Twinkle Twinkle Little Lies by Rob Ashman
The Blurb:
Twinkle twinkle, little lies, How I see them in your eyes … DS Khenan Malice believes his troubles are behind him. But it’s never that simple. This time … it’s personal. Detective Kelly Pietersen has decided anti-corruption is not for her. But her previous life hunts her down, sending her world spiralling out of control. Twinkle is a pillar of the community and an ambassador for the church. She is also a woman for whom lying is a way of life, wrapping those around her in a complex web of deceit. To her it’s a deadly game. Their paths cross when a decomposed body is discovered. The past and the present collide with shattering consequences, leaving the three of them fighting for survival.
About Rob Ashman:
Rob is married to Karen with two grown up daughters. He is originally from South Wales and after moving around with work settled in North Lincolnshire. Like all good welsh valley boys Rob worked for the National Coal Board after leaving school at sixteen and went to University at the tender age of twenty-three when the pit closures began to bite. Since then he's worked in a variety of manufacturing and consulting roles both in the UK and abroad. It took Rob twenty-four years to write his first book. He only became serious about writing it when his dad got cancer. It was an aggressive illness and Rob gave up work for three months to look after him and his mum. Writing Those That Remain became his coping mechanism. After he wrote the book his family encouraged him to continue, so not being one for half measures, Rob got himself made redundant, went self-employed so he could devote more time to writing and four years later the Mechanic Trilogy was the result. Rob published Those That Remain, In Your Name and Pay the Penance with Bloodhound Books and has since written the DI Rosalind Kray series. These are Faceless, This Little Piggy, Suspended Retribution and Jaded which are also published by Bloodhound. His latest work sees the introduction of a new set of characters - DS Khenan Malice and DC Kelly Pietersen. The first book in the series is titled Killing Pretties and the second is Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Lies. Both books will be published this year. When he is not writing, Rob is a frustrated chef with a liking for beer and prosecco, and is known for occasional outbreaks of dancing.
My Review:
This is the second book in the DS Malice series. Following up from book one, where the unlikely pairing of Malice and Detective Pietersen is formed, this book really cements their relationship as polysemous partners in crime.
Add to this a new villain, Brenda Copeland, affectionately known as Twinkle. Twinkle, is a star in the eyes of her local church community, setting up outreach centres for unfortunates who have fallen foul to their drug habits. Or so it seems. The church centres are really spider’s webs for Twinkle to prey (not pray) on. Twinkle is evil personified, a woman whose apparent compassionate nature conceals animosity that has no boundaries.
Kelly Pietersen has a skeleton in her cupboard that has come back to haunt her from her time spent with the police anti-corruption squad. A disgraced detective, Craven, is seeking retribution after Pietersen exposed him as a bent copper. The outcome of this took my breath away.
After a brilliant start to the series in book one, the second book would have been a hard act to follow. It did not disappoint.
