Title: The Next To Die
Author: Elliot Sweeney
Year: 2023
Genre: Crime, Thriller
The Next To Die is the debut novel in a new crime fiction series by Elliot F. Sweeney. When a boy copies the suicide of former cop Dylan Kasper’s daughter he is swept up in the mystery to investigate who or what drove him to it.
The book was chosen as my local book shops book club read and I entered it with no prior knowledge of the book although the title is definitely eye catching and made me excited to read it.
The book starts with Dylan Kasper receiving a phone call from a boy named Tommy saying that he can’t carry on anymore and then he learns that Tommy has committed suicide by jumping in front of a train.
The story then moves back to a few weeks before when Dylan first meets Tommy. We discover Dylan Kasper is a former police officer (who likes to be called Kasper) who has been living in a downward spiral, battling his demons following the suicide of his daughter Rosie, five years before. One day at the gym he meets and befriends Tommy and helps him when two guys look to threaten him with assault.
A few days later his father asks Dylan to befriend him, knowing that something is up but he cannot work out what it is. However just as Tommy is about to tell him, he clams up and then the next day he commits suicide.
Kasper is suspicious as it is in exactly the same circumstances as his daughter’s suicide a few years before, even to the same train station. Kasper knows this is because he told Tommy about his daughter’s suicide and he belives Tommy wanted Kasper to investigate further what the problem was.
As Kasper digs deeper though, he finds a whole number of skeletons in both Tommy and his families closet, but as he gets closer to the truth and enters the dark and seedy underbelly of London, will Dylan work out twhat happened or will it consume him and everyone he cares about?
Overall this book had me gripped from the first page and I struggled to put it down each time I picked it up to read it.
Dylan Kasper is a fascinatingly flawed character, who clearly wants to do the right thing for innocent people but also has a vigilante streak and is battling his demons from his daughter’s suicide a few years before. Indeed his journey as he is pulled into the world of investigating crime again is gripping and I wanted to read this book in huge chunks to unravel the mystery and the fact that you can never be quite sure how Kasper will react to situations makes the book very tense as he has to face up to his demons.
This is Sweeney’s first novel and he does a fantastic job of constructing a plot that is complex, with plenty of twists and turns and cliffhangers that make you want to read on and there are plenty of mysteries in this book that are all resolved in a satisfying and convincing way.
The supporting characters are also very interesting as we learn all of Tommy’s family are dealing with reprecussions of horrific events that happened years before and are coping with the trauma in different ways. The fact they don’t talk to each other also seems to contribute to the situation they have ended up in, adding an interesting commentary on mental health in families and not wanting to discuss it with those closest to you.
Even one of the guys who threaten Tommy at the start, Jazz, has an interesting dynamic as he is battling with his sexuality and this story has some surprising parallels with Kasper’s.
I think my only critique would be the villain’s in the story, who consist of a seedy London gangster and his muscle as they do come across a little bit pantomine and predictable for the genre, but the twists that Sweeney has during the books excellent plot probably mean you won’t notice this during an initial read through.
I would definitely recommend giving this book a try and I look forward to reading more in this series in the future, it is labelled as a Dylan Kasper thriller so I’m hoping we won’t see the last of this character. If you have read this book then let me know down in the comment what you think of it.
