Dead Simple - Hardcover

James, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 078671641X ISBN 13: 9780786716418

Publisher: Carroll & Graf, 2005

Synopsis

Michael Harrison had it all: good looks, charm, natural leadership, a wicked sense of humor, and now, Ashley, his fiancée. While out celebrating with a group of friends a few nights before the wedding, Michael suddenly and unexpectedly finds himself enclosed in a coffin equipped only with a flashlight, a dirty magazine, a walkie-talkie, and a tiny breathing tube. It's all in good fun — payback for the grief his mates suffered due to his own penchant for tomfoolery — that is until the four are killed in a drunk driving accident just moments after leaving Michael completely alone and buried alive.

Detective Superintendent Grace—himself dealing with the pain of losing his wife—is brought on to the case when Ashley reports Michael missing. Suspicions are raised when Michael's only friend not at the bachelor party refuses to cooperate, and Ashley's faithfulness—not to mention her increasingly mysterious past—are suddenly thrown in to question. As Superintendent Grace soon discovers, one man's disaster is another man's fortune.

About this title

About the Author

Peter James is a noted crime writer in the UK and an internationally known film producer. He was the executive producer of the recent film adaptation of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. This is his first novel in a series to feature Detective Superintendent Grace.

Reviews

British author James's far-fetched but terrifying thriller is the first of a new series featuring Det. Supt. Roy Grace. Michael Harrison, a successful real estate developer with a penchant for practical jokes, gets a horrible taste of his own medicine. As a prank, four of his friends bury Michael alive in a coffin equipped with a breathing tube and a bottle of whiskey and leave him, ostensibly for a couple of hours. But when their van crashes head-on into a truck and three of them are killed (the fourth dies later "in hospital"), Michael is trapped. His cell phone doesn't work, but he does have a two-way radio whose companion is in the hands of Davey, a mentally challenged young man who finds the phone near the scene of the accident. Grace, a detective with a taste for the supernatural (he uses mediums to help him solve crimes), gets on the case and discovers just how devious Michael's friends have been. The "buried alive" trope is undeniably powerful, and Grace shows promise as a hero—but the crime and the plot surrounding Michael's plight are just too cumbersome and transparent to really engage the reader.
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James, the executive producer of the recent film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, brings his filmic talent to a suspense tale that is almost excruciatingly easy to visualize. His opening premise is startlingly simple, that of the trickster tricked. Four friends celebrate one of their members' impending marriage by embarking on a pub crawl through several Sussex villages. What the groom-to-be doesn't realize is that his pals plan to play a payback prank on him by burying him alive (with a breathing tube and a walkie-talkie) for a couple hours. They leave the scene and are killed by an oncoming vehicle. Enter Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, assigned to investigate the missing-bridegroom case. Grace finds the case difficult, both because of the dearth of clues and because of his own wife's disappearance some years before. Achingly well plotted, with suspense that has no letup. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 078671641X
• ISBN 13: 9780786716418
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336