When I finished Book Two in the series I was struck by the shift into darkness – perhaps inevitable for a true crime focus – but nothing prepared me for the developments we see in As Good as Dead. In this stunning finale to the trilogy (and, boy, does that pain me to write) Pip is thrust into a position it’s hard to imagine…and nobody could come out of that unscathed.
When the book opens, Pip is preparing for her new life at Cambridge. Superficially, her life is good, but the signs are there that events have taken their toll. Pip is far from alright. She’s not sleeping, her nerves are shredded and she seems to be developing a sense of paranoia when she is convinced that the little chalk figures appearing on her driveway, the online death threats and the nuisance phone calls she is receiving are connected. In spite of promises to her parents, Pip needs something to take her mind off things…so she turns to what she knows best. Murders.
Pip starts looking into the stalking incidents that the police refuse to take seriously. They share an alarming link with the profile attributed to the DT killer, a recent case where five young women were found murdered. But the DT killer has been behind bars for six years. He confessed, so it can’t be him.
If someone were in this situation they might be reassured, but not Pip. She is unsettled by the links and digs deeper. What if the confession was, as the killer’s mother is convinced, given under duress? Could the real DT killer still be at large? Could Pip be the killer’s intended sixth victim?
This is the point that I give no more details, as the enjoyment of this story really does come from following Pip on her journey and being given access to her thought process as the events she has started to investigate take an incredibly personal – and increasingly sinister – turn. I was – on more than one occasion – stunned by what I was reading. It is haunting, and made me review my thoughts on certain characters and even the events covered in the previous books in the series. When this is published in August I cannot wait to see the reactions…
Holly Jackson, I never imagined you’d go there…what a character you have made us come to love (which makes the events of this book even more difficult to process) and I am so grateful to the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read this prior to publication.