One detective. One killer. One shared secret.

Connor Laird frightens people: he’s intense, he’s fearless, and he seems to be willing to do anything to protect himself and those he loves. When he arrives in the Longacre Children’s Home, seemingly from nowhere, he instantly becomes hero and villain to every other child there.

But thirty years later, someone is killing all of those who grew up in the Longacre with Connor. Each of them has secrets, not least investigating cop DI Ray Drake. One by one, the mysteries of the past are revealed, and Drake finds himself in a race against time before the killer gets to him.

Who would kill to hide their secrets?

Two O’Clock Boy isn’t a new release as I have had it on my Kindle for ages. But it was a new read for me and with unbelievable timing I finished reading it in the very week Two O’Clock Boy is being republished by Head of Zeus so I get to be both tardy and timely with a single review.

When you’ve had a book in the TBR for a long time then finally bring it into the light to read the best reaction you can hope for is “Damn, that was a brilliant book – why did I wait so long to read it?”  That was certainly my reaction to Two O’Clock Boy – it’s a dark one and the author has created a brilliant (and unpredicable) lead character in DI Ray Drake.

At the start of Two O’Clock Boy Drake and his team can be found celebrating. Promotions have been awarded and Drake is now a DI, his colleague – Flick Crowley – is the DS who will be given the challenge of investigating the gruesome murders which occur at the outset of the story. Note my use of the word “gruesome” only fair to warn you in advance that Two O’Clock Boy is on the darker side. There’s a lot of unpleasant stuff coming down the line and the early murder scene should set your expectations in terms of content.

For Drake the crime scene is going to rock his world. He knows the victims.  He connects one of the bodies to Longacre Children’s Home – a place he hasn’t visited for many long years. Through a series of flashback chapters we see Drake as a teen and learn of his connection to Longacre Children’s Home where his cousin was resident at the Home and he tried to spend time in her company. But Drake’s presence wasn’t tolerated by the owner of the home or the couple who helped look after the children. Though to say the children were looked after is misleading – the children lived in terrible conditions, they were used in criminal activity and the Home’s owner would abuse the kids in his care. As a child Drake knew the place was a virtual prison for the children and he tried to highlight the danger they were in to his parents – influential members of the community.

Drake realises he cannot afford to have his connection to Longacre explored by his colleagues but can he stop Crowley getting to the truth? The stakes are raised when it becomes clear there is someone who remembers Drake as a child and that same someone is determined to end the lives of anyone connected to Longacre. Drake is in danger and it seems his daughter may also be at risk but he still can’t let Crowley know what’s really going on. This means the reader follows Crowley’s investigation, Drake’s own attempts to uncover the identity (and location) of the killer and through the flashback chapters we learn more about the plight of the children at Longacre. Those chapters which take in Drake’s teenage years also allow Mark Hill to drip more and more important detail into our awareness and we slowly begin to understand why events from the mid 1980’s are so important thirty years later.

I absolutely loved Two O’Clock Boy – though finding out why the book has this title was another shocking chapter. Having a lead character who was a senior police officer but wasn’t actively investigating the murders was a brilliant hook and I had to know how things were going to turn out. Early buy-in ensures this reader will be captivated to the story. To put it in blunt context…I normally read three or four books at any one time. While I read Two O’Clock Boy no other books got a look-in. That’s a sign of quality.

Two O’Clock Boy is re-releasing through Head of Zeus on 2 February 2022. You can buy a digital copy of the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BN9C26VL/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2