Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant – Jen Med’s Book Reviews

Today I wish a very happy paperback publication day to Sabine Durrant. Her latest novel Dead Heat, is out now in all formats and I was very fortunate to be sent a copy by Penguin Books. My thanks to the publisher and to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for inviting me to join the celebration of the release. Here’s what the book is all about:

About the Book

Former journalist Matt Grimshaw’s life is at a low ebb. He’s been ‘let go’ by the paper where he’s worked for years, and his relationship with his long-term girlfriend has come unstuck.

So when an invitation arrives from his two closest friends, Celia and Adam Murphy, to join them at their house in Greece, he jumps at it.

It may be harsh and unwelcoming on the Mani Peninsula but Matt determines to stay there for the whole summer and to write his much put-off screen-play.

But then the Murphys plus children arrive, and a wealthy newcomer to the area starts throwing loud and lavish parties in his big house across the bay.

As the nights become hotter and the parties wilder, everyone’s motivations darken. Envy rises, resentments grow – until a terrible accident stops the summer in its tracks.

At least, it looks like an accident…

Set over one blazing Mediterranean summer, Sabine Durrant’s new thriller is tense, claustrophobic and utterly gripping.

My Thoughts

I think this is likely the first book I have read by Sabine Durrant, but given the glowing reviews I’d seen, and the desire to add a new author to my reading list, I didn’t hesitate to dive into this book. A tad ironic as it turns out for reasons that will become very clear to anyone who joins me in taking the plunge, so to speak. The stakes may be lower than those in the book, but for anyone looking for a perfect thriller for their summer holidays should look no further. This has it all – sun, parties, friendship, rivalries, and the small matter of a tragic accident that may not be all it first appears.

I was drawn into this book from the very start, largely because of the setting as much as the characters. We are led through the story by Matt, a guy whose whole life is on the verge of imploding – no job, no relationship – and who is offered a kind of lifeline by two of his closest friends in the form of the use of a cottage on their property in Greece to try and work on his intended great screenplay. Matt is a very complex character, one who is wracked with a strange mix of guilt, paranoia and perhaps even a touch of impostor syndrome, and also someone whose friendship with his hosts, Celia and Adam, seems almost out of place. Add in a face from Adam’s past, a missing tourist and a number of sources of unexpected conflict, and the scene is set for a slow (sun)burning thriller that really took me by surprise by the end.

I like how Sabine Durrant has explored the various relationships within the book through Matt’s perspective. It means that we are slightly removed from getting to know, or perhaps even like, the other characters, our view tinged by Matt’s internal monologue. That aside, the depiction of their circumstance, the stench of privilege and the various prejudices and bad behaviours that have grown from either having too much money, or having none, is really intriguing and exactly the reasons I remained glued to the story throughout. There is a strange contrast as well between the location and the tense atmosphere that threads throughout the book. Greek islands and a private bay sound idyllic, but look around a corner, or beneath the surface of the clear blue sea, and you can see the presence of a pulsing threat all around.

There are elements of the book that are easier to predict than others – intentionally so – even though Matt remains seemingly oblivious. And these are the precipitating events that add to that certainty I felt very early on that no good was going to come of an elongated stay at the cottage. I felt a keen sense of place, welcomed the brief moments of calm before the clearly signposted storm, and loved that the author still manages to throw a complete curveball at the end that I doubt anyone could have predicted yet which feels very fitting given the way the story unfolds. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more from the author and recommend this for anyone’s poolside read this summer.

About the Author

Dead Heat is Sabine Durrant’s seventh work of dark psychological suspense. Its setting, part of the Greek Peloponnese, has obsessed her since she read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travel book The Mani in her twenties. Her previous thrillers include Lie with Me which was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller, and Sun Damage, which was subject to a fierce film and TV bidding war and is currently in production with Bad Wolf and Disney.

Before becoming a full time novelist, Sabine Durrant worked in editorial at The Independent, The Sunday Times and The Guardian where she also wrote the weekly ‘Sabine Durrant’ interview with subjects as diverse as Archbishop Runcie, Stella McCartney and Jeff Goldblum. She has written two works of general fiction, including the bestselling Having it and Eating it, and two Connie Pickles novels for young adults. Her essay ‘At Sea’, for the collection Truth or Dare, was a personal investigation into the life and death of her father, a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, who disappeared off the Dorset coast a few months after she was born.

Sabine Durrant lives in south London with her husband, three adult children, one dog and two cats.

Copyright © Jen Med’s Book Reviews and jenmedsbookreviews.com (2016-2026).