This is
the final instalment of Mark Dawson’s Beatrix Rose trilogy, the first of which I reviewed
here: http://thecrimenovelreader.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/in-cold-blood-by-mark-dawson.html,
the second here: http://thecrimenovelreader.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/blood-moon-rising-by-mark-dawson.html
Mark
Dawson dropped the ball ever so slightly with Blood Moon Rising – please note,
even when he does he’s still a cut above many writers and that book is well
worth a read – but with Blood and Roses he’s back on 5 star form. His Beatrix
Rose trilogy comes to a thrilling end with our heroine first defending her
house in Marrakech from a heliborne assault and then flying to the United
States to despatch her arch-nemesis, Control. But there’s a complication. Beatrix
is terminally ill with cancer and over the course of the two previous novels
we’ve witnessed her steady decline. In Blood and Roses she’s approaching death’s
door.
Blood
and Roses is both a brilliant book and effective end to the trilogy. As always
with Mark Dawson it is well written and deftly plotted. The characters are well
drawn and three dimensional, in particular both Beatrix and her daughter Isabella,
the latter so much so that I wasn’t surprised to learn that the author has
resurrected the character for her own series of novels. Beatrix’s cancer is
also well realised. The use of this plotline both undercuts the main
character’s superhuman tendencies – she is seriously kick-ass – and makes her
all too mortal, while also adding to the tension as we wonder whether she will
finally be able to achieve her goal. The settings are well drawn and as with
Somalia in the first novel, In Cold Blood, Dawson vividly brings to life all
three major locations – Marrakech, New York and most memorably, the swamps of
North Carolina.
In
conclusion this is a stunning finale to a stunning trilogy, Mark Dawson is an
astounding thriller writer, and his publishers’, Thomas and Mercer, were wise
to snap him up before anyone else did.
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