Immersed in Murder – Rosepoint Publishing

Yahoo! I won this Print Book in an International Giveaway

Book Blurb:

This is a story of the use and misuse of the internet.
Angela is a bored, middle-aged spinster approached on the internet by an ex schoolfriend Kevin.
Concerned that her boring existence will not hold his interest, she weaves a fabric of lies, becoming more and more obsessed with her fantasy life.
But Kevin too is not who he claims to be, and the relationship between the two of them leads to death and destruction.

My Review:

A debut by this author and certainly a heroic effort penning a fully engaging novel that grips from the first page.

Mercy! How easy is it to unintentionally involve persons in a web of deceit using the internet. The interaction is arms length–shielded by the internet wall of protection. So easy to hide behind that shelter. From one small fantasy turned twisted to another whose life was already irrevocably warped. Of these myriad characters, a few innocents caught in this perverse tale turned sinister and eventually deadly.

I’m not sure. Is the main character the antagonist? Perhaps. There would appear no protagonist. There are empathetic characters in Giles (I felt so bad for him), his daughter, Harriet. The good support characters unintentionally involved by their network of friends. Then there are the others. You can’t think like them. (I hope not anyway!) Can’t figure them out. Angela–just–yuck. Yuck, yuck, and phtooey! She is so well fleshed you can smell her.

I enjoyed the journey through to discovery with the Detective Inspector Timothy and DS Talbot. Gleaning one tiny piece at a time until all the rest came together. And it was not a pretty picture.

Yes, I’m American and the dialogue purely British, but the dialogue is quite natural and believable. Antagonists are well developed as my suspicion is you are supposed to dislike them. They are egregious. And you do.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave…”

The conclusion is folded out patiently, so if at some point you got mildly lost, you could catch up at this point. Since the antagonists were intentionally set early, you knew who. But it was that last little zinger that got me and I hadn’t expected that one. No, quite the opposite, in fact.

My only problem with this very complex tale was the edit misses and a few missing words. Could have benefitted by an additional editor. Otherwise, this is one spell-binding drama that I would have no problem recommending.

Book Details:

Genre: Suspense, Crime Thriller, Mystery

ISBN-10:1480225320
ISBN-13:978-1480225329
ASIN: B00B5ULJZY

Print Length: 314 pages
Publication Date: January 24, 2013
Source: International Giveway by Kerry @ https://chataboutbooks.blog
Thank you, Kerry!
Title Link: Portal to Murder

Rosepoint Publishing: Four of Five Stars

The Author: Alison Lingwood was born in Cheshire in 1952 and this is her first novel. She is an ex-lecturer and retired businesswoman who lives in Staffordshire with her husband. [This author now has six published novels, the last, Immersed in Murder in August, 2018.]