Book Review - The Hiding Place by Simon Lelic

 The Amazon Purchase link below is an Amazon Affiliate link.

Amazon UK

Title: The Hiding Place

Author: Simon Lelic

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Netgalley

Publisher: Penguin

Publication Date: 5th May 2022

Rating: 5 Stars

FOUR FRIENDS. ONE MURDER. A GAME THEY CAN'T ESCAPE

'It was only a game.'

Until a boy went missing.

'No one was meant to get hurt.'

But a body has been found.

'Just some innocent fun.'

Except one of them is a killer.

Ready or not, here I come.

It's time to play hide and seek again.

THE WHISPER MAN meets THE GUEST LIST in this gripping story; DI Fleet is up against some of the most powerful people in the country as he attempts to discover the truth about what happened on the day of the game...

This had me intrigued and gripped from the start, and my interest didn't wane throughout. 

We get the story told in two timelines, from the POV of the victim 22 years ago in the time leading up to his death, and also of DI Fleet who after a tip off is needing to solve a 22 year old cold case, after a anonymous tip off gives the location of the body. 

Cold cases I've learnt through fiction are notoriously difficult to solve, so even more so when DI Fleet has his partner, no additional team or resources and there are links of some sort to a power man hoping to get into politics rather soon - so all sorts of interference from higher up. 

So a rather tricky case, where there doesn't seem to be much evidence, so its good old fashioned policework, and intuition required to try to solve this.  

The boarding school and its children that this centres around really caught my imagination, or perhaps given what occurs, should be my nightmares. 

This is well written, and really did hook me in and I was unsure for the majority of the book just who was responsible, and when the realisation comes, it was a case of OMG but also how did I not see that coming as there certainly were the seeds of it sprinkled throughout. 

It was the sections from the victim's POV that had me most involved, I really felt for him and his situation, and kept wanting to find out what would happen next. 

Kudos to Simon Lelic for yet another fabulous book. 

Thank you to Penguin and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.