Sins of the Father
Genre: Thriller
Series: DI Matthew Adams #2
Release Date: 28th Feb 2017
Publisher: Choc Lit (Death by Choc Lit)
A
roller-coaster of a read which you won’t want to put down! Former Police
DCI Stuart Gibbon
What if you’d been accused of one of the worst crimes imaginable?
Detective Inspector Matthew Adams is slowly picking up the pieces from a case that nearly cost him the lives of his entire family and his own sanity too. On the surface, he seems to be moving on, but he drinks to forget and when he closes his eyes, the nightmares still come.
But the past is the past or is it? Because the evil Patrick Sullivan might be out of the picture, but there’s somebody who is just as intent on making Matthew’s life hell, and they’re doing it in the cruellest way possible.
When Matthew finds himself accused of a horrific and violent crime, will his family stand by him? And will he even be around to help when his new enemy goes after them as well?
What if you’d been accused of one of the worst crimes imaginable?
Detective Inspector Matthew Adams is slowly picking up the pieces from a case that nearly cost him the lives of his entire family and his own sanity too. On the surface, he seems to be moving on, but he drinks to forget and when he closes his eyes, the nightmares still come.
But the past is the past or is it? Because the evil Patrick Sullivan might be out of the picture, but there’s somebody who is just as intent on making Matthew’s life hell, and they’re doing it in the cruellest way possible.
When Matthew finds himself accused of a horrific and violent crime, will his family stand by him? And will he even be around to help when his new enemy goes after them as well?
REVIEW
I hadn't read After She's Gone - the first in the DI Adams series, but was not worried as I soon got into this story (which reads perfectly as a standalone - I have however now gone back and bought the first!)
Matthew and family meet Jasmine, a college friend of step daughter Ashleigh's at a wedding. Soon we realise something is not as it seems with her. Matthew witnesses a fight with her boyfriend and escorts her home to make sure she is safe.
Events take a sickening turn and Matthew wakes up in a hotel room which is covered in blood, and no real memory of what has taken place. He soon finds out though as text messages and phone calls reach him and he knows he's in big trouble, none of which he believes is his doing.
He fights the law and the bad guys to protect his family, going to any lengths necessary, and finding out awful truths along the way, but Becky trusts him and fights to clear his name while trying to keep her family safe - something they couldn't do before.
This was a well written and gripping thriller from Sheryl Browne. It had me on the edge of my seat and wanting to shout instructions to help them through the pages. I love how versatile Sheryl is as a writer, and how she engages her readers within the lives of her characters. I was rooting so much for Matthew and family from the start.
The ending was so poignant and sad, Matthew's character shining bravely through, it really made the story for me. Well done, Sheryl on a fantastic read!
EXCERPT
Matthew woke
abruptly, hurtled from sleep by a nightmare he thought would never end. Sweat
saturating his face, pooling in the hollow of his neck, he pulled himself
upright and squinted against the thin trickle of sunlight filtering through the
slatted blinds at the window. His first thought was that he had a hangover the
size of an airdrome. His second, that they had no blinds at their bedroom window.
Easing
his legs over the edge of the bed, a wheeze rattling his chest and nausea
gripping his stomach as the room revolved in sick-making revolutions around
him, his gaze went instinctively to the bedside table. His inhaler was there,
the blue curative he carried with him, lined up neatly alongside his phone. Disorientated,
Matthew blinked hard. His vision was blurred. His memory? Where the bloody hell was he?
A
hotel room. Functional, he registered. Scanning his surroundings, he noted the
fire instructions pinned to the door, the ancient fire extinguisher on the
wall, the dusty circa nineteen eighties carpet. A shithole. Matthew closed his
eyes and swallowed against the acrid taste in the back of his throat, then
almost had a heart attack as his phone rang, loud and shrill, screeching
through his brain like an express train. Scrambling around his mind for some
recollection of what had happened the night before, he came up with nothing
that was tangible, his tenuous thoughts seeming to slip away, like sea
filtering ineffectually through sand. He had a few grainy, grey memories:
Jasmine, the apartment, tastefully decorated. The painting, abstract colours
intermingling. Coffee. Dripping. Shoes, clacking, like the ominous slow tick of
a clock. One shoe. A stiletto. Connor …? Had he been there? Here? Matthew
squeezed his eyes shut, tried desperately to remember. Natalie? Christ, no.
His
phone rang again, sharp, insistent. Becky, it had to be, and Matthew had no
clue what to say to her. Attempting to control his escalating panic, to
regulate his breathing, he let it ring and reached for his inhaler instead …
and then stopped dead.
Seeing
the crimson stains on his hand, Matthew’s heart somersaulted in his chest.
Dried
blood, he registered, trying hard not to let the panic, now gripping his gut
like a vice, cancel out logical thought. Old blood. His? How old?
Bringing
both palms shakily to his face, he examined them. They were ingrained with the
stuff. He flipped them over. His knuckles were bruised. Right hand. Sweet Jesus, what
had he done? Disentangling himself from the duvet, Matthew scrambled to his
feet, then quelling the nausea now clawing its way up his windpipe, he checked
himself over. Deep wheals ran vertically down his chest. Four. Matthew
swallowed hard. Checked his limbs. Found scratches on his arms. His neck, too.
He could feel those, raw and sore.
His
pulse rate ratcheting up, he yanked the duvet back. More blood. Too much. Stark
against the grey-white of the sheets. Trying desperately to keep a lid on his
emotions, he turned, stumbling towards the bathroom, where he leaned over the
toilet and vomited the sparse contents of his stomach.
Standing
unsteadily, Matthew clutched the sink hard for support. Deep gouges on his
cheek, he noted through the mirror, then flinched as a flashback hit him head
on: Jasmine, smiling, her eyes, flat and emotionless. Her fingernails trailing
down his face, his torso. Her touch had been light. She’d inflicted no damage.
So how? Who? Natalie? A fresh image
assaulted him, Natalie lying next to him. On top of him. Had he? No! His gaze straying to the wall behind
him, Matthew’s legs almost gave way. There were blood spatters on the tiles.
Perspiring profusely, he dragged an arm over his forehead. Irregular,
splattered all over the walls. Christ, this
couldn’t be happening.
A
terrifying scenario unfurling in his head, Matthew willed himself to turn to
the bath. His hand visibly shaking, cold trepidation snaking the length of his
spine, he steeled himself to reach for the mould-stained shower curtain,
hesitated, and drew it back.
A
tap dripped, slowly, steadily. Each drip echoing distortedly around the room,
sounding like a nail being driven into his coffin. He registered the watery
trickle of blood washing over the carcass of a spider wedged in the plughole.
No body.
No body.
Wilting
with relief, Matthew turned away. Taking several slow breaths, he grabbed a
towel from the rail, whilst simultaneously reaching for the sink tap, and then
stopped, his head screaming, his instincts colliding. If he cleaned himself up, he’d be destroying evidence. If he ran …
Matthew stared hard at himself in the mirror. More images assailed him,
disjointed memories. Surreal, foggy recollections. He’d been here with two
women. Jasmine and Natalie. Matthew knew that much. Thought he did. And every
indication was that one of those women had been badly injured, or worse,
possibly by him. If he was going to call this in, and terrified though he was,
his conscience told him he had to, he couldn’t wash. He needed to. The smell in
the room was cloying. A woman’s scent. It was all over him.
He
had to call Becky. Trying to keep calm, to not give into his urge to run from
the room and keep running, Matthew headed back to the bedroom, where his phone
had been ringing constantly. Whatever had happened, she needed to hear it from
him first. He needed to tell her … Tell her what?
Something’s happened, but I don’t know what? I think I’ve been set-up but I
have no idea why? I might have had sex with someone but it wasn’t intentional?
Consensual.
No! Disbelieving, Matthew gulped back
an immediate deep sense of shame.
BUY LINKS
About Sheryl...
Heartache, humour, love, loss &
betrayal, Sheryl Browne brings you edgy, sexy, heart-wrenching fiction. A
member of the Crime Writers’ Association, Romantic Novelists’ Association and
shortlisted for the Best Romantic
e-book Love Stories Award 2015, Sheryl has several books published and two
short stories in Birmingham City University anthologies, where she completed
her MA in Creative Writing.
Recommended to the publisher by the WH
Smith Travel fiction buyer, Sheryl’s contemporary fiction comes to you from
award winning Choc Lit.
Author Links
GIVEAWAY
AN ECOPY OF THE BOOK!
I just read this again - after mad dash to walk dogs earlier - and felt my heart swell with pride and then physically constrict for Matthew at how you described the ending. That, too, is very poignant, Donna. Thank you SO much for an excellent, beautiful review. Your words fuel me, they really do! :) xx
ReplyDeleteI've been seeing a lot about this book just lately and reading very positive reviews...my kind of book!
ReplyDelete#ToTT