No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride

The Bloodsmith has been on the rampage for seventeen months and the police are no nearer figuring out who he is or how he selects his victims. All the police do know is that once the Bloodsmith has rendered his victim unconscious he drains their blood and eviscerates them, leaving the message "HELP ME" scrawled on a nearby wall in the victims blood. Sometimes the victims aren't found until weeks after they've been murdered.

With the case going nowhere the investigating team are restructured and DS Lucy McVeigh and her partner DC Duncan "The Dunk" Fraser are given the task of reviewing the victims and the murder scenes in the hope that someone will remember something that will help them close a case that has ground to a halt after seventeen months.

Alongside this an old case rears it's head when a young man seeks Lucy's help. He happens to be Benedict Strachan, an infamous child murdered. At the age of 11 Strachan and an accomplice brutally stabbed a homeless man to death. Released after serving 16 years in prison he is now seeking help from Lucy but is adamant he still won't give up the name of his accomplice.

The fact that the reader joins the case seventeen months after the Bloodsmith starts his murder spree means that we quickly review all of the previous murders, giving an immediate feeling of being immersed in the story. As Lucy and The Dunk re-visit each crime scene we discover how the Bloodsmith has refined his murder technique over time.

Lucy is academically gifted, on a fast track to promotion. Her maverick style means that she discovers clues missed during the earlier investigation. Unfortunately Lucy is hampered in her work. Not only has she got Professional Standards breathing down her neck but the family of a man she killed is harassing her. As the story unfolds we discover the reason behind this killing along with Lucy's dark and disturbing past.

As you would expect from a novel by Stuart MacBride we have a dark and gritty story, with some humor thrown in (usually at The Dunk's expense) but what you don't expect is the tangent the story takes. With any crime story you expect a twist somewhere but the twist in this one simply cannot be predicted, a twist that makes the reader start flicking back through the book to re-read sections. 

No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride will be published by Bantam Press on 28th April 2022 in hardback, ebook and audio format. My thanks to Transworld Books and NetGalley for a review copy.