When Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and Cleo Morey take their first holiday together, they hope for a few days away from their dark worlds of murder and the mortuary. But their dream escape turns out to be the holiday from hell.

Things get weirder and weirder- the anonymous blogster names names and then, poof, they're gone. Eventually, she gets scared that she's cursed- clearly someone is reading what she writes and acting on it. In the mean time, Madison is seeing people who she has been close to her whole life disappear and desperately trying to make the connection to who could be responsible. Worse than anything, she fears that her new man of interest who just moved into town mysteriously could be involved in some way. Not to mention she's been getting weird anonymous notes on the computer, and now she's finding messages left for her warning her that it's not safe. Clearly someone she knows is involved in this, but who?

Who is Peter James?

Michael Holt’s two-level set – complete with a suit of armour that was quite the topic of conversation in the interval – was very reminiscent of an Agatha Christie style setting and Director Jonathan O’Boyle used it very well. Max Pappenheim’s sound and lighting worked well to give the chateau a suitable look but one thing I didn’t understand was why he included atmospheric music at various points, particularly in the second act. In a film or TV programme, incidental music added to the atmosphere and emotion works, but I’m really not sure it does in a theatre, and personally, I found it rather distracting. I will praise the baby though. I’ve no real idea how it was done, but whenever the child was making sounds – gurgling, crying, laughing you know the sort of thing – the noise came from the baby really making the child seem more real than it might have been. A great evening out, and another success for the Peter James franchise, look out Agatha, he’s trying to catch you up!’

Michael’s desperate and attractive fiancée, Ashley Harper, seeks Superintendent Roy Grace for his help, hoping to find her husband-to-be before the wedding in three days. Man, that puppy is psycho. The dialogue with his/her captives gives you goosebumps. The poor kids get not only physical torture but psychological as well. There’s so much I wanna say but can’t because I don’t wanna spoil! Definitely recommend you guys read this! I read it in like 2 and a half hours! (Though I did read like half last night then woke up at 6 am to finish…but in total it was about 2 in a half-ish hours) Meanwhile, Madison receives anonymous notes warning that she could be next. Desperate to solve the mystery before anyone else disappears, Madison turns to Tyler, but can she trust him when it becomes clear that he knows more than he’s sharing?James explained that, in his experience, a majority of policemen and policewomen enjoy their work, even though they have to work insane hours, deal with the bureaucracy, and face horrible tragedies, as well as the internal politics of the system. But he also explains that those experiences are the reason that police workers look at the world differently than everyone else. rowan, he is literally amazing. we love that he is honestly so protective of her, the way he was so so loving but morally grey??? yk i ate that up. he also has a way with words, making words literally sound poetic when he was showing his true emotions. Madison was a well done character. She was popular but different than the others- something that came more into play than I initially thought. She developed well, given the situation she was in and there were only a few instances where I questioned what she was doing and why. At the crux of Act 1 (spoiler), the Vicomte reveals himself to be Curtis, a notorious crime lord from Brighton who blames Grace for the death of his son. Madam L’Eveque is revealed to be Curtis’ daughter0in-law and both are soon joined by another family member, Brent, with the whole facade having been set up to allow the family to exact their revenge. Based in England in a city known to be full of criminals, Roy Grace’s department focuses on suspicious events and murder mysteries. One of the most popular murder-mystery novelists of his time, Peter James, wanted to give the dark city a personable protagonist who helped make the stories that needed to be told more light-hearted and easy to interpret.

The second act focuses entirely on how Roy and Cleo will miraculously escape this scenario and live to fight another day (probably in the next The level of gruesome and gore is medium as the target audience is young adult. Too bad it's not adult horror/thriller. Bet it would extreme and guaranteed with nightmares.Consider this is a YA book, I decided to just cool with the way these teens think. They're annoying, dramatic, gossips here and there, crush on boys and girls, judgmental and all that attitudes associate with teens. I was once a teen, so go figure. Madison, the main character, was a little bit boring (she doesn't really have anything special about her... I mean not a hobby or anything) but perfect for the storyline: she was in the popular clique still she wasn't mean or a bully so with other words people liked her. The whole story begins with the blog where a bullied girl writes about how badly people treat her. After we can read how Lucy (one of the most popular girls) gets kidnapped and then we read about what happened before Lucy got out of Tyler's car and here comes the story from Madison's point of view. When her friend, Lucy, disappears after being dropped off at her house by Madison and her Safe Ride partner, she feels guilty. The rules of Safe Ride state that the person being dropped off should be witnessed entering his/her home. Madison was pretty annoyed with Lucy and her better-than-everyone attitude that night, and when Lucy stubbornly continued to hang around on her front walk, Madison and Tyler just left her.

James is very active in his community. He has been involved in twenty-six movies (including The Merchant of Venice), is a chairman of the Brighton and Hove Drugs Commission, helps out with the local neighborhood watch, is an Ambassador for Brighton University, and helps with Action Medical Research. He also donated a police car to the Sussex Police in 2008.The set design by Michael Holt effortlessly captures the detail and essence of the place as described in James’s programme notes. There are dead animal heads coming out of the walls of the main room, a large and ominous painting of the crucifixion in the bedroom and, thrown in for good measure, a full suit of armour that looks like it could easily be concealing a live or dead body on the staircase. lightning, rain and thunder The story is told from Madison’s point of view, at least most of the time. Sometimes it switched around to the other teens involved but not often. It also switched when one of the teens was being kidnapped. It was written from their point of view when it was happening. It made the book seem a lot scarier because you saw what they were going through and you saw how helpless they were to fight. It was horrible.