Dead Simple (Pan 70th Anniversary) - Softcover

James, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1509860185 ISBN 13: 9781509860180

Publisher: Pan Books, 2018

Synopsis

It was meant to be a harmless stag-night prank. A few hours later Michael Harrison has disappeared and his friends are dead. With only three days to the wedding, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace—a man haunted by the shadow of his own missing wife—is contacted by Michael's beautiful, distraught fiancée, Ashley Harper. Grace discovers that the one man who ought to know Michael Harrison's whereabouts is saying nothing. But then he has a lot more to gain than anyone realizes, for one man's disaster is another man's fortune.

About this title

About the Author:

Peter James is the international bestselling author of many award-winning novels. His Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, set in Brighton, has been translated into 37 languages with worldwide sales of over 18 million copies. In 2015 WHSmith customers voted him the Greatest Crime Author of All Time and in 2016 he received the coveted CWA Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award.

From Publishers Weekly:

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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About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1509860185
• ISBN 13: 9781509860180
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480