Published by Penguin on 13th May 2021.

The Blurb
Eriston is a small town. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows your name – and your secrets.
Rebecca hasn’t been back in years, but she grew up in the shadow of a sinister local legend. There have always been deaths in Eriston – more than can easily be explained. People dying in their houses, behind locked doors.
Her father, Sean, had warned her of the dangers. Don’t let him in.
When Rebecca returns, she discovers that her father wasn’t willing to let the legend lie. He was on the verge of uncovering the town’s darkest truth.
Sean knew too much. Now he’s dead and Rebecca could be next……
My Thoughts
Rebecca has returned home following the death of her father, she has been travelling the world and now finds herself back in her home town up on the north east coast of England. Her father had been the editor of the local newspaper until it was forced to close due to lack of readership. however, Sean had not ceased working, his obsession was the high number deaths that occurred in such a small town and two of these in particular, the Eriston Rose and another young woman called Katherine, one of his reporters at the time of her murder. Rebecca soon discovers that her father may have been murdered for the information he knew surrounding these deaths and she enlists the help of the local policeman in her quest to find the truth.
From here on in the plot gets twisty and very dark, Rebecca is on the trail of a serial killer but she has no idea how close that trail is going to lead to her own family. I was totally invested in this story and found myself utterly gripped by the superb narrative. The characters are believable and likeable for the most part. The story developed at a great pace and never once did I skim read the text, I wanted to know every little detail that was going on, I was totally hooked and was desperate to know the outcome.
This story is well written, creepy, intense and just a tad scary with a good dose of the sinister thrown in for good measure. The feeling of being watched is never far from your mind and I guarantee you will be double checking the locks on your doors each night. The outcome was satisfying and I felt all the ends tied in very nicely together. There were times when I thought I had cracked the case only to be thwarted on the next page so when the murderer was finally revealed it was a bit of a shocker.
This is the first book I have read by Howard but it will definitely not be the last. I throughly enjoyed it and would heartily recommend it to lovers of crime fiction/thrillers.
Many thanks to the publisher for gifting me a copy of the book and thank you for bringing to work of Howard Linskey onto my bookish radar!
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