"What was she going to do about her? She just wouldn't leave her alone and often frightened her. Julie was aggressive and manipulative and always managed to get her own way. She didn't care what anyone thought, had no conscience and had, on a number of occasions, been violent towards her... The unpredictable side of her nature unnerved her. She had spent years trying to shake her off but she always found her".
Arlington Terrace by Tracy Martin-Summers is an utterly chilling psychological detective thriller.
As this is the sequel to Gordon Square, we meet again Detective Sergeant Mike Brugge and his team at Holden City Central. Although it works perfectly as a stand-alone, reading Gordon Square first would give you a better understanding of the dynamics between the main protagonists as well as reveal the horrors of the past.
We encounter the tragic sisters, Linda and Rachel, whose mental recovery is being supervised and scrutinised by their doctors and psychiatrists. While Linda is making a good progress, her younger sister is way behind with her rehabilitation. It looks like her childhood ordeal is "too far ingrained and the effects could possibly be permanent".
Linda feels "burdened with guilt that she had survived sufficiently to go forward but Rachel was a prisoner with an indefinite sentence". She herself is ready to move on, and immerses herself in studies.
Fast forward to 2026 (that's not a typo, we are indeed in 2026).
Mike and Mel are leaving their neighbourhood to move to a new house. He is reluctant to move away from his old haunts and mates. "Mike was a real creature of habit and didn't adjust well to change. He liked everything to stay the same. It made him feel comfortable, he knew where he was and that included people". He even turns down a detective inspector role, leading a team in Vice, as he prefers to stay in his existing role as a DS at Holden CID.
Emma is on a three-months-long sabbatical. She grabs an opportunity to move to an apartment in Arlington Terrace, Holden. Her new lodgings are very fancy, with designer interior and racks of very expensive wine. She wouldn't have been able to afford this place, if it were not a sublet, off the record. It is a perfect solution for Emma, with no questions asked and no references requested. She had heard so much about the area, which appears posh and idyllic.
Emma is on a tight budget, until she finds a job. Nobody knows her in the neighbourhood, she can slip in and out of her apartment unnoticed, and live incognito among the locals.
She doesn't tell anyone where she moves to, so how did Julie find her again? She's been very careful not to be tracked to her new abode. Emma is upset about Julie re-appearing in her life. "She always did this. Julie was a complete bully, a law unto herself, cared about no one but herself and Emma wished she had never met her... She had a habit of coming, stirring up trouble and then leaving again..."
We follow three different storylines, as they begin to interweave, creating an extremely dense and chilling picture.
Emma feels persecuted, she is bullied psychologically and physically, and considers a restraining order against her leach of a friend. She finally finds courage to go to the police. Mike wants to get to the bottom of what is going on here, between Emma and her so called friend. "There was something about that woman that spooked him. She had gotten under his skin and now his skin felt like it was crawling. What was it about her? Her vulnerability, her harrowing expression?... there was something else about her, something that was beginning to haunt him, he just couldn't put his finger on it..."
We follow Detective Sergeant Mike Brugge, Detective Constable Mel Brugge and Detective Sergeant Paul Osman as they are trying to unravel a crime which takes them back to the previous horrifying case.
The tension is set in motion, spiralling in wider circles as the creepy twisty storyline unfolds. I was convinced pretty many times what direction the storyline was going, but I got it wrong, the author has definitely outsmarted me. There are red herrings and twists galore, until the very last page. You will be shocked to the core.
Arlington Terrace is a cracking read, a haunting and twisty psychological thriller.
I reviewed Gordon Square earlier this year
This post is part of the blog tour for Arlington Terrace.
Many thanks to Tracy Martin-Summers, Michael Terence Publishing and Rachel's Random Resources for my copy of the book!
Author Bio –
Tracy was born in Harrow Weald, Middlesex in 1964, growing up in a loving family home. She married her first husband in 1990, has two grown up children and a granddaughter.
She studied a variety of topics via module learning, embarking on City and Guilds and NVQ courses, ranging from a brief spell in hairdressing to administration and now works for a utility company in North West London.
Tracy has numerous hobbies consisting of landscape painting to landscape gardening and always likes to paint the scene, even if it’s changing the colour scheme, yet again, within her home.
Tracy has always enjoyed writing and used to write short stories for her own children's amusement but it has only been in the last few years that she has taken this more seriously and has gone on to write her first debut crime detective Novel called Gordon Square.
Tracy Married her second husband in 2014 and now lives in Bedfordshire in a sleepy hamlet where she writes whenever she gets a spare moment.
My website is:
www.tracymartinsummers.co.uk and www.tracymartinsummers.com
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