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Saturday 11 January 2014

Review: Blood Men, Paul Cleave (New Zealand)

Title: Blood Men
Author: Paul Cleave
Publication: 2013/New York, Atria Paperback
ISBN #: 978-1-4767-1087-7
# of pages: 329
Discovered at Sleuth of Baker Street
Read in paper format
Also available in e-book format
Link to author's website: Paul Cleave


Have you ever said something and then immediately wished you could take your words back? Edward Hunter wishes that more than most of us ever could. A good pre-Christmas day has turned very ugly and the next seven days will only get worse. Edward thought growing up as the son of an imprisoned serial killer was bad enough. Is he now about to become his father reincarnate?


It is difficult to say more about the plot without giving away any twists...which start immediately. It seems like every other chapter has an ending that you don't see coming, right up to the last one. I'm not usually fond of books written in the present tense but the author manages to avoid the jarring tone that approach often seems to have. Reading this so soon after Christmas made the setting even stronger. If you see the serial killer reference and feel you don't want to read "Blood Men", please ignore that feeling! If you like the roller coaster ride of a thriller, this is the book for you. I couldn't put it down. 
Rating: (°o°)!   Stayed awake all night to find out what happened!


Notable sentence: "It makes Schroder sick to know that on any given day your entire future can change."


Wanting to be a writer since primary school, Cleave started some novels in his late teens. A resident of Christchurch, New Zealand, he worked as a pawnbroker and renovated properties, then fifteen years ago, decided to focus on writing. According to his website, "...the (first) three books have an overlapping timeline, so some characters from one will appear in the other, and actions of one character will create problems for the other characters in other books." According to Fantastic Fiction, "...The Cleaner and Cemetery Lake both end on the exact same day. His fourth book picks up exactly where those two books end." Yet they do not need to be read in sequence. To date, Cleave has written seven books. I can't wait to read the rest.

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