Source: Purchased copy
Publication: Available in e-book now and in paperback on 20 February 2020 from Pan MacMillan
PP: 464
ISBN-13: 978-1529009675
If your family was targeted in the middle of the night, what would you do?
You are asleep. A noise wakes you.You stir, unsure why, and turn to your partner.
Then you hear it. Glass. Crunching underfoot.
Your worst fears are about to be realized.
Someone is inside your home.
Your choices are limited.
You can run. Or stay and fight.
What would you do?
I chose to read this book because i had heard so many good things about it. Those readers were not wrong. From the very beginning of this book the writing was compelling. A Window Breaks is a stand out action thriller that is genuinely thrilling and the pace and tension that the writer creates takes physical form in the body as you feel your heart race a bit faster and your breath rise and fall sharply as your chest constricts with the tension.
Rachel and Tom have been struggling badly since the death of their teenage son, Michael. Then their daughter, Holly, is mugged as they wait for a car to take them home.
Realising that they have to pull themselves together for Holly’s sake, the couple and their daughter head off to a remote but luxurious Scottish lodge owned by Tom’s boss. The idea is that they will rest and recuperate and see if they can find their way back to rebuild their marriage.
Of course, it was never going to be as simple as that and the three central characters find themselves caught up in a whirlwind of catastrophic events that challenge everything they know, or thought they knew.
It is, as I have said, Chris Ewan’s writing that makes this book stand out. One of the things I really liked about it was the way that the story was gradually revealed to us through a peeling back of the layers and the addition of a narrative timeline that takes in Michael’s accident.
This paves the way for a book that is certainly tense and action packed, but also surprising and revealing, as the fabulously plotted layers to this story are peeled away and the final truth is unveiled.
Verdict: A dynamic, fascinating and enthralling read. Highly recommended.
C.M. Ewan was born in Taunton in 1976 and graduated from the University of Nottingham with a degree in American Studies and a minor in Canadian Literature, then later trained as a lawyer. After an eleven-year spell living on the Isle of Man, he now lives in Somerset, England with his wife and two children, where he writes full time. Writing as Chris Ewan, he is the author of the popular GOOD THIEF’S GUIDE TO … series of mysteries about globetrotting crime writer and thief-for-hire, Charlie Howard. The series has been praised as “crime writing at its best” (Sydney Morning Herald) and a “delightful series” (The Seattle Times).
Live and Deadly 