Dead Man’s Grip by Peter James finds Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace in yet another thrilling story that has suspense, fear, violence and the feeling of helplessness that makes for a compulsive read.
Carly Chase is driving to work, so is lorry driver Stuart Ferguson, and the driver of a speeding white van who dashes into an American student Tony Revere and sends him under the wheels of the 16-wheel big lorry. Carly veers away to avoid a collision and spins out of control, ends up banging into the wall of a cafe.
Tony is stuck under the tyres, his abdomen split open and his leg detached and in the middle of the road. He is the son of a ruthless mafia mobster, and a mother who is almost a homicidal maniac who dotes on her son and had let him go to England in spite of severe misgivings. She will settle for nothing less than the painful and real slow annihilation of all those who were part of the crash, and calls up her brother, who is also a mobster, to arrange retribution.
After the suspected driver of the white van and the lorry driver both die under gruesome circumstances, Grace realizes that he isn’t investigating a regular hit-and-run, and that he will now have to prevent the very proficient hit man, Tooth, from reaching the next and only surviving person from the incident, Carly.
Grace is torn between his work, and the fright he gets when his girlfriend Cleo develops complications with her pregnancy. His wife Sandy had suddenly gone missing years ago and is still untraceable.
l Dead Man’s Grip by Peter James Pan Macmillan Rs.299