Book #4: Dead if You Don't by Peter James
Dead If You Don't by Peter James
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book opens with Roy Grace at a Brighton and Hove Albion football match, but things soon descend into chaos with a bomb threat. Grace identifies the suspect item and attempts to be a hero, only for the bomb to turn out to be a hoax. His actions get him into trouble with his obnoxious boss Cassian Pewe, who decides that this gives the police a bad name. It's not a particularly rational decision, but it does lead the novel to explore the relationship between the two men a little bit more.
Also at the football stadium, a boy is kidnapped: Mungo is the son of an obsessive gambler called Kipp, with the kidnappers demanding a huge ransom. The whole thing involves the growing trend of bitcoin, but this doesn't take up too much of what is definitely one of the better novels in this series.
So, for much of the storyline, Mungo is put in grave peril, with the threat of being drowned if he is not found in time. The book feels like a race against time very much like the first book in the series, "Dead Simple" with its burial alive plot. Each chapter heading gives not only the day, but also the time when the action is happening.
This book also involves immigrant characters (possibly refugees like in one of the earlier books) being forced to do the main villain's bidding as part of what appears to be some sort of act of blackmail. To me, it felt like another commentary on how easy it is for vulnerable people to be exploited to other peoples' ends. I noticed a lot of hanging plot threads that weren't tied up at the end of the book, including dead drug mules, more bomb incidents and an unclear fate for the main antagonist. I am hoping that this is the beginning of an on-going plot arc that will unravel in the later titles.
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