Rosie’s Book Review Team #RBRT Kill Line by Robert Leigh @ScreamingMagpie #wwwblogs #bookreview

Today’s second team review is from Terry, she blogs at http://terrytylerbookreviews.blogspot.co.uk/

Terry chose to read and review Kill Line by Robert Leigh

Kill Line by Robert Leigh

5 out of 5 stars

I liked this book a lot, so much that I’ve already downloaded Robert Leigh’s latest one, Any Man Joe.

Shaun Dolan works in a call centre, and murders customers who are unnecessarily rude to him. Yet I still kind of liked the guy. I didn’t want him to get caught. That’s a real art – making the reader root for a brutal psychopath.   Oh dear, I hope it’s not just me…

The strength of this book is the sharp observation by which the characters have been created, from Shaun’s boozy mates, to the chav ex-girlfriend, to the begging victims Barry Johnson and the revoltingly pompous Derek Page-Dove (great name!), and, best of all – the ghastly, dreadful supervisors and management at Skymiles and Calltex call centre. Well done, Robert Leigh – the section in the middle about the changeover from Skymiles to Elevation, with all its corporate BS, is a masterpiece – it’s obvious the author has worked in one of those places, and the production of this novel must have made every soul destroying moment worth it. The dialogue is spot on, with every awful buzzword and phrase these people use; yes, and don’t they always refer to their staff, etc, as ‘you guys’??! Ugh!

This is not a novel for the squeamish; the violence is graphic, and you’ll want to weep for the victims. But it’s kind of funny. If you can believe that. Not laugh out loud funny, but witty and clever.

I wavered between 4 and 5 stars all the way through it, eventually deciding on 5*. I think it needs some tidying up, I thought the Harry Collins part was too much, and I was a tiny bit disappointed by the ending, but these are very minor complaints (in fact, not even complaints), are only my opinion, and the good bits are so very good that I couldn’t have given it less.

Highly recommended!

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com