Publishers Weekly
British author James's far-fetched but terrifying thriller is the first of a new series featuring Det. Supt. Roy Grace. Michael Harrison, a successful real estate developer with a penchant for practical jokes, gets a horrible taste of his own medicine. As a prank, four of his friends bury Michael alive in a coffin equipped with a breathing tube and a bottle of whiskey and leave him, ostensibly for a couple of hours. But when their van crashes head-on into a truck and three of them are killed (the fourth dies later "in hospital"), Michael is trapped. His cell phone doesn't work, but he does have a two-way radio whose companion is in the hands of Davey, a mentally challenged young man who finds the phone near the scene of the accident. Grace, a detective with a taste for the supernatural (he uses mediums to help him solve crimes), gets on the case and discovers just how devious Michael's friends have been. The "buried alive" trope is undeniably powerful, and Grace shows promise as a hero-but the crime and the plot surrounding Michael's plight are just too cumbersome and transparent to really engage the reader. Agent, Carol Blake at Blake Friedman. (Feb.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Call it a bachelor party gone wrong. What was to have been a pub crawl through Sussex ends with the prospective bridegroom buried in a coffin, equipped only with a breathing tube, a flashlight, a bottle of Scotch, a porn magazine, and a walkie-talkie. When the four perpetrators of this unusual prank are killed in an auto accident, the groom's future looks bleak. Then the coffin is found-empty. Has the groom managed to pull a Houdini? Assigned to the case is Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, who, still smarting from his wife's disappearance nine years earlier, is given to a belief in psychic phenomena when he isn't trolling the net for the new Ms. Right. Equal parts Stephen King, Ian Rankin, and Robert Harris, this first volume of a projected series of police procedurals by British crime writer James affords as smooth and efficient a ride as a Jaguar would along a twisty English lane. With a major media campaign planned, this should be a safe purchase for all public libraries.-Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A bachelor-party prank turns lethal in this gripping, overextended page-turner from veteran James (Ancient Mysteries, 1999, etc.). Michael Harrison has always come up with inventive, malicious tricks to play on old friends who are about to be married. So a few days before Michael's supposed to tie the knot himself with his stunning ex-secretary Ashley Harper, five old mates ply him with liquor, lock him in a borrowed coffin and bury him with only a breathing tube, a flashlight, a walkie-talkie, a bottle of Scotch and a skin magazine for company. Their plan to dig him up in two hours goes smash when a car accident sends one of them to the hospital in a coma and the other four to the morgue in body bags. What will become of Michael now? The good news is that the walkie-talkie his pals left near his gravesite is almost immediately discovered by a passerby; the bad news is that the finder is simple-minded Davey Wheeler, an encephalitis victim whose six-year-old mentality can't grasp what the voice he's hearing is begging him to do. Ashley's distraught calls to the Sussex Police Force eventually get Det. Supt. Roy Grace, who's evidently being groomed for a series, on the case. But for every bona-fide clue as to the whereabouts of the successful developer, Grace has to wade through lots of revelations that give him a bad feeling-the Cayman Islands account Michael shared with his partner Mark Warren, the false notes Grace picks up at the aborted wedding-that don't seem to get him any closer to the truth. Then James, perhaps impatient with cranking up the suspense a millimeter at a time, tosses in several shocks that send his far-fetched nail-biter spiraling into the realm of the incredible.Three-quarters of a great suspenser that doesn't know when to quit.
From the Publisher
A terrific tale of greed, seduction and betrayal” —Daily Telegraph
“Ingenious plotting, high suspense and tight writing” —Daily Mail
