I enjoyed watching The Tower by Kate London on TV and therefore was very pleased to be offered the chance to read and review her latest novel The Misper.

The Misper starts with Ryan Kennedy being imprisoned after killing a police officer. He knows that he has to keep his mouth shut about who he is working for and if he does then he’ll be looked after when he gets out. Meanwhile DI Sarah Collins has moved to a quieter life in the countryside after her colleague was killed. However when a missing teenager turns up in her area she realises that despite her reservations she is now involved in a much bigger investigation.

This is quite a difficult book to review as I don’t really want to say that I enjoyed it as frankly I found some of it quite disturbing, yet it was an absolutely enthralling novel that stayed with me long after I had finished it.

The main characters are all interesting, but what I found unusual for a story of a murderer was that I had sympathy for all of them. This is a novel about County Lines and drug gangs and every character came across as someone stuck with a life they didn’t always want for all sorts of reasons and all types of people, drug runners, mother’s, detectives, sisters. For me it encapsulated exactly how drug gangs affect so much more than just the users but without any judgement as to why people get caught up in this.

The book does start with a number of disjointed plots but it’s not long before the strands all start to make sense and you can seee how the story is all intertwined. I found it a gripping read with the short chapters adding to that sense of desperation felt by all the characters within the story. The changing viewpoints gave an interesting dimension to the story with insights from all angles. I thought the setting of the rural village, and the locals with the guns for shooting was a great contrast with the inner city location.

Whilst this is part of a series it can absolutely be read as a standalone novel and although I do now want to start the series from the beginning I didn’t feel that I was missing anything.

I would definitely recommend this book. Find out what others thought by visiting others on the blog tour.