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2000s: Come and Find Me – a challenge or a curse?
Come and Find Me
What you need to know before your trail
A prison riot breaks out in HMP Cloverdon where the most violent prisoners are held. One man escapes and others are killed or hospitalised. How did the riot start and what happened? The authorities need to find out, but first, the man who escaped needs to be caught and quickly.
DI Marnie Rome and her team think he may have escaped to try and find one of the love struck women who write to him from outside the jail. Women who write to prisoners for many reasons, and one of these might be next on his list.
The chase to find him though is fraught with danger. He could be watching, waiting. And one of these women might be his target. Unless someone else finds him first.
Travel Guide
London
HMP Cloverton is fictional and thank goodness. This is a prison visit with a difference. With clanging doors to cells, men who bunk in one cell who would rather kill rather than talk nice. Men who were like springs ready to unravel. And on one prison riot night, unravel they did.
A character wears Lynx aftershave which is described as apt since”he was now about to walk into a jungle”.
There is blood, anger, bloody injuries and an escapee who shoots from the prison with more energy than you know what to do with. This sets the pace for the rest of the book. A rush to find this monster with visits up to Keswick in Cumbria, across to Harpenden and another in Danbury to visit the women who write to this man, those connected to him and ghosts who flit from one page to another.
The novel is firmly routed in London however. The stomping ground of Marnie Rome and her team. A woman herself damaged by someone now in the prison system. Stained herself by murder.
The search for this man is looking not for a needle in a haystack but a ‘clean needle in a crackhouse” The language builds the setting and the setting oozes into the language. Prison life, riots, bars and brawls. An escapee with a score to settle. Brutal.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
Whoah Marnie Rome! This is one humdinger of a case! Talk about getting close to the action and entering into your nightmare all over again!
The first scene explodes onto the page – a scene as quite frankly, this and Sarah’s other books need to be on the TV. They’ve got that frenetic punchy energy that sizzles as you read. The language here was even more brilliantly delicious than in other books and when practically the whole book is set between a prison and a hospital ward with a few visits to see victims, that’s no mean feat.
This case – looking for an escaped prisoner – is described as not looking for a needle in a haystack but “looking for a clean needle in a crackhouse”. Pure Hilary genius right there. A crime scene in a house stuffed with old things becomes the “Antiques Roadshow massacre” So much evoked in three words. Horror wrapped up in humour. And there’s a likeness of a victim to a sheep on the side of the road I’ll never forget.
Come and Find me deserves to devour the most readers possible. It grabs you and if that ending doesn’t kick you in the place the sun don’t shine, then I don’t know what will. This really gets into the terrifying psyche of being in a prison, being in a cell with a nutter or two, at the centre of a riot when things get really ugly. What happens to those on the outside looking in. The women who write to these prisoners. The whole shebang.
Horrifyingly good. This is the Queen of the crime thriller which messes with your mind and lets you in to the darkness areas of the human mine.
Come and Find Me should be not just the title but the sign outside bookshops, libraries and, heck, anywhere signs exist so you are directed to a crime writer you really need to be reading if you aren’t already.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Come and Find Me
Destination: London Author/Guide: Sarah Hilary Departure Time: 2000s
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