First off, my thanks to Netgalley and Urbane Publications for my copy of Death In Profile.
About the book (via Goodreads):
The genteel façade of London’s Hampstead is shattered by a series of terrifying murders, and the ensuing police hunt is threatened by internal politics, and a burgeoning love triangle within the investigative team. Pressurised by senior officers desperate for a result a new initiative is clearly needed, but what?
Intellectual analysis and police procedure vie with the gut instinct of ‘copper’s nose’, and help appears to offer itself from a very unlikely source – a famous fictional detective. A psychological profile of the murderer allows the police to narrow down their search, but will Scotland Yard lose patience with the team before they can crack the case?
My thoughts:
I had Death In Profile on my kindle for a while before I got to it so with publication day looming I figured this week was as good as any to start it!
I had no idea what to expect when I started reading as I hadn’t read any reviews before I started as I like to go into a book with as little knowledge as possible, bar the blurb.
I was pleasantly surprised by this book though. Guy Fraser-Sampson has a very nice writing style, and though it took me a few chapters to get into it, i found myself enjoying it.
Death In Profile is a modern whodunnit, but it also manages a nod to classic crime fiction along the way. I don’t (and have never) read any of the classic detective novels so I don’t pretend to know much about them but I can see how the author has managed to weave the classic into the modern.
The story focuses on the murders of five women in the Hampstead area of London and how the various teams investigate them. I really liked the characters in this book too. There’s the classic “old school” detective, working alongside the decidedly “new school” detectives and how their methods differ is very interesting to read and to see what results are yielded from their investigations.
At times, I found myself thinking I knew who had committed these murders, and then I would turn the page only for my notion to be shot down immediately. There are clever hints scattered around Death In Profile and I really enjoyed trying to work it out, even if I was wrong more than once!
Guy Fraser-Sampson has written a great novel. It harks back to the classic detective novels, while managing to stay completely relevant and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I gave Death In Profile 4 stars on Goodreads. It is published on March 28th by Urbane Publications and you can pick up a copy directly from Urbane Publications HERE.
Happy reading! 🙂
