When I post on Random I know I am sending my thoughts out into cyberspace and who knows how many eyes will be reading and where they are located and who they are. I have my regular visitors from all over the world, most of whom are now familiar to me and welcome, but though the blogging world is now accepted and appreciated as a marketing tool it is difficult to quantify the influence or effect you may or may not have.
One of the unexpected pleasures of Random Jottings is to suddenly receive emails out of the blue saying they have been reading/following my blog and how much they enjoy it which I love when they pop up in my in-box. What I love even more is when a publisher drops by and says the same thing and then asks if I would like to review a particular book. The thrill of being deemed worthy of reviewing a book will never leave me and so you will understand one day why I was amazed to see an email from a name unfamiliar to me but identified in the subject line as 'Tess Gerritsen's editor'. Having just discovered, read and enjoyed all of this author's books I honed in like an Exocet and found I was being offered a copy of a debut novel by Niamh O'Connor, the front cover of which boasts a recommendation from Tess herself. So I said yes please and this book duly plopped through my letter box last week.
Since I have designated my reading this yeas as the Year of Living Dangerously as I seem to have been working my way through a whole swathe of crime writing, lots more have turned up unannounced so those hawk eyed publishers miss very little….
Having read thrillers this year set in Iceland, Sweden, Italy (Venice and Rome), SIcily and good old Brighton, I now find myself in Ireland with this novel set in the streets of Dublin. We meet Jo Birmingham who has been recently promoted and is one of the few female Detective Inspectors on the force. Add to this that she is separated from her husband, who just happens to be Dan Mason her boss, has two children, one a teenager and one just over a year old and we know we are in familiar territory. Woman in charge who has to prove herself while juggling with her family life and having a tough time. Have mentioned 
before that I know there are some fictional detectives who are happily married, but theya re very few and far between.
So I started thinking Oh dear here we go again, same old, same old but I have been caught out that way before and withheld judgement until I had got well into the narrative. Glad I did as I found a pacy well plotted story. There have been several brutal killings in Dublin and the killer has left a particular mark at the scene of each crime so that Jo realises that they have a serial killer at work. I have read several thrillers this year featuring serial killers and all of the authors have, in their own way, built up the tension so that by the end of the book the reader is dying to find out his identity. In a couple I have read, I have guessed who it is; another led me so far up the garden path that I got totally lost and this one also took me round the houses as we begin to suspect, particularly after the death of one of Jo's colleagues, that something or somebody in the investigating team is not all they should be. Or are they? Threw me completely.
This is a debut novel and already looking forward to the second on in what promises to be an interesting series. Jo's personal life is left ambiguously open so we know that not only will there be more crimes, but we are in for more complications on the familial front and all is set fair for a long run, I hope.
The only quibble I have about If I never See you Again is the cover which does not do the story justice. A rather vapid looking blonde on the front and sorry to say that if I saw this in a book shop I am not sure I would have picked it up and looked at it. I would have missed a treat so thank you to Transworld for sending me a copy of this great read.
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