The Man Made of Smoke by Alex North @penguinrandom #NetGalley #dark #thriller #suspense #bookreview

I am delighted to share my review today for The Man Made of Smoke by Alex North. This is a very tense murder mystery with a strong psychological theme.

My huge thanks to Penguin Random House for accepting my request to read this title via NetGalley.

You never forget the day you meet a serial killer.

Dan was just a teenager when he saw the man made of smoke, silent, watchful, vanishing into the mist. He was too scared to move, too scared to stop him. He’s carried the guilt ever since.

Now a criminal psychiatrist, Dan spends his life trying to understand the darkest minds.

But when his father disappears, he’s pulled back to the remote island he once called home, where something unsettling is waking.

A body has been found. The past is reaching through the fog. And the man made of smoke might never have left.

This time, Dan has to face what’s been waiting in the dark.

MY REVIEW

This is a very tense story. Dan is a psychologist. He gets a call to say his father, a retired police chief, is missing and possibly committed suicide. Dan discovers some old cold cases when he arrives at his childhood home, which his father was working on. His father was the one who found the body of a woman in some woods on his daily walk.

The father and son connection is good with this book, but there are things from Dan’s past that have lingering effects, and these are brought to the forefront of the story. The relationship between them is not what you would understand as being loving, there is a distance, although there are telephone calls.

Dan is filled with guilt; he could have done something as a child, but didn’t. He has never forgotten his, and the author uses it to great effect. Coming to terms with the death of his father, catching up with old friends, and trying to get some sort of progression leads Dan along similar lines to those of his father.

This is one of those stories that you just know is going to be tough. It does involve crimes that involve children, but the author does not go into details. There is enough detail to give the merest of details to let the reader know what happened.

The story is one that definitely gives you the sense of something bigger going on, that there is someone watching and that there is a lot that the reader just will not understand or realise until the closing chapters of the book.

There are several characters, and they have a role to play; some have a larger presence, but on the whole, these characters have problems of their own, mostly fearful of repercussions. This fearfulness leads to questions not being answered or not fully answered, the feeling that something’s being missed is ever present.

This is a crime thriller that has a huge psychological thriller aspect to it. It is a serious storyline, and it is quite complex. This is one I would definitely recommend.

Many thanks for reading my post, a like or share would be amazing 🙂 xx