This horror-filled story would be great for audiences that like their thrillers pitch black.
A deeply dark, chilling and horror-filled thriller sees an old case re-examined and painful memories resurface. A brutal attack sees Detective Raven Heart looking into her old case with the Palmyra Python a.k.a Ethan Reyes, 10 years after his capture. Reyes’ modus operandi is to sadistically torture his victims until the beg for death, then leave them to suffer. As similar cases start to crop up, Raven is sure there is a connection to Reyes. This is a seriously dark thriller that sees Raven having a Silence of the Lambs style information exchange with Ethan’s former cellmate, serial killer Ezekiel Schiller, residing on death row for his own horrific attacks on pregnant women and their unborn children. In order to survive this case, Raven must fight against being overwhelmed by her own past. ‘Death’s Delay’ by Craven Blood has a truly chilling plot. From the graphic violence of Ethan to the twisted predilections of Ezekiel. The author definitely has a knack for thinking up and portraying the horrifying. As the story develops and through Raven’s visits to Ezekiel to make progress in her investigations we learn a lot about Raven’s past and what drives her, making her a character you root for and want to succeed. Her maternal instinct and an instinct to protect drives her actions at key parts of the book, which made her final act (or lack of action I should say) a bit confusing to me. There are changes of perspective throughout the book, and with them jumps in time. This has a disorienting effect that was effective at keeping me unbalanced and not sure what was going to happen next. However, especially towards the end of the book, I found that it actually managed to break the tension instead of building it, revealing the safety of a character before you saw them in peril, which I think may be the opposite of what was intended. This horror-filled story would be great for audiences that like their thrillers pitch black. The events of ‘Death’s Delay’ had my hair standing on end at times and I’m sure it will haunt me for a while.
Charlotte Walker, A LoveReading Ambassador