Blood Rival is a taut crime thriller filled with palpable tension and harrowing twists that will stay in your mind for a considerable amount of time after you finish reading the last page.
When the murder of a gangster, Lee Royal, stays cold with no leads, the investigation is all but shelved. But that’s not good enough for Eddie Pierce, an up-and-comer rival of Lee who always begins an affair with Lee’s wife, Jo. What should be something of a blessing for Eddie soon turns into an obsession where Eddie tries to dig for the truth along with Jo and a brash Commander of Scotland Yard who wants what he’s owed by Lee. With new leads suddenly churning up, can Eddie trust his Jo, his friends, or even himself to accept the high cost of finding out what really happened the night where a mysterious man in the dark killed Lee in cold blood?
Jake Arnott crafts a mesmerizing and enthralling narrative where the characters get their due time to become familiar to the readers before taking the story for a wild descent into chaos, betrayals and a final twist that had me in knots with its mind-boggling nature. The story plays out with each major character driving the narrative to greater heights of unpredictability where just when you think you’ve figured out a character, you’re actually miles away from the truth.
At its core, Blood Rival is a crime drama that retains an old-school feel of grand gestures but with a faster modern pacing that kept me glued to the book. I finished it in a day without a single inclination to put the book down for even a second. Easier said than done, but Blood Rival put up quite the challenge.
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