Happy Monday! Starting the week off with a blog tour!
Thanks to the publisher for the free ebook copy in exchange for my honest review
THE DARKNESS WITHIN – Graeme Hampton (Released January 13th, 2021)
Book Description:
You can run… but death will always find you
A man is discovered on a leafy North London street, fighting for life after a brutal beating. DI Matthew Denning and his team are quickly called in to track down the monster responsible.
Except the victim is hiding secrets of his own. His name shows that he was reported missing two decades ago – but it’s clear that the missing person is not the same man lying broken in a hospital bed.
A visit to a squalid East London flat unearths a victim with his throat cut, his body left to decompose. A sad end to any life – but when it is identified as former DCI Frank Buckfield, star of the Met police, the case takes on a new significance.
Two seemingly unrelated cases – but as Denning, along with DS Molly Fisher, investigates further, they uncover links between the two victims that lead back to a ring of silence cloaking the blackest of crimes.
But as Denning and Fisher try to track down a killer with revenge on their mind, they find themselves pitted against a psychopath who will kill to keep their secrets hidden. Can they uncover the truth, before they end up the latest victims?
My Thoughts: 3.5/5 stars
If you’re a fan of police procedurals then this is the series you need to get into! Once again I found myself jumping into a series without starting at the beginning, but with crime fiction series that usually doesn’t cause too much of a problem. THE DARKNESS WITHIN is book three in the DI Denning and DS Fisher series, but it can definitely be read as a standalone. Of course, we’ll be missing some of the character development from the first two books, but I feel like the author did a good job bringing us up to speed.
This is a pretty straight forward police procedural. Nothing too drawn out or technical, but not too crazy of a thriller. I feel like this had a great balance and didn’t have a lull in the pacing like some in the genre can have. While I would have enjoyed a little more background on our main investigators, I think the author gave us enough information to get a little invested in them! The little twists and turns the story takes didn’t come as a complete shock, but that didn’t take away from the reading experience. There are some books I can predict the ending of almost immediately and still love them.
I liked the author’s writing style, the introduction to these characters, and following along in the investigation. I definitely plan on picking up books one and two at some point so that I can get to know Denning and Fisher better. A solid police procedural with a steady pace made for an engrossing read that I flipped through in just a couple sittings.
About the Author:
Graeme Hampton was born in Paisley, and grew up in Stirling. After leaving school, he trained as a stage manager and worked in London for a number of years. He returned to Scotland in his late twenties to study for a BA in English Literature at Stirling University. His first novel, Know No Evil – featuring Met detectives DI Matt Denning and DS Molly Fisher – was published in 2019 by Hera Books. This was followed by Blood Family in January 2020. The Darkness Within is the third novel in the series. Graeme lives in Hastings, East Sussex.
Twitter: @GHam001 Instagram: graeme_hampton Website: www.graemehampton.com
Jessicamap Reviews 
Thanks for being part of the blog tour today Jessica x
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