Someone Else's Skin (D.I. Marnie Rome 1): Winner of the Crime Novel of the Year (D.I. Marnie Rome)

by Sarah Hilary

[Leah]

I always love discovering new crime authors, especially as I am enjoying the genre more and more – the more new reads I find, the more new authors I discover and there are some cracking crime writers around! I picked up Sarah Hilary’s novel Someone Else’s Skin when I spotted it in Tesco and it has a delicious looking cover (not in that way). I love how the title shows a body inside it. That’s so cool.

Something I really enjoy about reading crime novels is the fact the leading characters are usually women, and strong women at that. I love reading about a woman who knows how to handle herself and DI Marnie Rome can certainly do that, having suffered one of the worst losses a person can suffer. She knows her stuff and I think that what she went through five years previous has only made her stronger, and I liked the glimpses we got of what happened five years ago. I suspect there’s more to come as the series progresses, too. It’s a back story that’s nicely bubbling away.

The main plot is really clever, in fact it’s one or two plots that some how become linked. DI Marnie Rome and DS Noah Jake are headed to a woman’s refuge to interview a girl about her brother, and the attack he and her brothers gave her, when they walk in on an attempted murder. What follows is a twisty, turn-y plot which will likely leave you with whiplash and which had me grinning when I realised where it was going. I guessed it, yes, but I was still shocked. I was still surprised. It took me a while to really get in to the book but once all the plots started coming together, and moves were made, and Marie and Noah and her team were put to the test, I was absorbed. I couldn’t wait to get to the end, and I finished the book in a couple of sittings over the course of a day.

Sarah Hilary is a top-notch writer. It just got to the point where I couldn’t stop reading and had to know how it all ended! I love books that just pull me in without me even noticing it, until I can’t give up until I’m done; in fact, I was so glad I was reading this during the day as there was no way I’d have been able to put it down at night time.

My copy above has lots and lots of praise on it, calling Someone Else’s Skin impressive, thrilling, disturbing and for once the book lives up the praise and is all of those things and more! I can’t wait to get stuck into No Other Darkness and be back with Marnie and her team again. They’ve immediately become one of my favourite crime solving teams and I’m dying to delve more into Marnie’s history!