Alex Gray was born and educated in Glasgow. She has been awarded the Scottish Association of Writers’ Constable and Pitlochry trophies for her crime writing and is the co-founder of the Bloody Scotland international crime writing festival.
Along with those accolades she can now be counted as being one of the great crime writers to be read by the Anchorsholme Crime Reading Group. They reviewed her book ‘Sleep Like the Dead’. her 8th novel featuring DCI Lorimer and criminal profiler Dr Solomon Brightman.
Sleep Like the Dead’s rollercoaster drama starts when Billy Brogan and his sister Marianne go missing. Marianne’s ex-husband Kenneth is gunned down and two men are dead at Billy’s flat!
Billy is actually on his way to Spain with the money for the hitman who killed Kenneth. Now the hitman remains in Glasgow looking not just for his money, but, for the elusive Marianne too!!
Here’s what one of the Reading Group thought –
If you like a good ‘whodunnit’ crime novel, this is not the book for you. Pretty soon into the book you know who the killer is – a professionally hired hitman, although at the beginning the police think it’s someone known to the victim.
The story was gripping enough though the brother was extremely naive for someone who was a fairly successful criminal in Glasgow.
There were more killings after the first one but none of them were particularly violent. I was disappointed by the novel – as well as a good story I like my crime books to be a challenge as to the identity of the killers!!
Ann W.
The Crime Group’s next meeting will be Thursday 13th July at 2pm where they will be talking about Kate Ellis ‘The Cadaver Game’.
