Reviewed by Alyson Baker
A SUICIDE. A MURDER. A CONSPIRACY. DIGGING UP THE PAST CAN BE DEADLY . . .
A thirteen-year-old boy commits suicide. A sixty-five-year old man dies of a heart attack. Dan Forrester, ex-MI5 agent, is connected to them both.
And when he discovers that his godson and his father have been murdered, he teams up with his old friend, DC Lucy Davies, to find answers.
But as the pair investigate, they unravel a dark and violent mystery stretching decades into the past and uncover a terrible secret. A secret someone will do anything to keep buried ...
I have enjoyed the CJ Carver Forrester and Davies series from the first installment. In Know Me Now, partial amnesiac Dan Forrester is back, back in another adventure for our enjoyment, and also back with his wife, Jenny, and their daughter Aimee. The family is eagerly awaiting the imminent birth of Dan and Jenny’s second son. Dan is also dealing with the sudden death of his father, Bill, who was visiting Germany when he had a massive heart attack.
In the midst of making arrangements for the repatriation of his father’s body, Dan hears that his 13-year-old godson, Connor, has also died. Connor’s death is being dealt with as a suicide, but the local doctor in the Scottish village where he died is not so sure. Two deaths so close together – and as the delightful DC Lucy Davies says: “In my job, we don’t believe in coincidences”.
CJ Carver certainly does believe in coincidences, the local GP who is suspicious about Connor’s death is none other than Dr Grace Reavey – one of the main characters in the first Dan Forrester outing Spare Me the Truth. I have come to realise that through this series Carver is weaving us a maypole of connections between her central characters. Given her skillful plotting, I am sure there are more reveals and connections to come, and with Dan’s dodgy memory, goodness knows what he has forgotten from his past!
Dan wants to go to Scotland to look into Connor’s death, but is thwarted when he is told his father’s death is unnatural, and he decides to go to Germany instead. Dan asks Lucy Davies to go to Scotland in his stead. In Germany, it turns out Dan didn’t know the whole truth about Bill’s work after the war, or about the project his father and his close friends had been involved with. As with the previous two installments of the series, we have some great plotting, and large picture conspiracies – this time involving some pretty precocious post-war research.
And we have thrills aplenty. Another character back from Spare me the truth, is the sinister Sirius Thiele – the centre of some truly scary scenes, and of another tantalising ribbon being wrapped around the coincidence pole. Dan, Lucy and Grace are all back in fine form. And when Lucy gets into a bit of a hole, and gives herself the advice regarding her supervisor DI Faris MacDonald that I have been yelling at her for three books now, I whooped for joy.
If you haven’t read any of the series, Know Me Now could be read as a standalone novel, but my recommendation would be to read them from the beginning (Spare Me the Truth, Tell Me a Lie then Know Me Now) and that is a strong recommendation!
Alyson Baker is a crime-loving librarian in Nelson. This review first appeared on her blog, which you can check out here.
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