Life Sentence

Crime fiction readers can often spot the villain from the first innocuous, innocent introduction. A. K. Turner, in the thrilling and well-paced Life Sentence, re-writes that rule. Likely characters appear, each one joining or replacing possible suspects. It’s subtle, enthralling and a modern take on a ‘who done it?’.

Life Sentence is based in a mortuary, where technician Cassie Raven, a goth with a scalpel mind as well as a cutting day job, talks affectionately to her dead charges as she pulls them out of the cold into the starkly bright strip lighting of the post-mortem suite. She is an orphan with troubled teenage years who finds out that she has a father – released on licence from a life sentence for killing her mother! They meet, and he says he was innocent.

Our believable main character is no stranger to death, but how will Cassie cope with uncovering the truth behind her father’s claims.

Life Sentence delves deeply into the medical aspects of post-mortems and dead bodies in general, and occasionally readers might reach for a medical dictionary. This is the second in the Cassie Raven series, which began with Body Language, and there are recurring references to the death of her ex-teacher, Geraldine Edwards, the victim of that first book.

Turner has a masterful control of pace and cadence. Short, action-packed chapters provide a breathless, excitement that builds anticipation as the plot moves towards a series of climaxes, each with a sub-plot that is worthy of an integral short story itself. It’s tight, controlled writing at its most invigorating.

The Cassie Raven series has powerful legs and the blood of crime fiction beats relentlessly. Being set in a busy mortuary with death behind every door emphasises the strength of a writing style that uses a morbid medical backdrop to create gripping and lively tension. The taste of death can be exhilarating, even comforting.