Product Description

A terrifying read-in-one-gulp thriller with a killer premise: what do you do when the woman in bed beside you is a headless corpse ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151321 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-18
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Synopsis
Straight off I knew it was going to be a bad day. The room was stifling hot; and when I did finally manage to drag open my eyes, all I could see was blood. I thought I'd stepped into the middle of a nightmare. But I was wrong. The nightmare was only just beginning. Ex-soldier Sean Tyler wakes up in an unfamiliar room next to the headless corpse of a girl he's met recently. With his memory of the previous 24 hours wiped clean, he's hardly out of bed before the he notices a note next to the TV telling him to press play on the room's DVD machine. The film shows him stabbing someone to death. Tyler is confident that the footage is fake, but will a jury see things the same way? The man on the end of the phone tells him that if he wants the evidence to disappear, he must go to an address in east London, and await further instructions. Tyler knows he must do as he is told. He also knows that the phone caller has no intention of keeping him alive. To survive he must recover the missing 24 hours of his life and find out who's setting him up before his time runs out for good. The clock is ticking...

From the Inside Flap
When formersoldier Dan Tyler wakes up in a strange room on a bed covered in blood, with no idea how he got there, he thinks he's stepped into someone else's nightmare.

But he's wrong. This is reality.

The corpse beside him is Leah, a girl he's met recently. And it gets worse.

As he staggers from the bed the phone rings, and a voice tells him to press play on the room's DVD machine.The film shows Tyler killing Leah. Then he's told to go to an address in East London where he's to deliver a briefcase and await further instructions.

There's no way out. The evidence against him looks rock-solid.

Tyler's heading into terrible danger. If he's to survive the next 12 hours, he must find out who really murdered Leah and why.

From the Back Cover
`From the moment I open my eyes, I know it's going to be a bad day. The room's stifling hot; my head feels like a dwarf on speed's dancing a jig on it, and the blood … Well, the blood's everywhere.

It feels as if I've stepped into the middle of someone else's nightmare.

But I'm wrong. This is my nightmare. And it's only just beginning.'



`Simon Kernick writes with his foot pressed hard on the pedal. Hang on tight!'
Harlan Coben

`Great plots, great characters, great action. Simon Kernick might just be the best of Britain's new-wave crime writers.' Lee Child

Customer Reviews

Spectacularly Predictable
At the start of this book, Tyler, the central character, wakes up in a house he doesn't recognise. He's clearly been drugged, and when he rolls over to get his bearings, he finds the badly mutilated remains of his girlfriend next to him.

Soon after, he gets a phone call that tells him that if he doesn't do certain things, the police will be called and evidence will be presented to them that suggests that he was involved in the mutilation.

He follows the instructions, but because he clearly can't trust who put him in this position, he goes after those who he believes were really involved in the death for the remainder of the book.

You might think that all this might sound rather enjoyable, if a little disgusting (and the way I've described it, it might sound a bit like a "boys own adventure" for adults). Trust me when I say that it's too predictable to be enjoyable.

After I'd read Chapter 1, I guessed pretty what was going to happen. This pre-cognition I had wasn't helped by the fact that Kernick seems to have borrowed plot themes from his own books to help bloster his own story. Almost as soon as I read certain things, I just knew how they might be related to what he wrote in Relentless, the other Kernick book I'd read.

Now you might think I have a knack for guessing the endings of books. I don't. Anyone with half a brain would guess what was going to happen in this book. Anyone who has read anything that's remotely similar to this book would guess what's going on in this book too. Everything he writes in this book is that well telegraphed. Trust me on that.

In short, don't read this book. Have a good look for a book with a similar plot and read that book instead. It's almost bound to be better written.

Great, if you like that sort of thing!
This story is fast paced & action packed from the start. Unfortunately for me, I need a story to be believable, and regularly this story is neither believable or feasible. I am an avid reader of crime fiction of the type offered by John Harvey, Peter James & Peter Robinson, for me this book was not in their league, but then it belongs more in the genre' of Frederick Forsythe. I was intrigued & lured in by the synopsis on the back of the book, and at times found it an engrossing page turner, but the spell was often broken by an element of the story being ridiculous. Kernick also fails to give his characters any depth and as a result I didn't find myself particularly rooting for our hero or hating the baddies!

Pot Noodles
I almost didn't read this because there were so many negative reviews. However, if you accept the book as fast action, violent, definitely gripping, and the book equivalent of 'junk food' then I don't see the problem. Quickly consumed and enjoyed (with guilt?!), then quickly forgotten. This isn't meant to be literary; it's a pot noodle of a thriller and doesn't try and be anything else. I enjoyed the quick 'junk food' fix (though if you don't like violence then give it a miss - but it's unlikely you'd read a book called 'Severed' if you were squeamish!).
I also enjoyed another of Simon Kernick's pot noodle books: 'Relentless'.