also has a permanent physical reminder of what happened. At the start I didn’t know what had happened to him but little bits of information are drip fed to the reader and as the book went on I gradually managed to piece together the back story. Beckett does not have a lot of support, neither from his superiors nor from the British Government, who decide to send over a DI Harper from the Metropolitan Police to ‘help’ Beckett but I suspect the real intention is for Harper to prove that Beckett has lost the plot. At first I didn’t really take to Harper but as I learnt more about his background, I warmed to him a bit more and could see why he is the way he is. He is career driven, hungry for promotion, has very little free time, he feels he has something to prove to his father but then no matter what Harper does it is never enough for his father, he does things by the book and he basically sucks up to management. The character of Mitchell Troy intrigued me somewhat and I am sure that he is hiding something but I don’t know what. To find out more you will really need to read the book.
This book is really well written and I could not put it down as I became addicted to reading just ‘one more chapter’. However before I knew it I had read far more than any one chapter. I read this book in just under 48 hours which is good for me. The author certainly knows how to grab your attention from the start and keeps you interested right throughout the book. I was sad to reach the end of the book as I just wanted to keep on reading. The author uses descriptions really well and I actually pictured myself on the Greek island, helping Beckett and Harper to investigate the case (I have a very vivid imagination). The story ends on a ‘duff duff’ moment (the same that happens at the end of an episode of EastEnders),which I was really pleased about as it means that a sequel could very well happen. Here’s hoping, fingers, toes and paws crossed etc.
So in short I really did enjoy this book. I fear that I will suffer a book hangover as the book was so well written and the next book I read really will have to go some to beat this one. I recommend that you really do need to read this excellent book for yourself and I look forward to reading any further books in this series. Hopefully there won’t be too long a wait. I award this book 5* out of 5* and would award it more if I could, as it really is that good.
(Many thanks to Bloodhound Books and the author for an ARC of this book)
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