📖 Book Review ~ Double Identity by Alison Morton

 

Pulcheria Press
January 2021

My thanks to the author for my copy of this book

Deeply in love, a chic Parisian lifestyle before her. Now she’s facing prison for murder.

It’s three days since Mel des Pittones threw in her job as an intelligence analyst with the French special forces to marry financial trader Gérard Rohlbert. But her dream turns to nightmare when she wakes to find him dead in bed beside her.

Her horror deepens when she’s accused of his murder. Met Police detective Jeff McCracken wants to pin Gérard’s death on her. Mel must track down the real killer, even if that means being forced to work with the obnoxious McCracken.

But as she unpicks her fiancé’s past, she discovers his shocking secret life. To get to the truth, she has to go undercover with the European Investigation and Regulation Service and finds almost everybody around her is hiding a second self.

Mel can trust nobody. Can she uncover the real killer before they stop her?

📖 My thoughts..

Mélisande des Pittones wakes in a London hotel with her dead fiancé in the bed beside her. As the last person to see Gérard Rohlbert alive Mel is under suspicion of causing his death and the British police will stop at nothing to lay the blame on her. However, when they they realise that there is far more to Rohlbert's death than at first appears, the police investigative team make the decision to utilise Mel's exemplary military background, as an ex-member of the French special forces, to move the investigation forward.

Anyone who has read Alison Morton's Roma Nova series will be aware of just how good she is at creating strong and decisive female characters and in Mélisande des Pittones she gives us a capable and determined protagonist who knows her own mind, and who won't be bullied by men of rank. That she is grieving for the loss of her fiancé is evident at the start of the story but as the many twists and turns in the plot start to get underway, so Mel begins to doubt if in fact she ever really knew the complexity of Gérard Rohlbert's true character. 

Setting the story primarily in London gives the book a good starting a point, especially pairing Mel with DS McCracken, a typical British police detective, but I think the strength of Double Identity lies in the way the plot encompasses both British and European surveillance and takes this clever, crime thriller from London and into Europe with seamless precision.

Double Identity is the first in a proposed new series of crime thrillers by this talented author and it certainly gets the series off to a cracking start. The pace is fast and furious, the characters both likeable and detestable in equal measure and the complex, and decidedly dangerous, plot kept me guessing from start to finish. I look forward to meeting up with Mélisande des Pittones, and hopefully, DS McCracken, in future crime thrillers.

 

About the Author

Alison Morton writes award-winning thrillers series featuring tough, but compassionate heroines. She blends her deep love of France with six years’ military service and a life of reading crime, historical, adventure and thriller fiction. On the way, she collected a BA in modern languages and an MA in history.

"Grips like a vice - a writer to watch out for" says crime thriller writer Adrian Magson about Roma Nova series starter INCEPTIO. All six full-length Roma Nova thrillers have won the BRAG Medallion, the prestigious award for indie fiction. SUCCESSIO, AURELIA and INSURRECTIO were selected as Historical Novel Society’s Indie Editor’s Choices. AURELIA was a finalist in the 2016 HNS Indie Award. The Bookseller selected SUCCESSIO as Editor’s Choice in its inaugural indie review.

Alison now lives in Poitou in France, where part of Double Identity is set and is writing a sequel as well as continuing her Roma Nova series.

CONNECT WITH ALISON:

Connect with Alison on her thriller site: https://alison-morton.com

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/alison_morton @alison_morton 

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