Welcome back to Books With Cause. Let’s dive straight into my latest review. Following on from my last post, we’re following up with the next Roy Grace novel.
Sometimes, things happen in life that become major historical events before our very eyes. They become bigger than anything. They become moments where everybody will remember exactly where they were for the rest of their lives. In my lifetime, 9/11 is one of those days. For me, it was the eve of my twelfth birthday. It was a very different time, and I went through the whole day and all my lessons, completely unaware of what had been happening elsewhere in the world. The internet wasn’t in my pocket like it is now. I walked home excited for the following day. I let myself into my home to find my family in the living room watching the twenty-four-hour news. Except I didn’t realise that’s what they were watching. Two tall buildings with smoke billowing out of them – it looked like something out of a film. But it was real life. I remember being stunned into silence. And just like that, all excitement for my birthday had evaporated.
These sorts of days feel like they should come with a warning ahead of time. Something to prepare us for what’s ahead. But the truth is that they start off feeling like any other ordinary day.
The 11th of September was my great aunt’s birthday. Her son lived in the States and had recently married an American woman. The pair of them had come over for her birthday. The three of them went out for a meal along with my nan and grandad. Now, I wasn’t there for the meal. Everything has been told to me second-hand, so I may have a couple of the details wrong. But during the meal, a waitress came over to speak to them.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But I thought I recognised American accents and I didn’t know if you’d heard what’s happened in America?”
The expressions on their faces told the waitress that they didn’t know. “I’m afraid there’s been some sort of terrorist attack. Two planes have struck the World Trade Centre.”
My grandad fainted.
The reason I mention this context is that it’s important to Dead Man’s Footsteps by Peter James. While the majority of the novel is set in 2008, there are key flashback scenes taking place during 9/11. On the surface level, this novel masquerades as just another book in the series where Roy Grace and his team continue their never-ending mission to stamp out crime.
This one starts with Grace’s weekend being ruined due to the discovery of a corpse in a storm drain on a Friday evening. The corpse would appear to have been down there for some time and will take a bit of work to identify. Separately, another body is found in Australia. It has also been there for some time, but thanks to the serial number on the body’s breast implants, Australian authorities are able to link the body to Brighton, which makes it Grace’s case too. In fact, both bodies would appear to be linked to a man who perished in the 9/11 disaster. But the question is, how could these three people be linked?
Grace has to decide how to smartly divide his team, sending some to Australia and some to the States, so they can follow up on both of those lines of enquiry. But that’s not the only problem. There is another detective on the scene, Cassian Pewe, who would appear to be the golden boy of those above. Cassian is also hell-bent on being a thorn in the side of Roy Grace. He starts stirring the pot by suggesting that Roy didn’t investigate his wife’s disappearance as thoroughly as he should have. From a reader’s perspective, we don’t have any reason to think that Pewe’s allegation has any weight to it, but it could be enough to cause unwanted trouble for Roy Grace.
Peter James writes thick novels. This one was almost 600 pages, so a little shorter than book three. And much like book three, this book never gets boring. The chapters are rapid, and I found myself tearing through them with an unquenchable thirst to know what happened next. Plus, there are scenes taking place all over the world. That certainly kept me on my toes. There were periods where I was enjoying this more than the previous book. But after everything that happens, I found the ending a little rushed. And I thought that was a bit of a shame.
Overall, this book is still a hell of a lot of fun and a highly enjoyable read. While this individual case came to a close, there is still an ongoing story at hand. Especially when it comes to what happened to Roy’s wife, Sandy? But all that will have to wait a little longer.
My Goodreads Rating:★★★★☆(4 stars)
