‘Someone is recreating every traumatic point in your life. They are doing this to make you suffer, to make you hurt and the only possible end game can be death. Your death.’
On the fourth floor of Chaucer House, two teenagers are found chained to a radiator. The boy is dead but the girl is alive. For Detective Kim Stone every detail of the scene mirrors her own terrifying experience with her brother Mikey, when they lived in the same tower block thirty years ago.
When the bodies of a middle-aged couple are discovered in a burnt-out car, Kim can’t ignore the chilling similarity to the deaths of Erica and Keith – the only loving parents Kim had ever known.
Faced with a killer who is recreating traumatic events from her past, Kim must face the brutal truth that someone wants to hurt her in the worst way possible. Desperate to stay on the case, she is forced to work with profiler Alison Lowe who has been called in to observe and monitor Kim’s behaviour.
Kim has spent years catching dangerous criminals and protecting the innocent. But with a killer firmly fixed on destroying Kim, can she solve this complex case and save her own life or will she become the final victim?
I believe I repeat this comment every time I review a DI Kim
Stone story-- this book is even better than the last one. In Dead Memories, Marsons uses a
unique methodology to share many of the secrets Kim holds close to her chest,
or boxed up as she admits, with her team and the readers. Every crime scene is a vignette, so to speak,
of a horrible event Kim endured in her childhood. The more I learn the more my heart breaks for
the young child and the adult who believes she must carry her burden alone.
In this case, many of the men who Kim arrested in the past are serving time in the same prison. They have a Kim “Hate Club,” where they plan how to get back at her. The question is who among the many people she arrested is capable of these horrific crimes and how did they find out the details of her past?
Tension starts early on, not only in the quest to find the killer, but the fear that Kim won’t handle the revelations of her childhood. Her team surprises her by their reactions and support. Even Woody makes allowances to help her get through the case and remain emotionally intact. Shockingly, the strong and dependable Bryant has a slight melt down worrying about his boss. So many emotional moments for everyone involved.
I must caution anyone who is tempted to read this book out of order. The mystery is intense, but all the backstory is lost without knowing what happened in the previous books. Also, begin this book in the evening only if you are ready to give up a night’s sleep—it is hard to put the book down. I highly recommend Dead Memories to DI Kim Stone fans, and the series to anyone who loves a well-researched and executed police procedurals. Trust me on this!
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