‘A new terror is sweeping Barnwell and Hunter faces a killer whose evil surpasses all others.’

“The discovery of a skeleton buried beneath the altar of an old chapel should not have raised an eyebrow, but this one was different. This one had been savagely murdered, and all the evidence points to the blood-thirsty killer the press have dubbed ‘The Beast of Barnwell’; a killer who has already served time for the brutal murder of a young girl and is now free.

Is this his handiwork?

In the midst of the enquiry, a 22 year old woman is abducted on her way home from work. Is there a link?

To add to Hunter’s workload his former boss, Michael Robshaw, is deliberately mown down and left for dead.

Why?

In his search for the truth Hunter returns to his undercover roots – with deadly consequences.”

I am thrilled to welcome you to my stop on the Shadow of the Beast blog tour…and hooray, it’s publication day!  Happy book birthday Michael Fowler and Caffeine Nights Publishing. Shadow of the Beast is book five in the DS Hunter Kerr series.  I haven’t come across this series or author before, but I will definitely be keeping a lookout for Michael Fowler’s books in the future.  (And hey, it wouldn’t be a damppebbles review if I wasn’t going into a series somewhere around book 5, would it?!)

Construction work digs up a human skull.  DS Hunter Kerr is called to the scene to start a new murder investigation.  Except it’s not a recent death.  The body is that of a young woman who was murdered in the 1980s.  But that’s only half of the problem.  Placed upon her corpse is the skull of a cow, and it’s quite obvious that the skull had skin and flesh covering it when it was first interred with the victim.  There starts a particularly difficult investigation for DS Kerr and his team, which goes to prove that time does not heal all wounds.  Time just makes it harder to solve a murder investigation.  The body count is rising as the investigators dig as far back as the 1970s.  Can Kerr and his team discover who has been getting away with murder for all this time?  And what of the savage hit and run accident that has put Crime Manager, Michael Robshaw into ICU?  Is this current vicious attack related to past misdemeanours…?

There’s nothing like a good ol’ police procedural to lose yourself in and Shadow of the Beast did just that for me.  This was my first introduction to Hunter Kerr and team and I will be making a point of reading the other books in the series as soon as the #terrifyingTBR starts to reduce a little.  I was expecting a strong and rather strapping DS with a name like Hunter Kerr and thankfully Michael Fowler’s writing and my imagination didn’t let me down!  I liked Hunter.  I expect there’s a lot to his back story that I’m not aware of but he did feel different to my normal lead investigators.

Even though the majority of the investigation is written around a cold case it was still exciting to read with twists and turns.  One of the characters oozed evil for me, a real nasty piece of work.

Would I recommend this book?  I most certainly would, what’s not to love?!  It fits the bill perfectly for those autumnal evenings where all you want to do is snuggle on the sofa with a glass of wine and a good book.  Lovely!

Four out of five stars.

Thanks to Noelle Holten, Caffeine Nights Publishing and Michael Fowler for providing me with a copy of Shadow of the Beast in exchange for an honest review.

Shadow of the Beast (DS Hunter Kerr #5) was published in the UK by Caffeine Nights Publishing on 6th October 2016 and is available in paperback and eBook format | amazon.co.uk | amazon.com | Waterstones | Goodreads | Caffeine Nights Publishing |

Michael Fowler was born and brought up in the Dearne Valley area of Yorkshire where he still lives with his wife.

At the age of 16 he left school with the ambition of going to art college but his parents’ financial circumstances meant he had to find work and so he joined the police.

He has never regretted that decision, serving as a police officer for thirty-two years, both in uniform and in plain clothes, working in CID, and undercover in Vice Squad and Drug Squad, retiring as an Inspector in charge of a busy CID in 2006.

Since leaving Michael has embarked on two careers: he is an established author with two crime series to his name: DS Hunter Kerr and DS Scarlett Macey, and he has also co-written a true crime story.

He is a member of the Crime Writers Association and International Thriller Writers.

Author Links: | Website | Twitter | Goodreads |