Deadly Secrets by Ann Girdharry #BlogTour

Why had he not broken the silence? Why had he been such a coward? It was simple. He wanted to live. And he knew for certain that if he failed to keep the pact he would end up dead. there was a deadly spider at the middle of the web and it watched everything he did.

Deadly Secrets by Ann Girdharry is a police procedural/psychological thriller. This is the second book in the series, a sequel to Deadly Motives, which reads as a standalone.
Past is never far away, and some secrets are too deadly to keep.

An elderly patient, Mr Quinn, is agitated on his deathbed. After a distressing visit from a menacing stranger, he tries to confess the sins of the past to the nurse who's caring for him in his last days. His deadly secret has to do something with the word "boys" which he whispers to Nurse Michelle Dixon.
Hours later, the kind-hearted nurse is found brutally murdered.

Mr Quinn is not a harmless old gentleman. Years ago he was the headmaster of Bladen School, an Approved School for young male offenders which was a dreadful institution, with harsh regime and brutality dispensed to its victims by the merciless masters.
Twenty years earlier, two boys, Kevin and Barry, went missing from school. The official version was that they managed to run away. Nobody was making a great effort to find them.

Quinn knew what has happened, he "had spent the rest of his life trying to pretend that night never happened. He had terrible nightmares and he hated the smell of fresh earth to this day and, like the others, he swore he would keep the secret or pay a terrible price."

Now, with the death of Quinn and savage murder of Nurse Dixon, the cold case comes back into the spotlight.

Detective Inspector David Grant and his team at the Himlands Heath office begin their investigation of the nurse's murder, which quickly escalates into a killing spree.

A rich local family appears to be heavily embroiled in the tragic events, both past and present.
"Sir Paul (Watson) was the local magistrate and was responsible for sentencing offenders.
The Watsons' family wasn't simply rich, it was wealthy beyond most people's imaginations."

Is he the culprit? Grant and his team have to track the killer, who's been getting away with murder for many years. The pacing is picking up speed, soon the team has to deal with not one but several murders. While some victims seem to be connected to the disappearance of the two boys twenty years earlier, the killer is also targeting ordinary people who have nothing to do with the school.
Just who is this criminal who takes a sadistic pleasure in watching his victims drown?

As a profiler, it is Ruby's job to get inside the killer's mind.
"Her past and the children's home had left scars which meant she wasn't used to letting people past her barriers.
Ruby Silver was a shared resource across Sussex Police but he (Grant) was proud to be the one who discovered her. Ruby was a top-notch criminal psychologist. She'd proven her worth on his last serial killer case."

Ruby recreates the psychological profile of the killer. Why would they want to attack "nice ordinary girls with a happy life and a loving family?"

She is also watching her team mate and potential love interest Tom.

Sergeant Tom Delaney has dyslexia and "he rarely wrote up his notes, preferring to use voice-to-text software to dictate them. One day he wanted to be as good as Grant."
The aftereffects of Tom's childhood trauma - he discovered his father's body when he was 10 years old - shape his current state of mind, and his investigation skills. He still has flashbacks from that terrible day. Tom's issues are acutely observed and sympathetically portrayed. The challenges he faces are described realistically, without a melodrama.

This chilling tale, gripping and bursting with twists, will appeal to the fans of authors like Angela Marsons, Robert Bryndza and Helen H. Durrant.

There are several chapters, written from the point of view of the killer, which are insightful into the mind of the sadist, but could also be distressing to read.
While the team members are portrayed realistically, some of the characters, like the Watsons, are a pure caricature.
And without going into details so as not to give away any spoilers, I found it difficult to believe that the criminal mastermind was so omnipotent. It is understandable why they would keep the first of their abused victims under their thumb and make them do their bidding, but the others? Like the headmaster, why would he obey in the first place?

Potential triggers: child abuse, sadistic murders.



Purchase Links

UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deadly-Secrets-must-crime-thriller-ebook/dp/B08BLNV9LM/

US - https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Secrets-must-crime-thriller-ebook/dp/B08BLNV9LM/

Author Bio –

Ann Girdharry is a British, crime thriller author.
She's a trained psychotherapist and worked as a manager in the not-for-profit sector for many years.
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Ann is an avid reader and her favourites are crime and suspense. She regularly talks about her favourite reads to her newsletter subscribers. She enjoys travelling and apart from the UK she’s lived in the USA (where her first daughter was born), Norway (where her second daughter was born) and she currently lives in France.

She was an ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARD Finalist 2017.

Social Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnGirdharryAuthor
Website: https://anngirdharry.weebly.com/my-readers-group---free-gift.html
Twitter: @GirdharryAnn
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14179591.Ann_Girdharry

Many thanks to Ann Girdharry and Rachel's Random Resources for an e-copy of the book!

This post is part of the blog tour for Deadly Secrets.