Thank you to Hoder and Stoughton for my place on the blogtour.
My Thoughts
This is such a daring concept, executed (!) perfectly. It’s a really intense combination of thriller and crime fiction. The story is one which you can’t fail to be invested in from the first pages, but, not only is that so gripping but the characters feel so real , and the legal elements are fascinating too.
The story is a highly emotive one, Alice and her sister find out that their father is on death row with seven days left. The book is broken down into chapters which count down the days. Not only does this give the feeling of pressure, but it’s all of the emotions that accompany that looming deadline too.
Alice and her sister are highly intelligent women, they pull together against their natural instincts to help their father who they haven’t seen for years after he abandoned them. Alice does her own investigative work, and often with her neck quite literally on the line she leaves no stone uncovered to try and follow through the case herself. She re-examines evidence, she calls in favours, and she does some sneaky work to try and find out what really happened. She wants to prove his innocence, if indeed he is innocent of what he is accused.
This is fast-paced, it’s tense, thrilling, and it’s very clever. I could imagine it as a tv drama, when you start reading it’s not one you want to put down. This is as much about the characters as it is about the story. What makes it for me is how the author has created characters that you feel sympathy towards, and not just the one in prison, it’s his family too. This shows how when it really matters you find out who cares, and how they handle their conflicting emotions. A lot of things in life are not straight forward and this shows how true that is even when it could be your final week. An absolutely cracking read for crime thriller lovers.
The Blurb
Your father is on death row. You have seven days to save him. But do you want to?
Alice knows her father is guilty of many things.
He’s guilty of abandoning her.
He’s guilty of being unfaithful to her mother.
But is he guilty of murder?
Now on Death Row, he has seven days to live.
Some people want him released.
Others will kill to keep him just where he is.
Alice has only one chance to save him. But should she?
The Author
Robert Rutherford had a random mix of jobs before taking the dive into crime writing; he’s been a bookseller, pizza deliverer, karate instructor, football coach, and HR Manager. He lives on the North East Coast with his wife, children & overly-needy dog, and is a founding member of the Northern Crime Syndicate crime-writers group.
Seven Days, a high-concept thriller, due out on 11th April 2024, is the first in a two book deal with Hodder.
He also writes as Robert Scragg, with “What Falls Between The Cracks”, the first in his Porter & Styles series, written under Robert Scragg, being chose as a New Writing North pick as one of the 2019 Read Regional books of the year. Rob’s work has also seen him win the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction in 2021, as well as being shortlisted for a CWA Dagger in 2021 and 2022.
Rutherford Reads 