Reading Peter James’ books is a bit like watching the TV show Midsomer Murders – you end up feeling Brighton is a major crime hotspot with a high murder rate. The twelfth book in the British crime novelist’s Roy Grace series, Love You Dead, sees the Detective Superintendent trying to juggle three cases at once within a period of just over a month – the re-emergence of his old adversary, serial killer Dr Edward Crisp, the return of his missing wife Sandy and a dangerous black widow – Jodie Bentley – operating on his home ground of Brighton. Bentley’s story dominates here, with the reader following her as she works her way through a number of older rich husbands, which she eventually meticulously kills off in an attempt to gain their riches and fortunes. James has said he aims to make each book better than the last, and he has definitely achieved that with his latest work. With cliffhanger endings to each chapter keeping the reader in suspense and the gripping cat-and-mouse relationship between the cops and criminal, Love You Dead is another hit in the author’s career.
