Storm

Boris Starling

The second book by Boris Starling, his first one Messiah I haven't read but after reading "Storm" I will defintely will!

Storm starts with the panic on board a Ferry from Bergen-Norway to Aberdeen-Scotland. The captain gets a phonecall about a Ford Transit carrying a bomb. They have to stop the ship to push the bus into the sea. So far so good, the bus gets dumped. But then you are brutally kicked into a very lively description of what generally happens when a ship sinks. Very realistic images sprung to my mind reading this part and I was really happy lying in my bed already 7 metres below sealevel. The good thing is also it lasts just long enough to keep you eager and sharp for the next few runs down the rollercoaster Starling has written down for you. Not too fast but a thrill in every loop.

During the sinking descriptions you get introduced to Inspector Kate Beauchamp, mother of a four year old son Leo, and part of an amateur theatre company back from their tour in Norway.

Back in Aberdeen as one of the survivors, she wants to get back to work straight away to forget what happened to her. She is assigned to a nasty murdercase, a young woman is found in the woods stabbed to dead with her hands and feet cut of and wrapped around her shoulders and on her chest a living black viper, the killer is nicknamed Blackadder.

Kate has enough problems of her own without this murdercase, she is not coping with the stress of the accident, no time for her child, in love with one of her fellow actors and on top of it all her father, whom she hates, is in Aberdeen to investigate the sinking of the ferry. She is not really making any progress in the investigation when another body is found displayed in the same way only this time the body is that of a midleaged woman. So Blackadder is a serial killer.

At this part of the book you have two plots which are bound to come together, one the sinking of the ferry Amphitrite being investigated by her father and two the two women killed by this alleged serial killer being investigated by Kate. Starling also weaves in the obligatory lovestory between Kate and Alex and the background and motives of Blackadder. He puts these 4 storylines nicely together in to a coherent novel with a lot of surprises and subplots. In the last 80 pages all these plots and subplots come together part of it shocking and surprising and part of it predictable. But on the whole it is a very well written, slightly original book and a fine example of it's genre,

I would like to reccomend Storm and rate it 3,5 out of 5.