Deadline: Die Zeit läuft ab - Der Albtraum beginnt (gekürzt)

Brilliant. As usual Simon Kernick keeps you on the edge of your seat.

I actually found this book left on a train and as I had never heard of the author before decided to give it a new home for a while and rather pleased I am that I did despite it not being my typical genre.The plot is a simple one,Andrea Deverne arrives home an empty house, as she crosses the threshold she receives a telephone call to say that her daughter has been kidnapped.Her husband is also missing, is he involved if so who can she trust? Will she ever see her alive again?The book starts with an explosive opening and continues to run at a relentless pace dragging the reader along in its wake taking many twists and turns along the way many of which I admit to not seeing coming. I felt that the characterization was good. We got a good insight of the desperate mother who will do everything in her powers to get her daughter back alive who has a somewhat shady background herself, the lonely copper who is also extremely keen to see a happy ending and willing to break the rules to do so. Then we get a pretty clear idea of the helpless plight of the daughter. Kernick also gives a good account of both the suburban and seedier sides of life in London. However, it is not a book without faults IMHO.Firstly I'm not at all convinced about the prologue and whether or not it was needed at all and although I admit that I didn't see the final twist coming I still felt that the ending was a little rushed and too neat for my liking,although the epilogue did help here. Mainly, however, the book relied on two very big coincidences. The lead detective Mike Bolt had an affair with the kidnapped girls mother around the time of her conception and then he goes an meets the main villain in a pub where he reveals his involvement in the case. That all said I still enjoyed it, finding it hard to put the book down and would certainly read any other Kernick books that I come across them.

A roller-coaster of a read. This starts with a kidnapping and a lot of questions and continues through the London underworld and a lot of lies. The race is on to rescue the kidnapped girl but the question is whether or not she's still alive and who was involved in the kidnap.It's not a bad read but I really didn't connect with any of the characters. The only character I cared for was Emma, the victim. The story did keep the tension going and I wasn't sure what was going to happen until the end. It took me a while to get into it as well but when I got into it the pages flew.

Another good book by Simon Kernick, focusing on a kidnapping of a young girl. Could her step-father be involved? Why has she been kidnapped? Should the mother go to the police? This was fast paced, with plenty of action and interesting characterisation, this is the third book in the Tina Boyd Series, and am enjoying the books that are all very different. I do recommend Simon Kernick . I am rather puzzled that this is the Tina Boyd Series, as she has not been the main character in the three books so far.

Having only read one other Kernick novel (Relentess) I was hoping for more of the same. Whilst this followed the same fast paced action, it was ten times better! The pages raced by as I started chapter after chapter, not wanting to put it down. I kept making guesses as to who was involved, thinking I’d sussed it out only to find my theories were completely blown out of the water.Unlike ‘Relentless’ this feels more realistic. There are still a few aspects of the plot that I don’t feel were tied up very well but as with most crime thrillers it’s easy to establish the crime rather than draw it to a close at times. Having said that, I felt completely satisfied when I closed the covers. Almost every character has a secret, but is it a secret connected to the disappearance of fourteen year-old Emma? With only 48 hours to raise the money her mother, Andrea Devern, pulls out all the stops. She contacts the only person she feels she can turn to but at what cost? As revealed on the blurb, Andrea’s husband Pat is also missing; at exactly the same time as her daughter. Therefore we have another clever point to consider – could Pat be involved in her daughter’s abduction? It really is a nightmare world to be in and Andrea is constantly at the centre of this hell as it unfolds over the course of a few days.I can’t wait to go on and read Kernick’s other novels. I already own ‘Severed’ but I’ll certainly be acquiring his other novels. His writing is consistent with him being able to maintain the pace he establishes at the outset; for me this is crucial in a novel that takes place over a short space of time. There was no point where I wanted to put this book down.