Dead Man's Footsteps by Peter James - A Master Piece

Peter James, one of most successful authors in unleashing thriller novels, has released yet another crime novel -- Dead Man's Footsteps, the fourth Roy Grace thriller.

Superintendent Roy Grace is the protagonist, the story takes precedence in Dead Man’s Footsteps, with Roy's personal life taking a back seat apart from a few hints that the relationship with Cleo might be on the way out. Brighton is the base, but this time the action moves around the world. At the start of the book, the body of a young woman, long dead, is found in a storm drain in Brighton. Roy is one of the team called in to investigate, and finds himself increasingly tense as the circumstances seem to fit rather too well to the body being that of his long-missing wife, Sandy.

The second tale is about a failed businessman and perennial loser, Ronnie Wilson is in New York on a last ditch mission to secure funding for his latest venture. It’s 11th September 2001 and he’s heading to an early appointment in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The third tale is about Abby Dawson who has just returned home after some years in Australia. She has moved into a luxury flat in Brighton in dread of an unknown threat. She's obsessively careful about making any sort of move into the outside world, but she doesn't think to check the lift. Its cable breaks, and she's trapped - the alarm doesn't work either.

Now the final tale is occurring across the other side of the world, in Australia, where another woman’s body is found decomposing in the boot of a car resting on the bottom of a river near Melbourne. She was apparently strangled. As this brilliantly complex tale moves between Brighton, New York and Melbourne, the threads binding these tales together become more and more tightly woven. Now it’s up to Roy to solve the mysteries.

Peter James is masterly, not just at keeping all the pages to move in mystery path, but also links his description to the World Trade Center tragedy, involving the reader in those events and their aftermath in a realistic and exciting way, as befits that awful day.