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ROBERT THOROGOOD is the creator of the hit BBC 1 TV series Death in Paradise.
He was born in Colchester, Essex, in 1972. When he was 10 years old, he read his first proper novel – Agatha Christie’s Peril at End House – and he’s been in love with the genre ever since.
He now lives in Marlow in Buckinghamshire with his wife and children.
Also by Robert Thorogood
A Meditation on Murder
The Killing of Polly Carter
Death Knocks Twice
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Robert Thorogood 2018
Robert Thorogood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © December 2018 ISBN: 9780008238223
Praise for Robert Thorogood
‘Very funny and dark with great pace.
I love Robert Thorogood’s writing.’
Peter James
‘This second Death In Paradise novel is a gem.’
Daily Express
‘Deftly entertaining … satisfyingly pushes all the requisite Agatha Christie-style buttons.’
Barry Forshaw, The Independent
‘For fans of Agatha Christie.’
Mail on Sunday
‘A treat.’
Radio Times
‘This brilliantly crafted, hugely enjoyable and suitably goosebump-inducing novel is an utter delight from start to finish.’
Heat
‘A brilliant whodunnit.’
Woman
For Rosie Evans
Contents
Where do you want me to start? At the beginning? Okay. Then you have to go back twenty years. That’s when it all began. With a single gunshot. Nothing before then matters. I was born, I lived my life, but it was in that moment that everything changed. Everything. You can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like. You think you can, but you can’t. I used to think the feelings inside me would go away. Somehow. That it wasn’t possible to feel like this forever. But guess what? It is. Not that I let on. I got good at hiding it. It used to surprise me, how everyone would look at me and think I was normal. They didn’t know about the furnace I had churning inside me. It became like a game. I’d see how normal I could be. No-one ever knew the truth. And over the years, the decades, that fire inside me changed. It got tighter and denser. And then one day, I realised it wasn’t a fire at all. It had become like a diamond. A diamond of pure hate. It made me laugh to feel