Play Dead
Crime, Female Detectives, Mystery
Angela Marsons
Kim Stone, Book # 4
Bookouture
May 20th 2016
ebook
366
English
August 16, 2019 August 20, 2019
The dead don’t tell secrets… unless you listen.
The girl’s smashed-in face stared unseeing up to the blue sky, soil spilling out of her mouth. A hundred flies hovered above the bloodied mess.
Westerley research facility is not for the faint-hearted. A ‘body farm’ investigating human decomposition, its inhabitants are corpses in various states of decay. But when Detective Kim Stone and her team discover the fresh body of a young woman, it seems a killer has discovered the perfect cover to bury their crime.
Then a second girl is attacked and left for dead, her body drugged and mouth filled with soil. It’s clear to Stone and the team that a serial killer is at work – but just how many bodies will they uncover? And who is next?
As local reporter, Tracy Frost, disappears, the stakes are raised. The past seems to hold the key to the killer’s secrets – but can Kim uncover the truth before a twisted, damaged mind claims another victim …?
About the book
Fourth book dedicated to Inspector Kim Stone. In this new book, after a case well finished, Kim’s boss gives a “prize” to her team, a trip to the Body Farm, a structure in which decomposing bodies are studied in particular cases such as in water, underground or left to the elements after being burned. Here Kim finds a corpse that is not part of the scientific research, but who is this woman? A few days later another woman is found, but this time she is still alive.
I liked the book, the case too. I’m just confused about one thing. But I can’t reveal who or what, so I keep my doubts. For the rest, I have nothing to object, apart from the fact that Kim is still in danger, but I’m used to it by now. All books of this genre have this cliché so I can’t say more.
I liked the final twist, even if I already knew who the killer was or what he had to do with it. I liked the characters, even Tracy Frost, the journalist, I have to say that she has improved a lot. I don’t usually like journalists because they are always represented as a nuisance, but it isn’t like that here.
I like the style of the author, the chapters are not very long and I like the fact that most of the chapters are told by the protagonist, but there are chapters narrated by the victim and above all by the murderer.
I think this book is the best that the author has written so far (obviously I have not read the following yet) perhaps also because I am fascinated by the work done by the “Body Farm”, meaning where the decomposing corpses are studied.
I love Kim, she’s the kind of woman I like and I sincerely hope the author doesn’t “make her ugly” by giving her a relationship that blocks her in her inner beauty. Because I firmly believe that women do not need a man to be powerful, so this tough figure, who drives a motorcycle and who is at the head of a team fascinates me a lot.
I also liked Tracy, as I said. I like the fact that she isn’t perfect and that she represents those people who, despite not being perfect and therefore being teased when young, have a good life in adulthood.
I recommend this series, especially this fourth volume (please, however, do not read only this book, a series is meant to be read in its entirety 
and chronologically).
