Dead Tomorrow Book

Despite his triumphs in a variety of endeavours (including film producer and horror novelist), Peter James’ current career as a writer of highly adroit crime novels has effortlessly assumed centre stage (James has long maintained that he was always essentially a crime writer). Such books as Not Dead Enough have revitalised the tired genre of the police procedural, powered by James’ sympathetically characterised copper Roy Grace. The author’s ace in the hole is, of course, his machine-tooled plotting, and that skill is well to the fore in Dead Tomorrow, quite the most authoritative entry in the series yet.

A teenager's body is recovered from the sea off the cost of Sussex, with vital organs excised. Two equally grim subsequent discoveries follow. At the same time, another teenager, Caitlinn Beckett, lies in a Brighton hospital; she will die if she is not the recipient of a liver transplant. The National Health Service cannot help, and Lynn, Catlinn's mothers, turns in desperation to clandestine sources. DS Roy Grace, on the trail of the killers of the dead teenagers, discovers a sinister cadre of Eastern European child traffickers. And here Peter James dispatches his usual peerless orchestration of suspense as two elements coalesce: can Roy Grace prevent another child death – and how far will the distraught Lynn Beckett go to save the life of her daughter?

Dead Simple, the first book in the Roy Grace series, immediately demonstrated that James was not content to simply reheat the clichés of the genre, and Looking Good Dead showed a similar willingness to reinvigorate the genre. Dead Tomorrow, the fifth entry, keeps up the momentum (with the usual vivid evocation of Roy Grace’s – and Peter James' – Brighton). Of course, if the police procedural field does nothing for you, there's nothing to say. But aficionados will be in seventh heaven. --Barry Forshaw