What can I say really? Angela has absolutely smashed it yet again, with another brilliant Detective Kim Stone novel!
Finally we’re playing a game. A game that I have chosen. I give one last push of the roundabout and stand back. ‘You really should have played with me,’ I tell her again although I know she can no longer hear.
Late one summer evening, Detective Kim Stone arrives at Haden Hill Park to the scene of a horrific crime: a woman in her sixties tied to a swing with barbed wire and an X carved into the back of her neck.
The victim, Belinda Evans, was a retired college Professor of Child Psychology. As Kim and her team search her home, they find an overnight bag packed and begin to unravel a complex relationship between Belinda and her sister Veronica.
Then two more bodies are found bearing the same distinctive markings, and Kim knows she is on the hunt for a ritualistic serial killer. Linking the victims, Kim discovers they were involved in annual tournaments for gifted children and were on their way to the next event.
With DS Penn immersed in the murder case of a young man, Kim and her team are already stretched and up against one of the most ruthless killer’s they’ve ever encountered. The clues lie in investigating every child who attended the tournaments, dating back decades.
Faced with hundreds of potential leads and a bereaved sister who is refusing to talk, can Kim get inside the mind of a killer and stop another murder before it’s too late?
From the start, this novel draws you in, with a truly sinister scene set in a playground. It’s pretty gruesome actually, but then that’s the Kim Stone series for you! No details are spared, which meant I was immediately invested in finding out who could commit such a sickening crime. It’s a great beginning, even after the first chapter I was unwilling to put the book down at all.
Kim is just such an established character, that by this point all I can say is that I still love her! She’s stubborn, clever, bullish but extremely caring towards her team, and I’ve always liked the complexity of her character. Her friendship with Bryant is a brilliant source of humour, lightening up what would otherwise be a pretty intense plot. Their moments of banter, and Kim’s hilarious working relationship with Keats, all add to lighten the plot when needed, and this is something I’ve always liked about this series. Angela knows just when the reader needs to be lifted by these little moments.
As the plot thickens, it just gets more and more intense, but I really loved it. It centres around an event for genius and gifted children, and it’s a genuinely fascinating concept. I liked the different people the team encountered at the event, and although there were a lot of characters, they all added a lot to the plot and the wider examination of this Brainbox event. It really hooked me, and the sister of the victim, Veronica, was intriguing to say the least. The way she responded to Kim was a nice touch, but the story of her childhood was genuinely quite sad. I felt that I was so invested in each character that got introduced, that I never had time to try and work out who did it, and as always with Angela’s writing, I was completely taken by surprise! The ending was really tense and I literally couldn’t put the book down because I was so focused on finding out who did it and why. It was a clever ending, linking various aspects of the novel for a really tidy and satisfying conclusion.
What I particularly liked about this was that Penn, a relatively new member of the team, had his own story to follow. It allowed him to really develop as a character and come into his own more, and I loved that we were able to see more of him. It was actually a really interesting story in it’s own right, and I felt it offered just the right amount of distraction from the intensity of the main plot.
Of course, I can’t not mention Stace, one of my favourite characters in the Kim Stone series. She’s so stubborn, independent and hard-working that I really warm towards her, and I found her reaction to Tiffany, a new character, really hilarious. What I like about the team as a whole is that they work so well together, complementing each other’s different ways of working, and Kim herself is so caring towards them, but without it being at all cringe. Instead, it comes across as a team of people who have been through some heavy, emotional stuff together, and have bonded because of it, and I really like that Angela portrays this so well.
The DI Kim Stone series is such a brilliant series in general, and this one doesn’t let it down at all. After the sheer awesomeness of the tenth book in the series, I wondered how Angela was ever going to top it, but this one carries on the series so nicely, so intensely and so fast-paced that I was immediately drawn straight back into the world of Kim Stone and her team. A genuinely enjoyable read, I’d of course recommend this as a 5* read to anyone.
Child’s Play
Angela Marsons
Bookouture, 11th July 2019
