The Broken Ones (DI Gina Harte #8) by Carla Kovach
Genre: Crime thriller, Suspense, Mystery
Read: 28th February 2021
Published: 1st March 2021
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
Amber applies a dash of red lipstick and checks herself out in the mirror before heading out on a date. ‘Don’t wait up!’ she calls to her housemates as she leaves. But Amber never returns home that night. Amber Slater is never seen again.
The last person to see Amber was her housemate. He remembers everything she was wearing that night. He watched her leave. He listened to every word of her phone conversation with her friend before she left. He knows more about Amber’s movements than anyone.
At university, she is well-liked by her fellow students and teachers. Her tutor’s voice shakes when he is questioned by the police. Some say he and Amber were very close. Too close. Some say his wife had just found out about their relationship.
The manager at the restaurant where Amber was supposed to eat that night says she didn’t show up. Yet the chef at the restaurant is overly chatty about her. He wasn’t working that night. He wasn’t answering his phone. Nobody knows where he was when Amber went missing.
Rumours begin to circulate about Amber, it seems that everyone has a story to tell. But when the young girl’s lifeless body is found in a local park, with her blue lips glued shut, the gossip suddenly goes quiet. As the police trace the last few hours of Amber’s life, it seems that the girl simply vanished on her way to catch her bus. And when another woman goes missing in the dead of night, it’s a race against time to find her before she too is silenced forever.
Fans of crime books from Angela Marsons, Cara Hunter and Clare Mackintosh will love The Broken Ones.
MY REVIEW:
I am excited to be taking part in the #BooksOnTour #BlogTour for Carla Kovach's latest compelling thriller THE BROKEN ONES.
This is one of my favourite series and I always enjoy revisiting DI Gina Harte and her team with every book. The eighth installment, THE BROKEN ONES is a gritty crime thriller that has you gripped from the very beginning as the team search for a twisted killer.
Opening with a Prologue set ten years ago, trying not to be heard by their mother he creeps into his sister's darkened bedroom to regale her with his plan. Finally they can be free of the grip in which their mother has them. But he is confused as to why her room is dark. Hailey loves the moonlight streaming in as she drifts off to sleep...so why are the curtains drawn? He tries to wake her, softly whispering her name. He sees the earphones in her ears. He gives her a gentle shake...and stops. She is cold to the touch. Then he spies empty blister packs on her bedside table beside a glass of water. His sister is dead. In an instant he knows "she" did this. Their evil mother. And she must pay.
Ten years later, it's Friday night and Amber is preparing to go out on a date with someone she met on a dating app. Her friend Lauren helps her choose an outfit - a pink jumpsuit coupled with leopard print stilettos. With a smile and an overnight bag, she smiles as she leaves the apartment block saying "Don't wait up!" As she makes her way to the bus stop, she sees someone she believes to be in need and stops to help...realising too late that she's the one in trouble.
Monday morning a call comes in from a young woman reporting her friend, that left to for a date on Friday night, missing. While it is not uncommon for Amber to stay out all weekend, it IS highly unusual that she has not text Lauren to let her know how her date went and when to expect her home. Although at first, Gina believes it just to be a woman staying out and having fun, when she receives a call mid-interview that a body has been found in a local park, she prays that it is not the missing young woman.
Gina arrives with her team at the cordoned area in the park and, after consulting with forensics, inspects the body laying in a nightdress at the edge of the lake. It is Amber. With a gaping stab wound to her abdomen and evidence that she had been restrained, it appears the poor woman also had her lips sealed shut with superglue. Now Gina and her team must question everyone who lives in the student apartment block that Amber resided in. But in searching Amber's flat, forensics find some clandestine spy cameras surreptitiously hidden where not even Amber would have noticed them. Who was watching Amber? And was she targeted for a reason?
But it seems Amber was well liked by her friends, tutors and colleagues at the local pub she worked at three nights a week. But as Gina and her team dig deeper, many secrets that people are hiding slowly start to surface. And in her sights is a chef at the restaurant that Amber was supposed to meet her date on Friday, who appears to be acting suspiciously. And her tutor, whose own alibi is shaky, seems to be hiding something. Is there more to Amber than meets the eye?
Then another student, Madison, in a neighbouring block goes missing walking to the carpark at the local hospital. Her nan sat in her wheelchair in reception for an hour waiting for Madison to return, finally asking nurses to call the police. Gina and her team begin their search in the surrounding area immediately and thankfully find the girl gravely wounded but alive. Madison, it seems, had also been on the same dating app as Amber. Could this be their link? Is the killer finding his victims via Appydater then stalking them before abducting and killing them? Madison reported suspicious behaviour of someone watching her and following her, so she was naturally on her guard when the villian tried to take her. But her training in self defence prepared her well for the knee to the bollocks and the punch to the face before she lost consciousness in the bushes.
Then when one of their own fails to appear for their shift, it soon becomes clear that the killer has targeted her and it is a race against time and a killer who will stop at nothing to be reunited with the past.
THE BROKEN ONES is seriously creepy with a handful of equally creepy suspects to take your pick from. The setting is just as sinister in the cold snowy landscape of mid-winter Cleevesford, giving the town a distinctively...well, creepy feel. It feels as if it is constantly dark adding to the malevolent aspect as Gina and her team race to find their killer, just as their much loved colleague fights for her life locked and restrained in a darkened room.
The eighth book in the DI Gina Harte series, THE BROKEN ONES is just as compelling as the previous ones in the series although some aspects may seem a little repetitive. For instance, her to-ing and fro-ing where her DCI Chris Briggs is concerned. Just when you thought she was getting her sh*t together with him, she second guesses everything again. This is the one aspect of the series that has me tearing my hair out in frustration. Either do or don't - stop procrastinating and second guessing! I'm just glad her daughter Hannah didn't feature in this installment because that girl grates on me with the disrespect she shows her mother, dangling daughter Grace in front of Gina as emotional blackmail.
It is also refreshing not to find Gina constantly referring to her past with abusive husband Terry. This is rehashed with every book in detail that I find redundant since readers are more than familiar with the story now. As for newcomers to the series, just a reference to it would suffice whetting their appetite enough to go back and read previous books to uncover what really happened. Gina's experience with Terry changed her understandably but doesn't define her, so that secret should remain locked away in her past never to see the light of day again. After all, how long has it been? Hannah was a young child and she's now a grown woman with a child of her own. Over twenty years at least, I'd say. Time to move that story on.
With Gina's private life is still somewhat in turmoil, I think it's about time she sat herself down with Chris and stop avoiding him and putting it in the "too hard" basket. I missed the last book (it's still in my TBR pile) so I haven't yet caught up with what took place there but I can read between the lines. I just want to slap her sometimes. lol
As for the crime aspect, I had no idea whodunnit but I wasn't surprised when it was revealed. And yet, it was still a highly addictive read. Overall, THE BROKEN ONES is a riveting crime thriller with all the suspense and creepiness that is bound to keep readers enthralled and entertained.
I would like to thank #CarlaKovach, #NetGalley, #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheBrokenOnes in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Since then she has written & produced several stage plays, has four self-published books, has acted in several independent films and is currently in the final stages of production of her feature horror film, Penny for the Guy.
She now writes full time as well as co-owning a film, photography & video production company located in the heart of Redditch town centre.
Social Media links:
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