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Playing with Fire
Playing with Fire
Nov 1, 2024 6:42 AM

Author:Tess Gerritsen

Playing with Fire

What if your child wanted you dead?

'I defy you to read the first chapter and not singe your fingers reading all the rest. It’s that compelling. It’s that good.' David Baldacci

Julia is terrified by her daughter's aggressive behaviour. Lily has changed from an angelic little girl into someone she is afraid to be alone with.

What scares Julia most, though, is that she knows why Lily is acting this way, but no-one will believe her. If she is going to help Lily, she will have to find the answers alone, embarking on a search that will take her to the shadowy back streets of Venice.

There Julia finds far more than just answers, and uncovers a heartbreaking, long-buried tale of tragedy and devastation. And this discovery has put her in serious danger . . .

Reviews

I defy you to read the first chapter and not singe your fingers reading all the rest. It’s that compelling. It’s that good.

—— DAVID BALDACCI

Tess Gerritsen is at the top of her game. Compelling and satisfying, this eerie, suspenseful novel had me turning the pages until the early hours.

—— Paula Daly

Deeply creepy, seriously clever.

—— Sharon Bolton

An outstanding story.

—— Associated Press

Highly original thriller...Works brilliantly well as a thriller written across two timelines, with a heartfelt back story. Really gripping stuff.

—— Sunday Mirror

Cunningly wrought . . . a triumph . . . the ending is perfect – a fitting full stop at the end of a great career.

—— Mail on Sunday

From the impressive variety of tones and styles to which she had access as a writer, Rendell chose for Dark Corners black comedy that echoes Muriel Spark . . . [Dark Corners] enjoyably and honourably concludes Rendell's six decades of exploring the death force that, as her last book demonstrates, may be triggered in unexpected people and places.

—— Guardian

The late Ruth Rendell put a permanent stamp on crime fiction with 65 novels of screw-twisting suspense, written under both her own name and the pseudonym Barbara Vine. The posthumously published DARK CORNERS is a worthy final entry in her body of work

—— The Wall Street Journal

It’s a Rendell ‘stand-alone’ – a pitch-black thriller.

—— The Times

A gripping story . . . You will feel the authentic Rendell prickle of fear as you realise how easily a mis-step could plunge you into a situation like [the protagonist’s].

—— Daily Telegraph

Dark Corners is compulsively readable and involving . . . [Rendell] had a superb gift for understanding and unsettling her legion of fans with her spare, elegant prose.

—— Daily Express

Not once does Rendell let up on the tension. This, her last book, is a triumph

—— Daily Mail

As hard-edged as ever. A brooding, claustrophobic mystery

—— Sunday Mirror

This is the innocent-seeming start of a journey into the very darkest recesses of the human mind; for such a nice woman, Rendell had an amazing empathy with psychotic killers. Dark Corners is Rendell at her incomparable best; talk about going out in style!

—— Saga Magazine - Book of the Month

Rendell was a prolific and hugely popular writer of intricately plotted mystery novels that combined psychological insight, social conscience and, not infrequently, teeth-chattering terror.

—— New York Times

Rendell was unequivocally the most brilliant mystery writer of our time.

—— Patricia Cornwell

When many of the literary novelists of our time are forgotten, Ruth Rendell’s books will remain, and future generations will see that not only did she keep her readers on tenterhooks with every book, she also wrote stories which held up a mirror to her times.

—— Daily Mail

Rendell’s work, mapping the manic and malevolent extremes of human behaviour, was distinguished by terse yet elegant prose and sharp psychological insights.

—— Daily Telegraph

Rendell’s novels have been a major force in lifting crime writing out of genre fiction and into both cutting-edge and mainstream literature.

—— Jeanette Winterson

Ruth Rendell: one of the all-time greats.

—— Sophie Hannah

Every aspect of Ruth Rendell’s dark art is splendidly showcased in Dark Corners. One can’t say she saved the best for last, because a great many books by Ms Rendell and her alter ego Barbara Vine are so splendid, but it’s among the best. You won’t put it down. I loved it.

—— Stephen King

Rendell set an extraordinarily high benchmark in crime fiction that continued throughout her long career. She is revered by all who came after her.

—— Ian Rankin

Rendell transformed what had become a staid and formulaic genre into a different kind of crime novel. She turned it into a prism for examining the world around her with a critical eye.

—— Val McDermid

Pleasurable narrative and thoughtful prose

—— Literary Review

This subtle, off-kilter foray into John le Carré territory—a chilling, thoughtful, deeply romantic drama about the collateral damage suffered by those on the periphery of world events—displays Dunmore's gifts as one of today’s most elegant and versatile storytellers.

—— Kirkus

Exposure is a beautifully written novel that really showcases this author’s talents.

—— The Welsh Librarian blog

Exposure is a great spy thriller with an emotional side to it ... it gives you great character's and a beautiful setting. Lily Carrington is one of the best character's I have read about in a book in a long while.

—— Rachel Bustin blog

A wonderfully descriptive tale of three rich characters and serves as a great way of bringing the private fears and realities of the Cold War period to life and this novel is a story of that time, as much as anything else.

—— Culture Fly

Exposure is about the drive to protect one’s family and the devastating consequences of abruptly finding oneself on the wrong side.

—— Anne Goodwin blog

Exposure is a brilliantly plotted novel, it’s enormously compelling and I gulped it down. Dunmore builds the tension slowly, the atmosphere of fear and creeping shadows is chillingly well done.

—— Heavenali blog

Just as thrilling and just as unputdownable as any Le Carré

—— The Tablet

A compelling read

—— Irish Times

A surprising and fulfilling read

—— The Oldie

Exciting, with a touch of Graham Greene

—— Evening Standard

Few novelists can rival Dunmore

—— Sunday Times Ireland

With a poet’s intensity for minutia and symbolism and an always hungry precision for the right word, she creates a real and thoroughly vivid world, a living place, grim and claustrophobic, full in small ways of menace.

—— Irish Examiner

Reading Helen Dunmore is like uncovering an old, intimate secret. Her historical detail is flawless. Her narrative focus is never so much on the big public bluster as it is on the private fragility of the human heart - and her latest novel might be her finest yet.

—— Irish Independent

Clever and moving

—— The Scotsman, Books of the Year

[It is] gripping… The writing is brilliant.

—— Methodist Recorder

A very dark, morbid tale… I loved it, because it’s a really original voice that draws you into a dark psychology.

—— Victoria Sadler

A clever, eloquent and captivating debut novel.

—— Brad Davies , i, Book of the Year

[It is] thrillingly playful.

—— A.M. Holmes , Observer, Book of the Year

The most grimly compelling fiction came from a new voice: Ottessa Moshfegh’s Man Booker-shortlisted Eileen. It takes nerve to create such a thoroughly dislikeable narrator… It is like someone reaching into a bottomless bag of gifts.

—— Robert Douglas-Fairhurst , The Times, Book of the Year

I loved its refreshingly dark and complicated protagonist and grubbily vivid sense of time and place. Eileen reads like a smart, feminist take on Hitchcock or Highsmith and was, for that reason, impossible to put down.

—— Francine Toon , Running in Heels, Book of the Year

[Eileenis] compulsively deviant and utterly delicious… I savoured every single word of it.

—— Mark O'Halloran , Sunday Business Post, Book of the Year
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