I am one of those readers who likes to read in bed, and I was that engrossed by The Slaughter Man, that I ended up staying up all night just to finish it.

The book is a fast paced mixture of gory violence and a loving relationship between a father and his daughter. Fast paced, but gives the reader sufficient time to digest what is happening before throwing in the next twist in the tale! The plot evolves in a way that the reader might not expect, and the whole story ends up being more than just a typical murder crime thriller.

It is really well written and set in contemporary London with a new cop hero by the name of Max Wolfe, a nard as nails detective and single father of a young daughter called Scout. The relationship between father and daughter bring another level to the story and is a breath of fresh air, needed at times. There are some fairly graphic violence and I like the excessive goriness tbh! It is also a really great touch adding the explanations of the science behind the gruesome stuff. It's good to have an explanation as to why most gun shot wounds to the gut are fatal for example.

A wealthy family are murdered on New Year's Eve and their youngest son vanishes. Max has to find the killer and hopefully locate the missing boy.

The crime resembles one which happened years ago, for which a man was imprisoned and now has been released.

Wolfe and the team have to work out whether the same man could be responsible for these deaths.

It seems Max has miraculous healing powers as he is stabbed, buried, ripped apart, knocked out and drugged and still has only one overnight hospital stay. There was definitely some disbelief that needed suspending throughout! He makes James Bond seem soft and that man should be dead years ago! But, I loved this guy long may he continue! :-)

I'd worked out quite early on "who done it" but what I hadn't worked out was why and there were plenty of surprises.

I will be looking forward to the next book from Tony Parsons and eagerly awaiting the return of Max Wolfe!

Highly Recommended Reading! ( )

Andra boken i serien så karaktärerna är redan på plats och man kastas direkt in i hetluften. Välskrivet och bitvis riktigt läskigt och spännande. Tycker dock att det trampas lite för mycket luft ibland. Snäppet bättre än första boken. Stark trea. ( )

In the sequel to The Murder Bag must DC Max Wolf hunt down a serial killer who have killed an entirely family except the youngest son who the killer has kidnapped.

I found the first book brutal this book is even worse. If there is something I have a hard time reading about is it cases where children are involved. Gone, Baby Gone, by Dennis Lehane is an excellent example of a book that I had a hard time reading. This one was also very hard to read.

Tony Parsons has once again written an excellent crime novel. Max, his five year old daughter Scout and their dog Stan are back and to be perfectly honest, part of the appeal of the book for me is what a wonderful father Max is, yes there are moments when he is a bit lost, like when his daughter needs a princess dress, but besides situations like that he is a man trying his best to take care of his daughter and that is why this case becomes so personal for him. Somewhere out there is a missing four-year-old boy almost the same age as his daughter.

There were some moments I thought were a bit peculiar, namely when the cops went into places without backup. They got a tip, they have an address and they barge in without waiting for backup and everything goes haywire. That Max does things that get him hurt I can understand, he's a bit of a loose cannon sometimes. But here we have him and some colleagues and his superior just barging in. Before that, they had done the same thing, in a camp with romanies and gotten into a problem. Besides that, the book was really good, almost as good as the first one. But as I said before I don't like cases with children involved and I would rather not read that kind of book.

4.5 stars

I received this copy from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review! ( )

I read so many crime thrillers by American authors, it was rather refreshing to find that this was set on home soil.
Parsons is a new-to-me author, and I'll be honest, I had a few misgivings, as I made the mistake of reading the unfavourable reviews. Yes, it's gritty, it's violent and features criminals who should never have left their mothers' wombs, but it's no worse than any of those TV programmes preceded by 'this programme contains bad language and scenes some viewers might find upsetting'. It's a policeman's world, it goes without saying.

This is the second in the DI Max Wolfe series, and he has to get to the bottom of the killing of four members of a family. The fifth member, a young child is missing. The crime and the weapon used smack of the work of The Slaughter Man…released from prison after doing his time, but now dying. Surely, he didn't do it again? And why pick on a perfect, happy family? But…was it the perfect family?

This is a fast-paced, gripping thriller. Having not read the first Wolfe book, I didn't know why he had an ex wife and, unusually, custody of his daughter. It didn't matter. He's certainly a hard-nosed policeman, but his five-year-old princess is the centre of his world. Parsons parallels these two worlds very adeptly. Oh, and at last, someone who explains all those acronyms used in the force…how enlightening!

I'm diving straight into #4 of the series (my Kindle is missing #3!). ( )

Detektiv Maks Vulf se suočava sa brutalnim ubistvom četvoro članova idilične, bogate londonske porodice, a najmlađe dete je nestalo. Maks zna da ako ne pronađe dete u narednih par dana neće ga ni pronaći živo. Slično ubistvo, pištoljem za ubijanje stoke u klanicama, već se dogodilo trideset godina ranije i ubica je još živ....

Toni Parsons sjajno vodi priču i još bolje je završava. Pri kraju knjige zaista sam zaustavljao dah i zaboravljao da dišem. ( )