Truth Dare Kill
Danny McRae begins this novel as a down-at-heel, jaundiced private eye with a taste for drink, in the Philip Marlowe tradition. However, he soon shows himself to be quite a different man and his story far more complex than what appears at first to be a run-of-the-mill crime novel.
The setting is the run-down, bombed out streets of post-war London. And Danny is its human equivalent. Disfigured and damaged by his war experience, with gaps in his memory, blackouts and hideous flashbacks – did he really rape and kill a woman? – he takes on the case presented to him by glamorous Kate Graveney. All too soon his past catches up with him and he finds himself fighting not only to clear his name but to stay alive.
I’m not normally a fan of dark crime novels but I was gripped by this one from beginning to end. I hated Danny at first. But slowly I took his side as I became immersed in his struggle to discover exactly what happened to him during the war. A gripping, if disturbing, read.
