A Dark And Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton (Lacey Flint #4)
A Dark And Twisted Tide is the latest book in the Lacey Flint series by the author Sharon Bolton (aka S.J. Bolton). While it’s not the last book in the series, apparently we will have to wait for quite some time before we get a 5th installment (sigh).
Lacey Flint is a police officer with some dark secrets that she’d like to keep buried forever, if possible. She is a very likable character, with all the qualities and flaws that a person as complex as Lacey can have.
Since starting to work for the police, she’s gone through a lot. In the previous books, she helped solve some very twisted cases, which left their mark on her. Following that, in book #3 he has withdrawn from the police and her current secret love Mark Johnsbury, deciding to take a long sabbatical.
In A Dark And Twisted Tide we find Lacey living on a houseboat on the Thames river, working with the local marine unit. She’s had enough of the police work which left her too emotionally scarred to be able to carry on any longer. She wants to forget Mark. She wants safety and boring, and that’s what she gets at her new job. At least for a little while, because as it’s usually the case with Lacey, trouble follows her no matter how well she tries to hide away.
The Thames river is not just any river. In the past, it had tried to take her life not once, but twice. However, she is inexplicably drawn to that patch of water despite it all.
One day while swimming in the river, she comes across a dead floating woman covered in what looks like burial cloth. Before finding the body though, she noticed someone else swimming in the river, which gave her the sensation of being watched. Now that she found the body, Lacey is wondering whether it was left intentionally for her to find by a stalker.
The more the investigation goes on, the more she realizes that someone indeed is watching her, and their motives might be more sinister than it seems.
When another body is found in the river soon after the first one, Lacey is sure that there is a connection between the two cases, and that the team is probably after a gang of illegal immigrant smugglers.
In addition to her new case, she is also worried about Mark, who has gone missing some time ago. Nobody, not even his colleagues at the police know where he is, and rumor is, he actually killed somebody while deep undercover.
Now Lacey, with the help of her ex-boss and Mark’s best friend, Dana Tulloch, has to find who killed the two women and threw them in the river, and figure out what is really going on with Mark.
As usual with the Lacey Flint series, this book is full of twists, turns and nail-biting suspense. Do not start reading the book at night because you’ll be up reading until dawn. You won’t be able to put this book down. It’s definitely not a cozy or a light reading.
Sharon Bolton has a way with words that enthralls you. Her description of the Thames river (where most of the story takes place) is great. There is a haunting quality to her descriptions that draws you in and grabs you right away, even if you are a very dialogue driven reader.
The characters that we already know very well from previous books are further expanded upon in this novel. We learn even more about the complex person that is Lacey – this book is really all about her, much more so than previous novels.
While I find that this book (and the previous one) lack a bit the intensity that the first two books have, the suspense, gore, and creepiness of the situations Lacey had to deal with are still there, making this a novel well worth reading. I’m a great fan of this author and will read everything else she has written or will write in the future.
Other books by Sharon Bolton: Now You See Me, If Snow Hadn’t Fallen, Dead Scared, Like This Forever
