The Blood Promise by Liz Mistry
A deadly gift.
Imogen Clark wakes up on her 16th birthday to find her parents dead at the breakfast table, along with a message from their killer.
A twist of fate.
Detectives Jazzy Solanki and Annie McQueen join the investigation, but the more they discover, the more Jazzy suspects that the killing is a twisted message for her. Jazzy shares the same birthday as Imogen, and believes that this is more than a coincidence.
A race to catch a killer.
When Jazzy discovers the connection between the killer and the stalker who has been following her for years, she is forced to confront the dark past she was desperate to keep hidden. She must stop at nothing to solve the case, before she becomes the next victim…
About the author
Liz Mistry moved to West Yorkshire in the late 1980s. Her gritty crime fiction police procedural novels set in Bradford embrace the city she describes as ‘Warm, Rich and Fearless’ whilst exploring the darkness that lurks beneath. Yet, her heart remains in Scotland, where childhood tales of bogey men, Bible John and grey lady ghosts fed her imagination.
Her latest work, The Solanki and McQueen crime series is set around West Lothian, where she uses the distinctive landscape, historic heritage and Scottish culture as a backdrop to her gritty yet often humorous stories.
Struggling with clinical depression and anxiety for many years, Liz often includes mental health themes in her writing. She credits her MA in Creative Writing from Leeds Trinity University with helping her find a way of using her writing to navigate her ongoing mental health struggles. The synergy been creative and academic writing led Liz to complete a doctorate in creative writing researching the importance of representation of marginalised groups within the genre she loves.
Her husband, three children and huge extended British Indian family are a constant support to her. In her spare time, Liz loves visiting the varied Scottish and Yorkshire landscape, travelling, listening to music, reading and blogging about all things crime fiction on her website blog, The Crime Warp.
Social Media Links –
Website: lizmistry.com/
X (Twitter): LizMistryAuthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LizMistrybooks
Review
‘The Blood Promise’ is a deftly crafted and plotted crime book that will keep readers hooked from the first to last page! I am a huge fan of Liz’s work and I was very excited to hear that she was finally writing a series that was set in Scotland, her home country. It did not disappoint at all, in fact, it exceeded all my expectations and delivered a cracker of a book! I am fully a signed-up member of the Jazz Queens fan group.
Although this book has a lot of humour included in the narrative, it's also not for the faint-hearted as some of the scenes, the opening ones in particular are very descriptive and very dark. But then I expected that from Mistry, but what I didn't expect was all the humour! The two main protagonists are demoted cops DC Jasmine Solanki (Jazzy) and DC Annie McQueen (Queenie) have a lot of baggage in their backstories. To begin with, neither woman likes the other and both come across as having abrasive personalities but as the book and story progress and we learn about their backstories you begin to understand their characters and how they cope with life. Plus as the case progresses you learn that Jazzy has a very personal connection to it all.
One thing I admire about Liz’s work is that she always manages to write about damaged characters and accurately portray their mental health struggles. Her characters always show how nuanced mental health struggles can be and she shows great empathy in creating them. Her characters always have light and shades to them and I love how diverse they are. They say a writer should always write about what they know and Liz is a shining example of how this works amazingly in her books. Considering Liz wrote her doctoral thesis on mental health portrayal in crime fiction you know that anything in her books is going to be on point!
This is the start of what I hope is going to be a very long series as I loved reading it and it is set in a part of Scotland that most crime writers ignore Livingston, which means that it's going to have its own unique dynamic! I can't wait to read what is coming next!
Let me know if you pick this one up!
