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This is the first Stuart MacBride book I’ve read, although I have several of his older books waiting their turn in my bookcase.
The story centres on detective inspector Bell, who supposedly committed suicide by setting fire to his caravan two years earlier. When he turns up dead in the driver’s seat of a crashed car, questions start being asked – especially when it’s discovered he was stabbed before the car crashed.
Logan McRae is now working for the Professional Standards division of the police, meaning most officers don’t want anything to do with him. He needs to find out where Bell has been since he was thought dead, and who stabbed him. Why did he disappear – and more importantly, what made him return from the dead?
Deaths start piling up as Logan works tirelessly to discover Bell’s secrets. If it wasn’t his body in the caravan, whose was it – and was Bell responsible for his death?
That’s only one of the storylines weaving their way through The Blood Road. Alongside this there are a number of missing children and rumours start flying about them being stolen to order for something called the livestock market. Witnesses aren’t telling the truth and Logan also has to deal with a young police officer who goes off on her own, seemingly reluctant to share any leads she has with her superiors.
Logan has a lot to do with the parents of the missing children, one of which is hiding her own secret, a secret that could put her life and the life of many others in extreme danger.
This book took me a few pages before I really got engrossed in it, but that may be down to the fact I had to keep looking up some of the words MacBride uses that may only be familiar to the Scots! It kept me guessing until close to the end, the mark of a good thriller, and as soon as I finished it I started on one of his earlier books, which showed how much I enjoyed it. (That and the fact he has cats, which instantly made me like him!)
Reviewed by Faye Lougher
The Blood Road
by Stuart McBride
Published by HarperCollins
ISBN 9780008208240
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