Still Bleeding opens with the narrator's description of the last time he saw his wife, before she committed suicide. Unable to cope with the feelings of loss and guilt, Alex Connor leaves the UK and his old life behind with the intention of losing himself.
A few years later he finds himself in an Italian cafe watching the international news, learning that his best friend Sarah has been murdered by his older brother. Finally spurred to confront his demons, he heads back to the UK to find out more.
But Sarah's body isn't where James left it. Someone has taken it, and Alex finds out there's a whole lot more to lose than your life nowadays. There's also Paul Kearney, a policeman on the hunt for a serial killer. When he discovers that more than one person is involved, and the latest victim may be still alive somewhere...
Alternating POVs and narrative voices, both men begin to unearth evidence of an underground business that deals in the dead, and as the story unfolds, it becomes horrifyingly clear just what people are willing to pay for.
This book is awesome :D I read it over the weekend each night before bed and that maybe wasn't a great idea (it's pretty scary in parts) but I totally enjoyed everything about it. I spent the first half of the book trying to figure out how the two main characters were connected, then the rest of the book trying to figure out how everything came together. I was dead proud of myself when I figured out the connection between Kearney and Banyard relatively quickly, but the rest of it kept catching me by surprise, and I fricking loved it!
Steve Mosby really does write this from a very human point of view; Alex's way of going through things is completely understandable, and increasingly so as the plot unfolds, and Kearney is such a complex and fascinating character that just as he tries to understand the mind of a killer, I found myself wanting to understand him more- his motives are mostly unclear, and his drive seems at first to be too much for someone like himself.
Some of the characters (bad guys) did sicken me; the way bidders at a (certain kind of) auction acted and enjoyed themselves seemed grotesque, and leering. It's been a while since I've read a book in which the characters are so well thought out, and so well described (but at the same time drip fed to the reader) that I literally couldn't stop thinking about them.
The ending too, is just short of a cliffhanger; the story has ended, but everyone involved is left suspended, unsure what to think or how to continue, and in a way I felt the same. There's a few twists, and a few surprises, and you're pretty much left guessing til the very end. It's definitely a book I'd recommend (already passed it on to my mum and mentioned it to a couple of friends) because it's very raw, and you can really understand pretty much everybody there. Even the bad guys! (Except Banyard... ughhhh)
For those who like being scared, this is definitely a must have for your shelves. The book explores just how far people go to indulge their fantasies and darker interests. I am of course, a little worried that Mosby watches snuff films in his spare time though... it is written pretty thoroughly... ;P (I am joking... mostly)
(You can read Adele's interview with Steve alongside Sean Cregan here)
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