‘Dark Country’ by Darren E. Laws

Published by Caffeine Nights,
1 February 2015.
ISBN: 978-1907565106

Susan Dark comes from a line of female country singers but her grandmother was murdered and then  her mother disappears.  About to release a new album, Susan is afraid the same fate awaits her.  but, looking for answers by probing into the past, she finds herself dragged into a terrifyingly ruthless sequence of events.  At the same time, FBI agent Georgina O’Neil, also investigating the murder and disappearance, has her own issues as her personal life seems to be going into meltdown. 

Law's  story operates in three different time shifts,from various points of view and includes a large cast of nerve-jangling subsidiary characters, thereby demanding that the reader stay alert,  but I didn't find it hard to follow this cleverly plotted  novel, as it races towards a  dramatic climax that despite being violent, still manages to be both poignant and engaging. 

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Reviewer: Susan Moody

Darren E Laws was born in East London in 1962. Darren's first writing success came in the mid 1990's, winning first place in a short story competition for a BBC Radio 4 arts program. The thrill of hearing his words read on Radio 4 drove him to write short stories of a dark and quirky nature before progressing to lengthier works. Darren then crafted his first novel Turtle Island, a crime thriller, which was picked up by an American publisher. Darren is now a seasoned author with another novel, Tripping, a surreal black comedy described as chick-noir, published. The sequel to Turtle Island is now completed, entitled Dark Country, and a fourth novel is in-progress which is another stand alone book outside of his series of Georgina O'Neil crime thrillers.

Susan Moody was born and brought up in Oxford.  She has published over 30 crime and suspense novels, including the Penny Wanawake series and the Cassandra Swann bridge series.  She is a past Chairman of the British Crime Writers' Association, a member of the Detection Club, a past Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tasmania and a past President of the International Association of Crime Writers.  She divides her time between south-west France and south-east Kent.   Nominated for the CWA short story award.  Nominated for the RNA's award.