Deadly Game - as addictive as heroin

If you were blown away by Matt Johnson’s 2016 debut Wicked Game, then Deadly Game will leave you breathless, as this new Robert Finlay is as addictive as heroin, but without the needles or the need to smoke. Deadly Game, and Matt Johnson has raised his game, this book has a multi-layered narrative, the plot is mind blowing creating a tense and very exciting thriller you will not want to put down.

I was blown by Matt Johnson’s writing when he debuted 2016, the characterisation, the plot, the pace, and the knowledge make for an exhilarating, at times twisted and dark thriller, where you really do want to cheer on for Team Finlay. What this guy has been through and still in the police and still being treated like a mushroom by both Mi5 and Mi6. Deadly Game is most definitely a stunning thriller touching on one of the great crimes of our age, human trafficking.

Robert Finlay is current living in an Mi5 safe house in London with his family, and all he wants to do is get back to work as a Police Inspector with the Met. The problem is his colleagues see him as a bullet magnet, and do not want to work near him, but his Mi5 liaison officer Toni Fellowes is trying to find him a place back in the force. When he gets a message to contact the commander of the Anti-Terrorist Branch who is willing to take him back but he will have to become a detective inspector and learn on the job, but he is going to an ant-trafficking investigation.

Teamed up with a highly efficient DS Nina Brasov he is going to be looking into trafficking of people in to the UK from Eastern Europe. When he and Brasov go to check on a witness and find her dead they are drawn in to the murder investigation and stumble on the killer. A killer who Finlay recognises from a recent wedding he has attended and he realises that this is not going to be an easy case.

When the trafficking gang take an off-duty police officer out of her car, Finlay knows he is in a race against time, and he does not know who to trust. With Mi5 and Mi6 interested in what he is doing but providing little help when needed, with corrupt police officers, he turns to the only people he can really trust, members of the SAS.

Will he be able to get back a Met colleague alive, will he be able to move on and know that he is finally free from the spooks in his life. Robert Finlay is complicated person who you cannot help but like, he is human and makes poor decisions but will he be able to rescue a colleague and save trafficked women before they are murdered when they are no longer useful.

A stunning thriller, a real page turner, well researched and written by a brilliant storyteller. ( )