Today on my blog, #BookAddictShaun shares his thoughts on David Jackson’s Don’t Make A Sound. Enjoy!
About the Book
You can’t choose your family. Or can you?
Meet the Bensons. They’re an ordinary couple. They wash their car, mow their lawn and pass the time of day with their neighbours. And they have a beautiful little girl called Daisy.
There’s just one problem.
SHE’S NOT THEIRS.
D. S. Nathan Cody is about to face his darkest and most terrifying case yet . . .
David Jackson’s A Tapping at my Door is one of my favourite crime novels, and is one of the ones I recommend to people when showing them an actual book (because I am quoted inside!) I think I read Hope to Die on a bad day and want to give it a reread because I struggled to get into the story. This time around though with book three, Don’t Make a Sound, and I couldn’t read it quick enough and read the book in just two thrilling sittings.
In Don’t Make a Sound, David Jackson has written what could be marketed as a psychological thriller. It certainly leans more towards that genre as opposed to being just another crime thriller. Nathan Cody’s latest case sees him looking into the disappearance of a young girl, Poppy. The reader knows that Poppy and another girl have been kidnapped and are being held in a locked room by a married couple. I was so on edge whilst reading this book. The way David writes really puts you inside the story. I felt uncomfortable reading some of the scenes inside this room and could genuinely feel the terror that the girls felt at being locked inside this room by this strange couple. It was horrifying to read about how he so easily broke into Poppy’s house and kidnapped her and they were just so creepy. I found myself imagining how I would have felt as a child, or how I’d feel as a parent having something like this happen to my child. It makes you look at those creepy neighbours in a whole new light.
Despite the book being set in Liverpool we don’t see a whole lot of the city and that was a disappointment to me. The city a crime fiction book is set in is usually a character in itself, but this story could have been set anywhere in the UK, there wasn’t really anything distinguishing about it other than the use of a couple of street and place names. All that said, that is just a personal niggle of mine and the story here is where the book really shines and I’m just being picky because we don’t get a lot of Liverpool based crime fiction and when we do I want to read more about the city. The fact that this book is more character driven and psychologically based however means that the story well and truly messed with my head and the setting didn’t matter all that much.
At around about the 200 page mark something happened that completely took me by surprise and almost made me gasp out loud. This was the turning point in the story for me and was the point where I knew I wouldn’t be putting the book down until I was closing the final page. Apart from a brief sojourn onto Twitter to profess my enjoyment of the story, I was racing my way to the thrilling and dramatic conclusion. There’s something disconcerting about reading a book and having one mindset throughout only to finish it with all of your thoughts being thrown back in your face when the author completely takes you by surprise and delivers something you just did not see coming. That’s what happened here with David Jackson and I can only applaud the fantastic way he finished this story. I personally didn’t see it coming and whilst I want to scream about how good the ending was, I also don’t want to give away spoilers so all I will say is, prepare yourself for a truly brilliant ending. It’s ensured that I’ll be thinking about these characters and this story for a short while longer yet.
This is shaping up to be a great series and I definitely enjoyed my time with Nathan and co more in Don’t Make a Sound than I did in Hope to Die. It’s clear that the demons from his past are still present, and that things may finally start to come to a head in subsequent novels. I can’t wait to see how Nathan develops as a character both personally and professionally and after three rather different books from David, I am excited to see what he writes next and also hope that he utilises the Liverpool setting more and allows the good and the bad of this city to shine through in his writing. Either way l’ll be at the front of the queue to read whatever it is that he writes next and until then I highly recommend that you check out this series.
At the time of scheduling this review, Don’t Make A Sound is my current read – so I’ve avoided reading Shaun’s review because I don’t want it to influence my own – Saying that, I am more than sure it’s a cracking review because I know Shaun and also, this book is bloody awesome! Watch this space for my review close to Publication Day!
