Dead if You Don't by Peter James Review!

A PARENT'S WORST NIGHTMARE IS GRACE'S DEADLIEST CASE . . .

Roy Grace, creation of the CWA Diamond Dagger award winning author Peter James, faces his most complex case yet in Dead If You Don't.

Kipp Brown, successful businessman and compulsive gambler, is having the worst run of luck of his life. He’s beginning to lose, big style. However, taking his teenage son, Mungo, to their club’s Saturday afternoon football match should have given him a welcome respite, if only for a few hours. But it’s at the stadium where his nightmare begins.

Within minutes of arriving at the game, Kipp bumps into a client. He takes his eye off Mungo for a few moments, and in that time, the boy disappears. Then he gets the terrifying message that someone has his child, and to get him back alive, Kipp will have to pay.

Defying instruction not to contact the police, Kipp reluctantly does just that, and Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is brought in to investigate. At first, it seems like a straightforward case of kidnap. But rapidly Grace finds himself entering a dark, criminal underbelly of the city, where the rules are different and nothing is what it seems . . .

My Review
Dead if You Don't is the 14th in the Roy Grace series. I have read a few of the books in the series, I actually have all of them and need to get on reading the ones that I have missed. That said, I really had no problem reading this one even though I did not read them in order.

When Kipp Brown and his son Mungo arrive at a football match Mungo disappears, Kipp thinks that he is just soothing his ego after they had had an argument about a cell phone. Mungo had broken his cell phone and Kipp got upset and bought him a cheapie of which Mungo took offense to.

When he receives the message that someone has his son and they are demanding a ransom. At the same time, someone has planted a bomb in the stadium. Roy Grace is brought in and does his heroic thing in getting rid of the bomb. I turned out to be a dud. But Roy still investigates the two cases which take him deeper into the workings of the Albanian mob located in Brighton. 

Kipp has a gambling problem and keeps on gambling even though he has no money to gamble with. This causes some problems as how is going to pay the ransom for the kidnapping of his son and does something illegal to get the money. The kidnapping itself is sketchy and as the story gets deeper we find that this is a complex story of murder and kidnapping, two as a matter of fact,  that I was not expecting. But of course that is how Peter James writes, always leave the reader wanting and expecting more. It took me a while to get into the story but that was because Mr.James was setting up the plot and characterization. Once I was into the story I did not want to put the book down.

I have been a fan of the Roy Grace series from the start and will continue to do so! I actually ordered one of his older books, The House on Cold Hill, not a Roy Grace novel but one I am sure to love.

I received this book for review purposes.

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 thirty-seven languages with worldwide sales of over eighteen million copies, and has given him eleven consecutive Sunday Times number ones. In 2015 WHSmith customers publicly voted him the Greatest Crime Author of All Time and in 2016 he became the recipient of the coveted CWA Diamond Dagger lifetime achievement award for sustained excellence. Peter has also written a short story collection, A Twist of the Knife, and his standalone titles include Perfect People and The House on Cold Hill. He has also co-written a non-fiction account of Brighton’s toughest cases with former detective Graham Bartlett entitled Death Comes Knocking. The Perfect Murder, Dead Simple and Not Dead Enough have all been turned into smash-hit stage plays. All his novels reflect his deep interest in the world of the police. Three of his novels have been filmed and before becoming a full-time author he produced numerous films, including The Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. He divides his time between his homes in Notting Hill, London and near Brighton in Sussex.