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    Una muerte sencilla
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    Una muerte sencilla
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    Una muerte sencilla
    Ebook505 pages6 hours

    Una muerte sencilla

    By Peter James

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Primera novela de la serie de misterio del detective Roy Grace, un hombre atormentado por el recuerdo de su mujer muerta. Grace recibe una llamada de auxilio de Ashley Harper, una joven que, tres días antes de su boda, no sabe dónde está su prometido. Para colmo, algunos amigos de éste han aparecido muertos. Algo extraño ha sucedido durante la despedida de soltero, pero la única persona que sabe algo no tiene intención de hablar al menos de momento. Quizá encuentre alguna razón para explicar lo que sabe, un motivo que nadie imagina; ya se sabe que la desgracia para uno es la fortuna para otro.

    LanguageEspañol
    PublisherRoca editorial
    Release dateJul 14, 2010
    ISBN9788499180823
    Unavailable
    Una muerte sencilla
    Author

    Peter James

    Peter James is a UK No.1 bestselling author, best known for his Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, now a hit ITV drama starring John Simm as the troubled Brighton copper. Much loved by crime and thriller fans for his fast-paced page-turners full of unexpected plot twists, sinister characters, and accurate portrayal of modern day policing, he has won over 40 awards for his work including the WHSmith Best Crime Author of All Time Award and Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger. To date, Peter has written an impressive total of 19 Sunday Times No. 1s, sold over 21 million copies worldwide and been translated into 38 languages. His books are also often adapted for the stage – the most recent being Looking Good Dead.

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    Reviews for Una muerte sencilla

    3.5/5

    395 ratings27 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Another British crime novel; this one featuring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace who is called in to assist on a case of a missing groom -- missing after a possible prank-gone-wrong. Good storytelling, with a few twists and turns, but also one of those books where the reader begins to wonder how/when it will end. Enjoyable, with a few bits over the top.
    • 4/5
      Interesting start to a series.
    • 4/5
      I started out with the most recent book in this series and have now started back to the beginning. While, I liked the most recent book; I now see what this series is all about...Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. He is quick witted, commands respect from his co-workers, and does not stop until the case is solved. Speaking of cases, this one had me from the beginning. In fact, I lost some sleep over it. Yet, I would gladly lose sleep for this book. Warning to self "don't ever agree to be the prankee in a prank". When the four friends got in that car accident and dead, I think I forgot to breath for a few. My next thought was "oh shit", now the stakes have just gotten higher. The story kept me hanging on until the end. Which took me a bit by surprise. I can't wait to continue this series with book two.
    • 4/5
      Kept me awake till 3 in the morning to find my tea was stone cold. A police-procedural and race-against-time thriller. A stag-night goes horribly wrong when the prospective groom is buried alive. So many twists and turns in the plot that I didn't see coming, and a lonely, overworked detective trying to solve the puzzle and attempting to have a private life to root for.Will certainly be seeking out more in this series.
    • 3/5
      Michael Harrison is a soon-to-be groom who is buried alive by his joker friends as a gag. A terrible road accident leads the reader to an assumption of where this thriller is headed. The reader will soon find out that he it completely wrong.

      James creates distinctive players in this game of who is good and who has hidden motives. This is a pure definition of page turner.

      The reader will imagine watching this on the screen with appropriate scary music and moments of great shock and surprise.

      My only quibble with James is the insertion of a psychic late in the story that detracts from a nearly perfect conclusion.
    • 4/5
      Dead Simple is Peter James's first novel about the cases of Brighton's best cop, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. While the tale, with the amount and types of twists and turns, may be implausible - it is also a lot of fun! From the crazy start (stag night - guys playing prank on groom by burying him in a coffin - then they all die in a car crash!) it just gets worse for the victim - again, if you just allow yourself to go for the ride and forget about likelihoods and some such, you'll enjoy this book immensely.The real strength of the book is, however, not the case, but the character. Roy Grace is an excellent cop who's wife has simply vanished nine years ago. Vanished without a trace. Grace has tried everything, including supernatural avenues, to find out about his wife. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Now, years later, he's a bit of a recluse but a great cop, a good friend to his partner and resolved to finding every missing person by whatever means necessary. Finding a man buried alive won't be easy! Another great plus is the setting - Peter James is at home and deeply rooted in Brighton - you feel it on every page - streets, places, procedures - all is clearly researched extensively and packed with loving care into this brilliant novel.
    • 3/5
      The storyline intrigued me. This is an original book, no doubt. It is thrilling, surprising and full of twists. I read it almost in one go. The fact that I could skip a lot of detailed, unnecessary accounts and descriptions of characters that would never reappear in the story accelerated the process.
    • 4/5
      I enjoy a good mystery/thriller story and Peter James does not disappoint. This is the first in a new series by Peter James (I would have to say that the link is the word "Dead" since his second one is called "Looking Good Dead") and his characters are, in many ways, a breath of fresh air.The lead detective, DI Roy Grace is all too human. This is an experienced detective who is competent at his work - with flashes of brilliance - and knows how to see when someone lies. And this is something I may use myself. When we lie, we tend to look in the direction of our creative mind. When we tell the truth, we look in the opposite direction. Early on in interviews Grace will ask "What did you have for lunch?" and see which way the suspect looks. From then on he is aware that when the suspect (or witness) is lying, they will look the other way. This is a genius quirk, in my opinion, it's something we can all visualise and try out. Have fun, won't you :)Of course, no detective can be whole without some tragedy in their life - Grace's is that his wife disappeared from the face of the earth some years previously and he can't let her go even though it's likely that she's dead. The author gives us a real sense that the couple were indeed happy and that this blights Grace's life horribly. We care. Well, I do.The story is very simple but filled with the twists that we want - a man has a prank played on him at his stag do. He is buried in a coffin and told his friends will return in a couple of hours. Unfortunately, his friends are all killed in a road accident. Can the police find the missing man before it's too late? Very simple tale, expertly told. I recommend this book to fans of the genre.
    • 5/5
      Excellent! One of the best I've read in this genre for a long time.
    • 4/5
      An excellent read. Superintendant Roy Grace has a job on his hands trying to work out why a young man out on his stag night is not involved in the accident that killed his companions. Where has he gone? And how is his oh so sweet fiance involved? There are many twists and turns to this plot which make exciting reading with a very satisfactory ending. A touch of the supernatural makes an interesting appearance but he shouldn't rely on these to cover problems that can't be solved logically.
    • 4/5
      What a fun book to read! The outcome of the prank itself is bad enough, and most writers would take that one idea, run with it, and have a good book. Peter James does a Churchill with this same idea. One simple prank-- a riddle-- which he then wraps up in a larger mystery and finally tosses into an enigma with even greater implications. The fun for readers is to savor each page, to tease out the clues, to deduce what's going on... and to hope that Detective Superintendent Roy Grace can put it all together in time to save Michael Harrison's life. Peter James has also created a fascinating main character in Roy Grace. As a young boy "Grace had been addicted to cop shows on television, to books about detectives and cops of every kind-- from Sherlock Holmes to Ed McBain. He had a memory that bordered on photographic, he loved puzzles, and he was physically strong." Now that he's been on the force for a few years, Grace realizes that "in this modern, politically correct world, you could be a law enforcement officer at the peak of your career one moment and a political pawn the next." It's that realization that can make showing up at work in the morning a bit grim. The juxtaposition of a thriller-type plot and a nuanced character study is what makes Dead Simple so much fun to read. The adrenaline junkie portion of my reader's brain could gorge on all the twists and turns while the more introspective and thoughtful portion of my brain could savor James's characterizations. This book had been sitting on my to-be-read shelf for a long, long time. Now I know why it kept catching my eye each time I walked past. I can't wait to continue with this series!
    • 4/5
      The beginning of this book is the creepiest I have ever run across. Anxious to play a prank on their soon-to-be-married friend Michael Harrison, known for his pranks, four of his friends get him drunk and passed out, then bury him in a coffin with only a tube for air, a porn magazine and a walkie-talkie. Then they drive off and are T-boned by a concrete truck. All are killed. The tow truck driver's retarded son (or should I say mentally challenged), finds the walkie-talkie in the grass where it had been thrown by the accident, talks to Michael, but then drops it and thinks he has broken the unit. Now he's afraid to tell anyone about what he found. Michael's realization that he is buried and that no one is answering his increasing frantic calls on the walkie-talkie will give you nightmares, or at least it would, if you're susceptible to that sort of thing. Forget supernatural/horror crap, realism is far more frightening.

      Superintendent Roy Grace is charged with finding the missing man who disappeared just three days before he was to be married. Michael's friend and business partner we soon learn has it in for Michael and Ashley's Michael's intended is startled to learn that the business had considerable funds in a Cayman Islands account. Or is she? (Spoiler police, please note:These really aren't spoilers as we learn the details from several points of view early in the book.) The scenes of Michael growing increasingly frantic in his coffin are really frightening. Some interesting twists kept things moving along nicely.
    • 3/5
      The story opens with a great maguffin - a stagnight prank gone wrong (or perhaps not so wrong), and the novel develops into a page-turning thriller which will entertain. There is plenty of suspense, and the plot twists and turns excitingly. But when revealed, the eventual villain and motive are pedestrian, and the narrative is reduced more than once to double-takes (e.g. a repeated car-chase). Nor, for the life of me, can I remember Roy Grace.
    • 4/5
      Very enjoyable police procedural mystery with intetesting main character. Not a typical mystery with about a third of the narrative from the perspective of the victim, it had several unexpected turns.

      Although I found Roy Grace intriguing (a cop who believes in mediums & the supernatural), I found there was a bit too much about him & his personal life (wife who disappeared years ago). I like mysteries to focus on the case rather than the detective...
    • 3/5
      Good, fast paced thriller set in the Brighton area of England. The plot is well done, beginning when a stag party prank goes awry. Four friends of the groom decide to pay him back for past practical jokes by getting him drunk and putting him in a casket. Leaving him in a deep hole with a breathing tube, whisky, a flashlight and a walkie-talkie, they drive back onto a highway and become involved in an accident with multiple fatalities. Called in on the case, to help another officer and friend, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace's wife disappeared 8 years before the novel opens. He misses her desperately throughout the first third of the book, maybe, and then spends the rest of the time admiring and attempting to seduce other women. And there are a lot of beautiful women in Roy Grace's world. Some graphic violence, no graphic sex, the tension is high until the very last page.
    • 4/5
      I feel that there is something missing here, due to the ending that the author has chosen for this first book in the Grace "dead" series. Many crime novels end with a lengthy explanation, usually from one of the bad guys, which reveal how all the pieces of the puzzle fit, especially those events that were unplanned and changed the course of events. Rather, James went for the thriller/movie scene ending. I have now read the most current book in the series and the first and I plan to read at least #2, but this is still a road test for me - I am not in love with the series the same way I committed to Lawton's Troy series recently. "Dead Simple" has a fairly straight forward plot which very cleverly becomes more interesting through the addition of a walkie-talkie. Tension, storyline, pace,characters are all well done once past the first 80 pages or so. Good start to a series, looking forward to hearing more about Brighton in future books.
    • 5/5
      Good character and excellent story-telling
    • 4/5
      This book was recommended to me by a stranger while I was browsing in a bookstore. It's rare when another customer out of the blue recommends you read a book without knowing anything about your tastes, so I knew I had to read this book. And that other customer was right, I loved this book and will absolutely read the next book in the series.
      The plot is one of the most inventive and entertaining ones that I have ever read. The story begins with a batchelor party gone horribly wrong, five friends go out for an evening of partying with a plan to give the groom, a serial practical joker, some of his own medicine. They plan to give him a little scare by burying him alive. Tragedy strikes when his friends get into a car accident, killing 3 of them immediately, leaving the fourth in a coma, and the groom buried alive. Wow - what a begining, and the plot just keeps getting better with its many twists and turns. Highly recommended!
    • 2/5
      This book makes me think of the serialisations I used to read as a child in my great aunt's copies of Women's Weekly and People's Friend. It's not bad writing, but it's not good literature. I imagine it's how Richard Hammond would write a novel - a bit cheeky, a bit blokey, a bit misogynist. The repeated references to big tits, the surprise of the main character when a woman is good at her job followed swiftly by him reducing her to how fuckable she is, the separation of women into fuckable nymphs and ball breaking bunny boilers, gets in the way of what is a fast running story. It's detective mystery by numbers - the world weary detective with relationship problems, the cliff hanger at the end of each chapter, the scheming girlfriend, the betraying best friend and business partner, the oddballs who hold the secret to cracking the crime. It would get you through waiting for a plane, or lounging by a pool, or taking a long train journey.
    • 4/5
      This was a brisk no nonsense cracker. Sharply defined characters, kept this story on track at a brisk pace. Very exciting story. Will be reading more in this series.
    • 4/5
      This thriller had me racing through the pages to get to the end. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. Mr. James doesn't play any games with the reader, but still manages to give the plot plenty of twists. Roy Grace is an interesting and sympathetic character and I find myself wanting to read the next book in the series just to find out what happens next for him.
    • 4/5
      This has been on my TBR shelf for quite a while - needing a break from a fantasy series I picked it up. I really enjoyed it. It starts off relatively slowly but then there are a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Would be happy to pick up another one.
    • 4/5
      Pretty exciting suspense thriller. I have a major quarrel with the flip at the end, but the chase scene is great. Also, a wee bit of “huh” about the incl.usion of the paranormal, but what the hey.
    • 3/5
      Dead Simple is the explosive first novel in the Roy Grace series of police procedurals, and it is a compulsively readable tale of disappearance, deception, betrayal and murder. Michael Harrison’s four best buddies take him on a pub hop a few days before he’s to marry Ashley, the love of his life. Michael’s partner in his successful company, Double-M Properties, Mark Warren, who is also his best man, misses the festivities because he is away on business. Michael, a bit of a joker, has pulled pranks on all of his friends, and the idea is to get one back on him. But when the prank goes horribly wrong and suddenly turns into a missing-person case, everyone, crooks and cops alike, is forced to improvise. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace heads up the search for Michael, which rapidly escalates into a case of multiple murder and extortion. He looks to Michael's family, to Mark and to Ashley for help, but it turns out that almost everyone has his or her own agenda. James has conjured up a situation in which no one can be trusted and nothing is how it appears at first glance. The conspiracy runs deep, and an innocent man’s life hangs in the balance. Dead Simple keeps the reader guessing until the final page and Roy Grace proves himself to be a complex, sympathetic character with a tragic past whose return in subsequent novels is most welcome. A gripping inaugural entry in a highly regarded series of suspense thrillers.
    • 4/5
      It's Michael Harrison's stag night. He and four of his friends are on a pub crawl. Although Michael has promised his fiancée not to get too drunk, he's having a good time and feeling virtually no pain. The only thing missing is his best friend, Mark, but Mark was out of town on business and his plane back home to Brighton has been grounded by fog. Just when things are really starting to heat up, Michael's friends take their revenge on him for all of his stag night pranks against him and put him in a coffin in a grave. Their intention is to make him sweat a little and come back in a few hours and dig him up. As they're driving off they are in a horrible car accident. Three die on impact and the fourth has suffered severe injuries and is comatose. Enter Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. Grace has been asked by a friend and co-worker to help out on Michael’s disappearance. Can they find Michael before his upcoming nuptials or before he dies of lack of oxygen or worse?Dead Simple is the first in the Roy Grace series by Peter James. Grace is not your average police officer. He is relatively young to be a detective superintendent and was on a fast track until a defense attorney mocks him for his belief in the paranormal, specifically the use of psychics on his cases. Grace is thirty-nine years old and has been grieving the disappearance of his wife Sandy for nine years. He refuses to have her legally declared dead because he still holds out hope that she'll be found. Grace's abilities as an outstanding police officer are admired by most and it is precisely due to this admiration that his friend and co-worker Glenn Branson that he is called in on Michael Harrison's disappearance. Roy doesn't quite believe Michael's best-friend and best man Mark Warren when he says he had no idea what his friends were up to on that night, he had only planned a pub crawl. Although Michael's fiancée Ashley appears to be distraught over his disappearance, there's something about her manner that has Roy wondering about her as well.Dead Simple is part thriller, part suspense, part police procedural, and a great read. Roy Grace is a quirky but likeable character and wholly believable as a police officer. His interaction with friends and coworkers adds to his likeability quotient and adds to the reader's understanding of Grace the man and Grace the police officer. This seemingly simple case of a missing man becomes anything but simple as the story evolves. Just when you think you know who is doing what and why, Mr. James throws in a nice plot twist and you're off in a completely new direction. There are bad guys and even worse guys in this story and they provide the perfect foil for Grace and his abilities. All of the action in the story takes place over a span of five days, a fast-paced, suspense-filled five days. Does Grace find the bad guy(s) in the end? Is Michael still alive? What was the motive behind Michael's "abduction?” You know I'm not going to reveal those types of details; you have to read this delightfully twisted story for yourself to find out. One thing I can tell you is that I'll be reading more of the Roy Grace series by Mr. James because I'm totally hooked.
    • 5/5
      I purchased this book after watching the performance of Peter James's stage play – Marriage Is Murder. Though this review isn't about the play, I'll touch on it briefly because it's relevant to Dead Simple, the first of the Roy Grace detective novels. In Marriage Is Murder, Roy Grace is a fledgeling detective investigating his first murder. In Dead Simple he’s a seasoned copper, yet similar themes run throughout, particularly whether such a thing as a perfect murder exists. To paraphrase Mr James himself – of the many who disappear without trace every year, how many have been murdered without anyone knowing, the body disposed of, the perpetrator (s) never caught?In Dead Simple, Roy Grace investigates the disappearance of Michael Harrison. We, the reader, know what has happened to poor Michael. The question that keeps us turning the pages is what is going to happen next?Life hasn't been kind to Roy Grace. His beloved Sandy has disappeared. The psychics can't find her. Does this mean she's still alive? Roy Grace is gritty, he carries on searching – for missing Sandy, and for missing Michael Harrison. The events which unfold do so through the eyes of the story’s participants. It's a bit like unwrapping pass the parcel – the reader doesn't know what they're going to find in the next layer. In this way, the identity of the puppetmaster is slowly revealed.Many reviewers found the ending slightly hurried. On balance, they may be right, but it doesn't detract from this novel as a page turning psychological thriller.Nina Jon is the author of the Jane Hetherington’s Adventures in Detection crime and mystery series.
    • 4/5
      Stag nights have changed significantly over the years. No longer just an opportunity for a drink or three down the local boozer with your best mates, nowadays stag dos – and their not-to-be-outdone female companion, hen dos – and more likely to see the potential groom flying off to Prague or Amsterdam with every male companion he can persuade to holiday with him. Regardless of your opinions on this development, I can promise you that no-one wants a stag night like Michael Harrison’s.== What’s it about? ==Michael is a renowned prankster whose friends have experienced his devious tricks too many times, particularly on their own stag nights. But that’s okay: tonight they are going to get their revenge. What appears to be quite a traditional stag do has been given a vicious twist which no-one could expect the groom to enjoy, but matters take a further turn for the worse when Michael disappears and his stag night companions die.One man should have some answers, but he’s claiming ignorance. It’s up to DS Roy Grace, a man whose own wife disappeared without a trace nine years ago, to find Michael and discover the truth about the missing man’s best friend and his beautiful, distressed fiancee.== What’s it like? ==Thoroughly rooted in police procedure (with one key and incredibly irritating exception). Packed with big twists to make you draw a pantomime-esque intake of sharp breath and cry ‘ooh’, this is a gripping (albeit occasionally frustrating) read.‘Dead Simple’ introduces us to DS Roy Grace, who is the lead detective in Peter James’ hugely popular ‘Dead’ series, so it’s good that he’s a largely interesting and sympathetic character with a backstory just waiting to be fully developed, but at times he seems so far behind the curve it’s a bit odd. Yes, the reader has a significant advantage in that we are given increasingly surprising glimpses into the lives of Michael’s closest companions – his best friend and business partner, Mark, and his beautiful fiancee, Ashley – but even Grace is briefly surprised at one point when he wonders why no-one in the police force (including him) has made a rather obvious connection.Then again, he is rather tired, and James shows us clearly how dedicated police officers struggle to balance work and home life (at least Grace doesn’t have much of the latter to worry about, though we do witness him have to repeatedly bail out of the few personal commitments he does make). I really enjoyed the procedural elements, where Grace is briefing his team members, hearing their reports, crunching the numbers (there’s a wonderful moment where his face goes white as he realises he’s ‘wasted the best part of a thousand pounds of his budget on soil analysis’) and attending autopsies. This is James’ strength, and it was no surprise to learn at Crimefest16 that he has spent many a fascinating hour out on patrol with his local police force, nor that he views the police as “a major part of the glue that holds our society together”. Certainly, this book presents a positive view of the officers it features: all are hardworking and diligent, though one (younger) officer is perhaps a little trusting.== Final thoughts ==The twists are truly stunning, and it’s easy to see why James has been in talks to get the Grace series televised; the development of the storyline is fantastically dramatic and will likely have you leafing back through previous chapters to check and see if you missed any obvious pointers…then holding your head in frustration as the police continue to miss vital clues (budget constraints mean Grace opts not to put a watch on his main suspect). The claustrophobia of one character’s experience is well-evoked and I imagine that if you’re familiar with Brighton’s roads, you may well be able to follow in detail the book’s denouement.As for the denouement itself…this was a little disappointing. In essence, after a lengthy chase scene, Grace (and Peter James) cheat. Can’t solve the case? Let’s involve the supernatural. Now, leaving aside the question of your dis/belief in the supernatural (James and his detective are believers), it’s disappointing that a case so focused on procedure had an ending that side-stepped it. For resolute disbelievers, this disappointment is likely to be compounded by irritation, which is a shame at the end of an involving narrative.Still, there’s a definite ending for the reader, even if the police have a number of unanswered questions. This is something I have previously liked about James’ books: they have proper endings, with no cliffhangers to force you to buy the next installment in the series (though obviously the missing wife is designed to build some intrigue). James trusts his readers will have enjoyed his story enough to want to read the next book anyway. And he’s right.I shall continue to follow the investigations of Roy Grace, though I am slightly perplexed by a character so beholden to his memory of his missing wife that he cannot throw out her toothbrush or sell her car, but can go on dates with other women, and look forward to reading the rest of the ‘Dead’ series.