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Summary
Summary
Perfect strangers. A perfect holiday. The perfect murder.
In the standalone novel Rush of Blood, internationally bestselling author Mark Billingham puts a sinister twist on a deceptively innocent topic: the beach vacation.
Three British couples meet around the pool on their Florida holiday and become fast friends. But on Easter Sunday, the last day of their vacation, tragedy strikes: the fourteen-year-old daughter of an American vacationer goes missing, and her body is later found floating in the mangroves. When the shocked couples return home to the U.K., they remain in contact, and over the course of three increasingly fraught dinner parties they come to know one another better. But they don't always like what they find. Buried beneath these apparently normal exteriors are some unusual kinks and unpleasant vices. Then, a second girl goes missing, in Kent--not far from where any of the couples lives. Could it be that one of these six has a secret far darker than anybody can imagine?
Ambitiously plotted and laced with dark humor, Rush of Blood is a first-rate suspense novel about the danger of making new friends in seemingly sunny places.
Author Notes
Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston's Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel and also won the Sherlock Award for "Best Detective Created by a British Author." His books, which include the critically acclaimed Tom Thorne series, have been translated into twenty-five languages and have sold over four million copies. He lives in London.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Three British couples meet by chance during a vacation in Sarasota, Fla., in this intricate psychological thriller from Billingham (Die of Shame). They share fruity drinks and promise to keep in touch after their holiday, the kind of promises reminiscent of summer camp that never really pan out. Their vacation takes a dark turn when a mentally challenged 14-year-old, Amber-Marie Wilson, wanders away from the resort and vanishes. Back in England, somewhat awkward dinner parties ensue, with each couple hosting the others and the topic inevitably returning to Florida. When another girl with similar attributes goes missing in Kent, police on both sides of the Atlantic take notice and start paying much closer attention to this seemingly harmless group of people, one or more of whom is harboring something unpleasant. Billingham does a clever job shifting the setting from his usual turf, even if the tension isn't always ratcheted as high as it could be, and his characters aren't fully realized as usual. Agent: David Forrer, Inkwell Management. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Three London-area couples meet and pal around while vacationing at the same Florida resort, their holiday marred only by the disappearance of a developmentally delayed teenage girl on their last day in the Sunshine State. The holiday friendship deepens back home as the couples, each one very different from the other, take turns hosting dinner and meeting for drinks. But one of them has killed the girl, as revealed through first-person flashbacks. Which one? And why? Readers will enjoy puzzling it out as they gradually get to know the suspects through Billingham's deft and believable characterizations. Meanwhile, the Florida detective assigned to the case begins communicating with a detective-constable trainee in England, whose enthusiasm for her first real police work may just be a key in cracking the case. Billingham (Die of Shame, 2016) is a seasoned pro whose knack for combining a clever conceit with seamless execution ensures an absorbing read. He takes his time getting to the denouement, but readers who can resist reading the end in advance will savor the slow-burning suspense.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Ugly Americans on a European vacation are always good for a laugh. But you laugh at your peril at the Ugly Brits vacationing in America in rush of blood (Atlantic Monthly, $25), Mark Billingham's savage satire about good friends whose special bond originated in murder. Three couples who are all from London find themselves staying at the same cheesy beach resort on Siesta Key in Sarasota. That's as good a reason as any for Angie and Barry, Dave and Marina, and Ed and Sue to strike up a friendship when they meet at the Pelican Palms. The wives are jealous, competitive and catty, but still easier to take than their husbands. Ed is a vulgarian and a bully. Barry is a pathetic worm. Dave is a genial jackass. The thing is, one of these terrible tourists used precious vacation time to murder another guest at the resort, 14-year-old Amber-Marie Wilson, a friendly child with "mental difficulties," as her mother puts it. From the killer's interior monologues we learn that this won't be the last murder. Back home, where the couples have been hosting dinner parties to keep in touch, this perv is already haunting special-ed schools trolling for another victim. Billingham, who also writes the Tom Thorne mystery series, brings in investigators on both sides of the Atlantic to broaden the cast of characters and introduce some procedural details. Jeffrey Gardner, the American detective in charge, is the soul of compassion; but he'd be more inclined to give up on the file if it weren't for Jenny Quinlan, a trainee constable who prods him into letting her work his case along with a similar killing outside London. Even these good guys are flawed, which makes them attractively human, if not as monstrously fascinating as "the Sarasota Six," as they call themselves. "Nobody knows anyone really, do they?" Angie muses during one of the drunken dinner parties at which the hideous husbands and their enabler wives draw on their best social skills to conceal their kinky pleasures and secret sorrows. It's maddening, the way Billingham keeps us in suspense, cringing from each character while keeping watch as if our own lives depended on it - but we wouldn't want it any other way. the great war is never over in the mournful tales of the mother-and-son authors who write as Charles Todd. Inspector Ian Rutledge, the Scotland Yard detective in this elegant historical series, was shellshocked in battle and is still haunted by the dead. But those personal nightmares make him profoundly responsive to the suffering of others, like the wounded souls he encounters in RACING THE DEVIL (Morrow/ HarperCollins, $26.99). In 1916, on the eve of the Battle of the Somme, a group of English officers make a bet with the Devil. Those who survive will meet in Paris and race their motorcars to Nice. At the end of the war, the race is on, but one car is forced into a ravine and the driver barely survives. A year later, in East Sussex, another racing car is rammed off the road, and this time the driver - not the captain who owns the car, but the local rector - is killed. Evidence of foul play brings Rutledge down from London to a village that, like all the rural places he has visited in this series, is still mourning its war dead. Todd writes a rich mystery, but in investigating the murder Rutledge also probes the psychic wounds of the village and tries to minister to the collective survivor guilt of the living. "The dead," as the voice in his head tells him, "still believe it was worth dying for." anyone toying with the idea of emigrating might consider Siglufjordur, the outermost village in the north of Iceland and the setting of SNOWBLIND (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur, $25.99), a first novel by Ragnar Jonasson in a chilly translation by Quentin Bates. The story is set during the 2008 fiscal collapse; but since the boom never made it this far north, the crash doesn't make an impact either. Remote as it is, Siglufjordur proves the ideal job posting for Ari Thor Arason, a former theology student who recently graduated from the police academy. Ari Thor may be naïve when it comes to affairs of the heart, but he shows intelligence and persistence in investigating the apparently accidental death of a local author. This classically crafted whodunit holds up nicely, but Jonasson's true gift is for describing the daunting beauty of the fierce setting, lashed by blinding snowstorms that smother the village in "a thick, white darkness" that is strangely comforting. IT'S NEW YEAR'S eve in Sam Hawken's hard-boiled action novel WALK AWAY (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $26). His protagonist puts in sweat time at the gym punching the heavy bag, rides home on a Harley, chows down on a poundand-a-half steak, with a bottle of Jack Daniel's . . . and then she falls into bed. Camaro Espinoza, who did tours in the Middle East, is tougher than an army boot. But she's got a soft spot for her sister, Annabel, who periodically calls for help with the brutal men she keeps hooking up with. Annabel sends out another distress call from Carmel begging her sister to rescue her one more time. But in dishing out punishment to Jake Collier, Camaro earns the hatred of his brother, Lukas, a stone killer whose homicidal exploits account for much of the action. Camaro isn't entirely believable as a fighting machine, but it's deeply satisfying to watch her take out an animal like Lukas.
Kirkus Review
Trouble in paradise follows three British couples back home.Their sojourn at Pelican Palms on Siesta Key, Florida, should be nothing but relaxing for veteran visitors Ed and Susan Dunning as well as for novices Angela and Barry Finnegan and Marina Green and Dave Cullen. And if Ed seems to leer a little too much at shapely Marina, or Angela is too outgoing to suit gruff Barry, maybe its just the novelty of being far from home and away from the cares of daily life. It would all be quite a lark for the six of them if only Patti Lee Wilsons not-quite-right teenage daughter didnt just disappear in the middle of it. Once home, Angela invites the other two couples to dinner. But does Angela just want to keep up the relationship that seemed so close and easy in Florida? Or does she want to stir the pot that Amber-Marie Wilsons disappearance set on the boil? As the others mull the consequences of transplanting an American-born friendship to home soil, Trainee Constable Jenny Quinlan develops a professional interest in the sixsome. Ever since Quinlan called Detective Jeffrey Gardner, he becomes convinced that the solution to the Wilson case is right under her nose in the U.K., and she will push the trans-Atlantic envelope as far as she can to prove it. Billingham, creator of DI Tom Thorne (Die of Shame, 2016, etc.), provides a stand-alone thats both creepy and shocking as he probes a friendship with complexities even the friends cant fathom. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
British writer Billingham's ("Tom Thorne" series) intriguing psychological mystery brings an ominous note to the family beach vacation. Three unlikable British couples become acquainted with one another at the Sarasota, FL, resort where they are on holiday. Just as their trip is ending, a teen-age girl goes missing and is later found murdered. The couples return to London and keep in touch through a series of dinner parties though perturbing facts about one another begin to emerge. Meanwhile, a Florida investigator and an eager Scotland Yard trainee begin to probe. The narration by Toby Longworth is sharp; he gives the characters distinct voices and personalities VERDICT Recommended for mystery fans who like a bit of satire and lots of twists and turns.-Phillip Oliver, formerly with Univ. of North Alabama, Florence © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
