Amy Myers is known for her short stories and historical novels featuring Victorian chef Auguste Didier and chimney sweep Tom Wasp. Her contemporary series feature ex-cop Peter Marsh and Daughter and classic car detective Jack Colby, and she is currently working on a new series starring Cara Shelley who runs a café in the grounds of stately home Tanton Towers.
Website: www.amymyers.net
Past Life is Dominic Nolan’s debut novel and the quality of this thriller ensures that the path lies open for powerful successors.
Well written, it is the story of ex-policewoman Abigail Boone (always known as Boone) and her bid to track down a sadistic sexual killer. She has every reason to do so both on her own account and because of those who had gone before her as victims and those who were still in his power. Boone had suffered not only major physical injuries, barely escaping with her life, but had irretrievably lost her identity. She remembers nothing, neither her career nor anything else. Worst of all – for them – she does not recognise her husband nor her teenage son. She clutches only at the path before her and the one detail she can remember: the name of Sarah Still who disappeared without trace; it was she whose case Boone was investigating when she was captured. It is a start along the dangerous path to find the killer.
The violence in the novel is extreme. I found it hard to identify with Boone herself with her self-imposed determination to put her hunt for the killer before not only her own safety but the needs of others. Nevertheless the strength and writing ability in the novel won out.
