‘Look Fast or Die Slow’ by David Six

Look Fast or Die Slow

When a serial killer taunts Frank Bruno with mysterious messages, the former detective is puzzled to say the least. The murderer’s victims – brutally butchered – are piling up rapidly and it soon becomes obvious that the trail of bodies leads straight to Frank’s own door. While his ex-partner, Lieutenant Rita “Sally” Salvanian, tries to keep her pal out of danger, Bruno’s latest love interest is also getting in the way – as well as his other girlfriend, Emily. Faced with an apparently senseless series of killings, Frank and Sal race to untie the knot of clues before it’s too late.

Rather stupidly, I hadn’t realised this book is the second in the Bruno and Salvanian series – that’ll teach me to read the blurbs properly! Nevertheless, it works well as a stand-alone and the snippets of back-story were enough to fill me in on what I’d missed in book one. As with the previous novel I’d read by this author (For Weeds Will Grow), the narrative sucked me in like a giant leech on a fleshy buttock, and the twisty-turny plot kept me captivated right to the end. David Six’s characters might be well-rounded, but they’re also intriguing, and he has a knack of creating those solidly-built relationships that, as we all know, are the foundations of a great novel. The humour too, while a bit off the wall at times, helps lighten the load as the plot slides through a series of very bloody murders.

The narrative occasionally felt a little more drawn-out than it needed to be, although that could have been my own eagerness to reach the end (it was hard to resist skipping forward to the next gory bit), and while the denouement wasn’t exactly a ‘twist’, it did take me by surprise, which is nice. All in all, ‘Look Fast or Die Slow’ is a brilliant book that, for those of you with strong stomachs, will grab you by the dangly bits and drag you kicking and screaming all the way to the last page.