AN ADDRESS TO DIE FOR…
There is a killer on the loose.
And he is targeting one specific address – 138 Main Street.
The problem? There are over 7,000 Main Streets in the USA.
And no clue which one will be next.
For FBI Special Agent Ben Walker and his rookie colleague, Officer Zoe Hill, the pressure to solve the case is unimaginable. There aren’t enough police officers to cover every house, and vigilante residents are attacking anyone who rings their doorbell. Main Street might be one of America’s most popular addresses, but for those living at number 138 it comes down to fight or flight.
Then a manuscript is sent to the New York Times, purporting to be the manifesto of the Main Street Killer and demanding radical social change. The killer demands that Wall Street be shut down for a day. The financial implications will be huge, but unless it happens he will escalate to bombings. Soon it won’t just be whoever lives at 138 Main Street who is at risk, but entire residential blocks.
As the effect of the terror campaign takes hold across the nation, Ben and Zoe find themselves in a race against time to stop the killer. But with their target always several steps ahead, and almost 3,800,000 square miles of ground to cover, they'll have to find him first…
I am thrilled to be hosting the blog tour for 138 Main Street by Gavin Bell today. Many thanks to Simon & Schuster for sending me a copy of the book and to Anne Cater from Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to fully express the rollercoaster of emotions I've just experienced as I raced through the pages of 138 Main Street. Gavin Bell's new book is a high octane threat from start to finish for thriller junkies but it's so nerve-shreddingly tense, it should probably come with a health warning!
Nobody notices when two separate homicides occur at different locations that share the same house number and street name but a third murder scene at another 138 Main Street confirms this is not a coincidence. Ben Walker from the FBI is assigned the investigation but as he visits the site in New York, the horrific news comes through that the killer has struck again – this time in Granton, Illinois. With over 7,000 households across the US living at 138 Main Street, people are forced to decide whether they flee their homes or stay put and hope the odds are on their side. The vast distances between the killer's victims means this could have been a book that was high on intrigue and excitement but which missed the crucial human element that ensures the storyline has emotional heft too. However, Gavin Bell cleverly circumvents this by including chapters which focus on some of the at-risk residents and perhaps even more crucially, by introducing Zoe Hill, a rookie police officer from Granton who is surprised to be seconded to the FBI.
Zoe has her own tragic history but although there is one moment in the book which finds her briefly blindsided, she is intuitive and resolute, despite being in the unenviable position of feeling an outsider both working for the FBI and in interactions with the uniformed officers who now look at her differently. It adds a fascinating dimension to the story, particularly as she is such a likeable character. Meanwhile, her interactions with Walker and especially with young analyst Brodie are refreshingly collaborative and the characterisation throughout complements the intense drama of the plot perfectly.
It's the scenes that follow some of the 138 Main Street occupants which are the most terrifyingly suspenseful, however. Gavin Bell allows us to know them well enough to see them not as mere statistics but as people who we grow to care about. I almost inhaled this superb novel, all the while holding my breath and with my pulse racing but just as I thought I might be able to relax for a while, another life would be threatened or a new twist upped the stakes of this already complex investigation still higher.
The brief insights we are given into the killer and their motives are gradually revealed until the full, disturbing truth becomes clear; as this outstanding thriller reached its breathless climax, I genuinely had no idea who would survive. The breakneck speed of the plot is addictive but this cat-and-mouse race against time still has an excellent sense of place, with both the contrasts between the different possible targeted residences and the historical urban development of the country as a whole explored here. I have been craving a brilliantly written, unbearably tense thriller and 138 Main Street delivered everything I was hoping for and more – a cast-iron certainty for one of my books of the year! Very highly recommended.
138 Main Street is published by Simon & Schuster; purchasing links can be found here.
Follow the blog tour, details are below.
About the Author
Comments
Post a Comment