I didn’t expect much of Dead Simple. I had never heard of it but it was part of the goody bag I received at the book blogger event that I attended recently. The author, Peter James, is also the director of the movie Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons and Ralph Fiennes. His Roy Grace series stars a detective by the same name who dabbles in the paranormal by regularly consulting psychics to help with unsolved murder cases.
Which may be a reason why his books are named Dead Simple, Look Good Dead, Not Dead Enough and Too-Dead-Easy-To-Make-Up-These-Unoriginal-Titles. But don’t let the cheesy titles fool you, Dead Simple was a page turner. It’s a fast read and I was dying to get to the end of it.
The story is about a bachelor party gone wrong where the groom ends up trapped in a coffin and buried alive. His prankster friends have all died in a car accident after burying him. If that doesn’t make you want to keep reading, nothing will! Add a beautiful fiancee and a business partner that mysteriously didn’t make it to the bachelor party and you have yourself a good story.
Roy Grace is a Brighton detective with a soft spot for a lot of things – psychics, children and women. If you’ve ever seen the British cop love interest from Bridesmaids, you’ve met Roy Grace. He’s just not very macho but he is very loveable. His British slang confused me in the beginning but you get used to it pretty quickly. The book also ends with a car chase which would have been great on screen but in my opinion, car chases suck in a book.
Especially when you’re dying to figure out if Grace will find the missing groom alive.
Brighton
