Blood Lines by Angela Marsons (D.I. Kim Stone #5)

When two people with seemingly nothing in common are murdered in the same manner, D.I. Kim Stone feels in her gut that the same killer’s work is involved in both cases. But there is a problem.

The two people are as different from each other as they come. The first victim is a well-dressed woman who is seemingly a victim of a robbery gone wrong. The second one is a druggie, who apparently got the wrong end of her last deal.

Both were killed with a single precise and efficient matching knife wound, which puzzles Kim to no end. The wound doesn’t imply any emotion, such as passion, anger or even boredom, on the part of the killer. The wound just is.

While working the case with her team, Kim is suddenly distracted by a letter that arrived in her mailbox from her old nemesis: Doctor Alexandra Thorne, psychiatrist extraordinaire. The very person (strike that, psychopath) who is now rotting away in jail for heinous crimes against her own patients. If there is an embodiment of pure evil, Alex is that.

Her coming back into the D.I.’s life does Kim no favors. Kim is constantly distracted by questions upon questions and knows that she must visit Alex in prison if she wants to find answers. But doing that might just end up costing her soul.

Alex is an evil, yet a very interesting person. As hateful as she is, even while my levels of anxiety were continuously rising while reading, I couldn’t stop from being mesmerized by the chapters that went deep into her psyche. They gave me further glimpses into how the mind of a sociopath, who is also a brilliant psychiatrist, works. She is so good at what she does that she repeatedly cons even prison guards to do her bidding. Nobody can rise to her brilliance.

Or so she thinks because her obsession with Kim might just be her downfall after all.

As for Kim, she not only has to find a cold-blooded killer and deal with Alex, who has long gotten under her skin but also make sure that her mother never leaves the care facility that has been housing her for decades. Thanks to Alex, her mother’s road to freedom is now just a few days away.

The book is superb, and I don’t say that lightly. It got under my skin from the very first few words and didn’t let me go until I finished the last page. Nobody is perfect and when you read the book you feel that you are following real people with real, human problems. Emotions run high all around, even in her department, and people are depicted with all their flaws and complexities.

We get to learn a bit more about Kim’s team and understand where they are coming from and what makes them tick. How often do you feel that you are not treated equally with others and you are put on hold because of some imaginary flaw you might have? Some of Kim’s teammates feel the same, which invariably pushes them to make some critical mistakes during the case investigation.

And this is where Kim’s wonderful managerial skills come to light. She is able to defuse most situations while making the people involved realize what they did wrong without offending them personally. I wish I had someone like her as boss back in the day when I worked in the corporate world.

Blood Lines is a pure joy to immerse yourself in, a roller coaster that doesn’t seem to slow down until the very end. I read the book in two sittings, both times staying up (just one more chapter, just one more) until very late at night. Angela Marsons has long become one of my favorite authors and I hope she will continue to delight us with more Kim Stone novels for many years to come.

Blood Lines by Angela Marsons
Published by Bookouture
Published 2016
Genres: British Mystery, Crime Mystery
Pages: 380
Source: Purchased