Product Description

On the night Brian Bishop murdered his wife, he was sixty miles away, asleep in bed at the time. At least, that’s the way it looks to Detective Superintendent Roy Grace who is called in to investigate the kinky slaying of beautiful young Brighton socialite, Katie Bishop.

Soon, Grace starts coming to the conclusion that Bishop has performed the apparently impossible feat of being in two places at once. Has someone stolen his identity, or is he simply a very clever liar? As Grace digs deeper behind the facade of the Bishops’ outwardly respectable lives, it starts to become clear that all is not at all as it first seemed. And then he digs just a little too far, and suddenly the fragile stability of his own troubled, private world is facing destruction . . .

Praise for Looking Good Dead:

'James is a master plotter . . . this follow-up to Dead Simple cannot fail to thrill' Daily Mail

'Will have you glued to your deckchair' Observer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44866 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk
Peter James came to many readers’ attention via his immense success as a horror novelist, but his more recent career as a writer of effortlessly ingenious and readable crime novels has – perhaps unfairly -- eclipsed his earlier work. (The author has claimed that he was, in any case, always essentially a crime writer – even in the days of his earlier acclaim).

Not Dead Enough marks another welcome appearance for the author’s quirkily characterised policeman Roy Grace (who we’ve already met in Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead). Here, Grace is investigating the bizarre slaying of a member of Brighton’s social elite, Katie Bishop. Her husband, Brian, appears to be in the clear – he was in another town at the time, sound asleep. But Grace begins to suspect the presence of a doppelgänger: is someone else -- nigh-identical to Bishop – involved? As in his previous cases, Grace’s diligent exhuming of murky secrets soon demonstrates that the Bishops’ outwardly settled lives had darker corners. And as Grace gets close to the truth, he finds – paradoxically – that it’s his own beleaguered private life which is on the line.

. With Not Dead Enough, we’re soon reminded that Peter James’ métier has long been machine-tooled plotting, and that particular skill doesn’t desert him here. James himself spends time with the police of the Brighton area (his own beat) and that research is seamlessly freighted into the narrative here.

Readers are confronted with a dizzying variety of tales of murder and deception these days, but this one has an individual strand that marks it out from the crowd. --Barry Forshaw

Observer
'I loved it.'

The Times
'Peter James creates a world we can smell, touch and feel...'

Customer Reviews

Not Dead Enough
Not Dead Enough is the third outing for Peter James' troubled detective, Roy Grace. In a complex plot, Grace's sanity is not only threatened with three murders, one suspect and little in the way of evidence, but the fact that he is still coming to terms with a wife who walked out on him nine years previous and has never been seen until ... possibly ... now, in a remote corner of Germany: add to that, a threat on the life of police mortician Cleo Morey, Grace's new girlfriend, and you have the trappings of a very tense and sophisticated novel, which, in the hands of a master story-teller like Peter James, offers you a very compelling read, full of plot twists and turns that come so thick and fast you barely have time to draw breath before the author gives you something else to think about. In the style of Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead, the book races towards an unexpected and chilling outcome, with well defined, 3D characters, something that has always been a trademark of James as readers of his previous novels like Denial and Faith will remember. Not Dead Enough comes very highly recommended: the only crime any reader would be guilty of is not rushing out and buying a copy.

Not Dead Enough
I enjoyed the first two Roy Grace thrillers immensely and found them difficult pull myself away from. The third is even better. The writing style is much tighter and, consequently, the suspense a notch or two higher.

Attention to detail and the nature of obsession seem to be very close to the author. The whole series is highly recommended but don't buy just one - it won't last very long.

Acceptable as an airplane book.
Like many readers, I first knew Peter James from his horror novels. I have been reading these Roy Grace detective novels with some interest, although I have to say that I still find myself missing something in his work.

Not Dead Enough spins a tale about a man who is a seemingly obvious murder suspect, if it only were not for the fact that it required him to to be in two places at the same time. The themes of the day are obsession and revenge. It kept me reading, I will give it that much. I do have to say that had I not been on an airplane, the overly complicated plot would most likely have struck me as rather tiresome.

The quality of the writing is good, and I like Roy Grace as a character. I plan to give James the benefit of the doubt and see if I can find something in the series than I like better than Not Dead Enough.

Not bad though, as airplane reading.