Dead Memories

DI Kim Stone has been called to an incident at a flat in a tower.  Her DS, Bryant doesn’t want her to enter the flat.  Being stubborn, she goes ahead only to be confronted by a scene that recreated something that she had experienced thirty years before in a flat below this one.  She now has to convince her boss, DCI Woodward that it isn’t connected to her past.

The following morning DS Austin Penn and DC Stacey Wood are wondering if they have a new case on their hands.  Not long after they do find that they do have a case.  There were no needles at the scene, so how could two teenagers have overdosed?

The postmortem reveals that the lad had a bit of cracker wrapper in his throat.  This is the evidence that ensures that Stone knows that the scene was created and directed at her.

As Penn is working at his desk, a call comes in that a body has been found in a car that has been crushed.  The question now is, how are they going to get it out without destroying evidence?

Woodward has one stipulation for her to continue working on the case is that Dr. Alison Lowe is to work with the team.  Stone’s team had worked with her on a previous case.  Lowe was a profiler and behaviouralist, but Stone has no use for that.  She is also under the impression that Lowe is there to help the team, but that is not the case.  Lowe is there to observe Stone.

When an older couple are killed and burned in a vehicle, Stone decides to inform her team that she thinks that the killer is replicating disasters in her life in order to get at her.  The question arises, what traumatic event will the killer try to replicate next? There is a second question; who hates Stone the most to do this?

A third recreation leads Stone to almost punch a constable, but Bryant stops her.  However, it leads to her DCI pulling her off the case.  

How many more will die before the team without the leadership of Stone before the killing spree ends?  Author Angela Marsons’ psychological thriller is fast paced and intense.  I found it hard to put down.  A very good read.