2.5 rounded up to 3 stars. The book edged toward ridiculous with the third potential victim. A single person might have overlooked the likely outcome, but surely all their heads together they could have grown savvy to it. Ah well. Not one of the better ones, but alright. ( )

Roy Grace series book #7

I loved this story. Peter James has given us a most intense and suspenseful mystery with lots of police procedural and has teased us with little bit more into his protagonist personal life.

One raining morning Tony Revere is killed on his bike in a road traffic collision. The vehicles involved are a car with a drunk driver, an articulated lorry with a driver that is overtired and a white van who quickly fled from the scene. Tony is the grandson of New York Mafia and his family is super powerful. Upon learning the death of her son, Mrs. Revere set about plotting revenge.....mafia style. Ds Roy Grace and his team will do their best to thwart all plans and get to the villain before too many deaths.....

The plot all spools out from this tragic accident.

The author pays astounding attention to details such as locations, his characters and the depth of research, maybe a bit too much at times. The story may be over the top at time and may be a good idea to suspend disbelief for the plot to work but as soon as I personally did I found myself completely absorbed in the mystery. The suspense level as the novel progresses is brilliant especially when two of drivers involved in the crash are found tortured and murdered. When Carly Chase, the car driver begins to suspect that she is next....The narration reflects how scare she is. The writing style is quite representative of Mr. James ability to realistically portray human behaviour. Each characters are unique and well drawn.

What a page-turner, so gripping it grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go until I had finished the last sentence. “Dead Man’s Grip” is really an enjoyable book and a compelling read. ( )

I don't know why I am compelled to keep reading these books. This was by far the worst one so far. ( )

This series is usually enjoyable enough. This was more a will they catch whoddunnit than a whodunnit. And the whole basis was very unlikely. So OK but the plot wasn't the best in the series. ( )

I think I was on a bit of a downer on Peter James after the last of the Roy Grace books which I didn't like so much. Dead Man's Grip was a lot of fun though, a good mix of realistic feeling cop stuff, nasty villains and enough soap opera around the central characters to keep you interested in them as well as the plot. ( )