Deep Black Lies
The last thing psychotherapist Harry Hope expects on his walk home one evening is to be knifed.
At first, he thinks it’s random event. But as the police investigate further, seemingly unrelated attacks, Harry is shocked to discover that every victim is linked to him. And that his name is on a death list.
Who would want to kill Harry? Why?
Teaming up with his old friends DI Theo McCannon and DS Libby Harding, Harry is forced to delve into the dark and twisted world of a cold and calculating killer.
And as Harry fights his way closer to the truth, he realises time isn’t just running out for him, but for everyone around him…
If you enjoy cleverly written thrillers with an emotive and engaging cast… and a well thought storyline… you can’t go wrong with Deep Black Lies
This is great stuff, with lots of action in a book that is very easy to read and that you won’t want to put down. A really enjoyable mystery thriller
I was taken in by the winds of cyclone as the plotting of the author soon came to light. It was one wicked path. But damn thrilling
Loved this book from start to finish and hated having to put it down
I loved the twists and can only hope I get to revisit Harry again
A really good thriller that will keep you wondering until the last few chapters!
This is a book about friends, and friendship, and how well friends know each other, or think they do. I remember being completely stunned when I opened my Sydney Morning Herald one day to see a good friend of mine had been arrested and flung into jail.
Apparently he’d been involved in a currency scam and had defrauded thousands of people consistently over a five year period. He hadn’t just taken money from the wealthy, but had scammed people’s life savings from them, including pensioners, leaving them with nothing.
The callous, greedy persona portrayed in the newspapers was nothing like the kind, funny and generous man I’d known and it made me question what friendship was, and how we present ourselves to one another.
It also made me wonder about my other friends. How well did I know them? How well did I know anyone?
This became the central theme for the book, where Harry finds he and his friends on a cold-blooded killer’s hit list, forcing Harry to investigate his circle of friends in order to get to the truth.
The last thing Harry Hope expected as he walked up Gloucester Street at 6.15pm on a chill spring evening, was to be knifed. He’d heard the footsteps behind him, padding swiftly, and assumed they belonged to a worker hurrying home at the end of the day. When he felt the man’s hand on his shoulder he honestly believed it was someone he knew catching him up, perhaps a friend wanting to say hello and ask him out for a pint.
He didn’t feel any danger, his instincts lulled by his routine evening walk to his car, a walk he must have done a thousand times. He didn’t take in the drizzle dampening the Georgian buildings or see the porticoed entrance just ahead because, as usual, his mind was taken up with the clients he’d seen through the day. The depressed teenager, the sad divorcé, the obese woman desperate to lose weight.
The one that had hit him hardest was the loving husband and father who’d just discovered that his three children, all now university students, were not his own but his wife’s lover’s. It had made Harry think about his own three kids. Like most fathers he assumed they were his, but how would he know for sure without a paternity test? And would he actually want to know if one or, God forbid, all of them had been sired by another man?
He may be divorced but even so. He loved his children fiercely and would do pretty much anything for them. Talk about opening a can of worms. Harry couldn’t get his patient out of his mind. The poor man hadn’t just been cuckolded, but betrayed on a monumental scale. Little wonder he was feeling homicidal. Harry sighed, thinking he would probably feel like killing someone too.
‘You…’ The man’s voice was low and hard, breaking through Harry’s thoughts, and at the same time his hand yanked Harry backwards.
Shocked, Harry lost his balance, stumbled to one side. At the same time, he saw the flash of metal slice past his waist. A blade gleamed in the streetlights. A knife. The man had tried to knife him.
Harry didn’t hesitate.
With all his strength he thrust himself to the side, driving his elbow into his attacker’s midriff, using his shoulder to punch his attacker off balance. They fell together, Harry on top and delivering a vicious blow with his fist straight into the man’s face. He felt the crunch of snapping cartilage followed by the rush of warm liquid that he knew was blood. The man cried out but Harry had no intention of pausing, not with a knife around, and he punched the man again, and again.
Footsteps hammered. Voices shouted.
‘Hey, stop! Stop!’
Harry felt himself being heaved up but his adrenalin was still surging and he lashed out at the person hanging on to his arm.
‘Harry, stop! It’s me!’
Harry hauled himself under control. ‘Doug?’ he gasped.
‘What’s going on?’ Doug demanded. Doug was a fellow psychologist at the Wellness Centre. He was helping Harry’s attacker to his feet. The young man was clutching his nose which was pouring blood. Early twenties, jeans, sneakers, grey hoody. He was watching Harry with such loathing, Harry found it hard not to recoil.
‘He had a knife.’ Harry’s breathing was choppy and shallow as the adrenaline began to ebb. ‘He tried to knife me.’
‘A knife?’ Doug stepped back.
‘No knife,’ the attacker mumbled. ‘He just went for me. No reason. He’s crazy. He should be locked up.’
‘Liar.’ Anger made Harry bunch his fists again. ‘Turn out your pockets.’
‘No way.’ The young man tried to back away but Harry grabbed his hoody in his left hand and raised his right fist threateningly. ‘Do it.’
Trembling, sweat sheening his face, the young man emptied his pockets onto the ground. Harry dragged him aside. Looked down to see a wallet, a set of keys and a balled-up tissue. ‘And the knife,’ Harry told him.
‘I already said!’ The loathing Harry had seen had vanished beneath a blanket of fright that made the young man’s voice wobble. ‘I haven’t got a bloody knife, okay?’
‘Just do it,’ Harry snarled.
‘Pat me down, then! See if I’m wrong!’
Harry pushed him in the chest and when the young man lurched backwards, offering no resistance, moved behind him and began searching for the knife. Nothing in his pockets. Nothing tucked in his waistband. Harry ducked down and ran his hands up and down the man’s legs, his arms, his spine.
Shit, he thought. I can’t believe this.
No knife.