YOU HAVE SIX SECONDS TO READ THIS MESSAGE…The body of a 15-year-old is found hours after she sends a desperate message to her friends. It looks like suicide, until a second girl disappears.This time, the message is sent directly to the Metropolitan Police – and an officer’s younger sister is missing.DS Nasreen Cudmore and journalist Freddie Venton will stop at nothing to find her. But whoever’s behind the notes is playing a deadly game of hide and seek – and the clock is ticking.YOU HAVE 24 HOURS TO SAVE THE GIRL’S LIFE.
MAKE THEM COUNT.
Watch Me by Angela Clarke is published by Avon on 12 January 2017 and is the author's second book in the Social Media Murders series, featuring Freddie Venton and DS Nasreen Cudmore. I read and reviewed the first, Follow Me, on Random Things in November 2015. I loved it and it went on to feature in my Top Books of the Year list.
Watch Me features Freddie Venton and her childhood friend Nasreen Cudmore who is now a police detective. Following on from the events that happened in Follow Me, although easily read as a standalone story, Watch Me is another fast-paced thriller that kept me hooked from the opening pages.
Freddie has not really recovered from the trauma that she went through when she and Nasreen were pitted against the original Social Media Murderer in Follow Me. The murderer, known as Apollyon is locked up in Belmarsh prison, in seclusion, there is no way that he can commit any more crimes. Or can he?
When Nasreen and the other members of her police team receive chilling anonymous Snapchat messages they have no idea what is about to begin. Then Freddie receives the same messages, and it's clear that another very clever Social Media Murderer is on the loose, or is it Apollyon? The team have only 24 hours to save the life of a young girl; one girl is already dead. Freddie'e expertise is needed.
Watch Me concentrates more on Nasreen's character than Freddie, and it was great to get more of an insight into how she works, and how her history affects her job as a cop. She and Freddie have secrets from an age ago that will be exposed during this case, and will have an impact that neither of them could have foretold.
Watch Me is bang up to date. The author writes with style and with wit, and skilfully increases the tension as each hour passes towards the deadline. There's a darkness within this story, there are issues dealt with that are shocking and at times feel quite grubby. The rise in revenge porn and the ease in which people can humiliate and terrify their victims on line is something to be seriously considered. Angela Clarke does not hold back, she exposes the real brutality and depths that some people will go to in order to hurt someone who has spurned them.
Watch Me is a brilliant follow up to Follow Me. Freddie and Nas are an intriguing partnership, and I'm enjoying the development of their characters. Angela Clarke is an absolutely cracking author, her writing grips, her plot lines are ingenious and her characters are fabulous.
My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review.
Angela Clarke is an author, columnist and playwright. Her debut crime novel Follow Me (Avon) is out now. Follow Me is the first in the Social Media Murders Series.Her memoir Confessions of a Fashionista (Ebury) is an Amazon Fashion Chart bestseller. Her debut play The Legacy received rave reviews after it's first run at The Hope Theatre in June 2015. Angela's journalist contributions include: The Guardian, The Independent Magazine, The Daily Mail, and Cosmopolitan. Now magazine described her as a 'glitzy outsider'. Angela read English and European Literature at Essex University, and Advances in Scriptwriting at RADA. In 2015 Angela was awarded the Young Stationers' Prize for achievement and promise in writing and publishing.
She is almost always late or lost, or both.
Find out more at: http://angelaclarke.co.uk
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Follow her on Twitter @TheAngelaClarke
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Sounds great I loved follow me too x
ReplyDeleteSounds like a gripping read to me.
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