Blood Summer – Steven Dunne
Two detectives from opposite sides of the planet join forces to hunt a ruthless killer in the South of France.
Commandant Serge Benoit is haunted by the terror attack in Nice, a crime scene he can see from his seafront apartment. Dispatched to a remote village, an hour’s drive from his home city, Benoit finds two brutally dismembered bodies. Who are the victims? Where did they come from? And who killed them? Benoit’s only clue is a cell phone with a single number in the memory…
Former FBI Agent, Michael Trent, is a wanted man in his homeland. Unable to return to America, he travels the world as an escapologist-for-hire, helping people in trouble to disappear. In Singapore, he is engaged by multi-millionaire Harry Renfrew who needs to relocate after receiving death threats from the Russian mafia.
After hiding Renfrew and his wife in a rustic French village, Trent assumes Renfrew’s identity to lay down a false trail to confound pursuers. After weeks of incident free globetrotting, Trent arrives in Barcelona for the final leg of his journey. But before he can congratulate himself on a job well done, he receives a shattering phone call…
Normally when I post a review I share the blurb then, in this space, I mention I am reviewing as part of a blog tour or I may thank a publisher for proving a review copy. Today I am reviewing Blood Summer, a book from my TBR pile which I had pre-ordered and received on release as I think Steven Dunne is a brilliant author and I absolutely had to read this book as soon as I could. Well done to past-life me, that was a great decicion you made a few weeks ago.
Blood Summer is in the world and if you like a dark, intelligent and pacy crime thriller then this is very much a book you should be reading.
The action takes place in rural France where two bodies have been found in a luxury villa on the edge of a small village near the South coast. Both victims appear to have suffered prior to death and their bodies were dismembered leaving investigators with little to go on. Commandant Benoit and his colleagues will take short term residence in the village while they conduct their investigations but this is not a small town crime.
Before the murders take place and the police become involved, the reader knows the victims. We have read about their flight from the East into Europe, how they travelled using fake passports and we understand why it was essential nobody knew who they were. For the couple we were rooting for and the former FBI Agent (Michael Trent) who had been employed to ensure their safety, this is a double blow for a reader.
Where did everything go wrong for Trent? Well, perhaps the incident which led to his departure from the FBI may have influenced his subsequent career choices but the memories of an operation which went wrong will never leave him. Now a second operational failure hangs over him and he must rely upon the support of the French police if he his to understand what happened. The problem for Trent is that he is very much a Person of Interest to the police and he must convince them of his innocence.
Despite the dark nature of the murders (and some of the other plotlines) there is humour and heart in this book too. Steven Dunne knows how to pack his stories with punch and I enjoyed every aspect of Blood Summer. Highly recommended.
Blood Summer is available in paperback and digital format and can be ordered here: