The Killer You Know by S.R. Masters – Book Review

PUBLISHERS BLURB

You need to kill at least three people, right? So that’s what I’ll do.

When Will jokes about becoming a serial killer, his friends just laugh it off. But Adeline can’t help but feel there’s something more sinister lurking behind his words.

Fifteen years later, Adeline returns to Blythe for a reunion of the old gang – except Will doesn’t show up. Reminiscing about old times, they look up the details of his supposed murder spree. But the mood soon changes when they discover two recent deaths that match.

As the group attempts to track Will down, they realise that he is playing a sinister game that harks back to one they used to play as kids. Only this time there are lives at stake . . .

MY REVIEW

“All of this started the night Will told us he was going to be a serial killer”

This is S.R. Masters debut novel, a psychological thriller set in 2015, with flashbacks to the late 90’s.

December 2015, and Adeline has come home to Blythe….she’s stopped by to visit her parents. she didn’t have a particularly close relationship with them, but her mum is ill….but nothings changed and the little digs are still there.

A reunion of her teenage friends has been arranged and so she leaves her parents as soon as she can as she wants to meet her old gang, Jen. Steve, Rupresh and Will.

They all arrive except for Will….

As they catch up, they begin to talk about Will, and his surprising revelation as a teenager that he was going to be a serial killer. He was planning on disappearing for a year and killing three people and making it look like suicide……he would know it was murder and so would his friends now…

He even went into details, a festival hanging by a guy rope and a drowning in Loch Ness and a third close to home…..

They laugh about how weird Will was, until they google festival suicide and things start to get real…..it’s a coincidence isn’t it ? Will wouldn’t really kill someone would he? Does Steve know more than he’s letting on?

What follows is a creepy, unsettling psychological thriller interspersed with a coming of age drama….the trials and tribulations of being a teenager…..and a feud with the odd Mr Strachan and his dog. Slow burning and tension filled thriller….brilliant.

Thank you to Anne Cater and Random Things Tours for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour and for the promotional materials and a free copy of the book  in exchange for my honest, unbiased review.

You can buy a copy here (click on the image)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R. Masters studied Philosophy at Girton College, Cambridge before working in public health and health behaviour for the NHS. He is a regular contributor to UK short fiction anthology series The Fiction Desk, having won their Writer’s Award for his short story Just Kids. His story Desert Walk was included in Penguin Random House USA’s Press Start to Play collection and he continues to have short fiction published in a variety of magazines. He grew up around Birmingham but now lives in Oxford with his wife and son.
The Killer You Know is his first novel.
You can find him on Twitter @SRMastersAuthor or on his website http://www.sr-masters.com/

THE KILLER YOU KNOW

By

S.R MASTERS

2nd May 2019

Published in paperback by Sphere, £7.99
Ebook and Audio also available