Prepared to Die - Peter Dudgeon

Prepared to Die - Peter Dudgeon

Prepared to Die has been a book I have been waiting patiently for the author to release.  I have read previous books by Peter Dudgeon and have loved every one of them, so couldn’t wait to see what this book had in store. 

Prepared to Die is a psychological thriller and starts off with a family outing of a grandmother and her grandson enjoying a day at the zoo, however, things quickly take a drastic turn with the grandmother throwing herself into the rhino enclosure under duress and the person who was responsible for making her do this then shooting themselves. 

We are then transported three years later to the murder of Sebastian Fallon found at his home, along with another body found nearby, which seemingly looks like suicide.   How are these two bodies linked?  Are they linked? 

DI Daniel Sheppard has been off work for a period of time, due to nursing his dying wife but now feels that he needs to get back to work and get the old grey matter working again.  Daniel feels that the murder of Sebastian Fallon is not a clear murder-suicide and wants to investigate this further, and does his best to try and solve the case with a team assigned to him that don’t think he should be back at work yet, don’t like the way he runs the investigation and feels that he is not the right man for the job. 

Due to this book being completely different to other books of Peter’s I have read, I found it very difficult to understand what was happening, and found that the first few chapters seemed to be jumping around and wasn’t sure where the story was going.  However, once I started to understand the characters and connected some of the dots, I could get to grasps with the story and found it a good read. 

I am looking forward to seeing if this is the start of a series and if so what is next in store for DI Daniel Sheppard.

My thanks go to Peter Dudgeon for contacting me and allowing me to read and review an ARC of this book.