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How I discovered this book: it was submitted to Rosie's Book Review Team, of which I am a member.
In a Nutshell: Novella. Former criminal turned good guy is forced back into the underworld. Set mostly in Melbourne.
I liked this book more and more as it went on. Ex-crim Jackson Forbes is confronted by a grown-up daughter he never knew about - and she wants something from him. Not just fatherly love, or money, but help; Frida is in trouble, and Jack is about to be pitched back into a world he thought he'd left behind.
This is a novella (40K words or under; I imagine this is around 40k), and I appreciated the way in which the story fitted perfectly into the shorter length; there was no feeling that it needed more detail anywhere, which in turn made me feel as though I had read a full-length novel. Any longer, and it might have dragged, or been filled with superfluous detail. It's an easy read and well-written, with a convincing plot.
I read another book by this author and my main complaint about that was that the characters didn't come across. In Secret Kill, however, I felt that Jack and Frida were completely real; there were no sudden shifts in personality like before. There was one revelation about Jack's past that made me less sympathetic towards him, but, boy, did he pay for it. I was fairly set on 4* all the way through, but the unexpected and unusual ending made me want to add an extra half star. Good one.
Thank you Terry
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