A Tapping at My Door: A gripping serial killer thriller (The DS Nathan Cody series)

Product Information

Later, when I learned that the motivation of the murderer was linked to a single, at that point unrevealed, word I know what the word would be. I also loved his boss, DCI Stella Blunt who threatened to ride roughshod over everyone on her sporadic appearances in the plot, with an incomparable mix of steel underscored by a certain softness. DS Cody is a broken man - mentally unstable and lying to himself, his boss and his colleagues about it and thereby putting himself and his colleagues at risk.

Starting with a shiver inducing murder and staying pretty shiver inducing throughout, A Tapping at my Door has the advantage of being a brilliant police procedural enveloped within some pretty cool pyschological character study, Nathan Cody and his inner turmoil adding some intriguing and fascinating layers into an already fascinating plot. Scared, she opens the door to find a large raven and then things get seriously creepy as she realises the raven is not alone.

Cody was previously an undercover officer but it is clear that a previous case has gone horribly wrong and has caused him extreme trauma. I was so totally engrossed in the plot from page one that I didn't even see where it was going until it slapped me in the face!

There was a moment near the end that I switched off to everything around me as I wanted to give everything I had as a reader to the final few pages of the book that is definitely going to be in my Top 10 of 2016. On the one hand, the start was great, the plot seemed to be almost perfect, but on the other hand the final revelation and subsequent ending left me a bit cold. This is no way detracts from the story, because the story is about the killer, about Cody and a couple of other characters, about relationships, about the why. Step forward Detective Sergeant Nathan Cody partnered with his ex-lover and new work colleague, Megan Webley, to solve the mystery.Off course the Author made sure we still have some thing to wonder about, but we also got some answers which really made me happy. It's one of the few novels that I have read where I felt some empathy towards the killer and revulsion towards a victim. As mentioned in the novel, Rodney Street is sometimes referred to as the Harley Street of the north, with its doctors, dentists, etc. He can’t sleep, has a quick temper and flares up very easily, especially with the local reporter and he acts recklessly with little regard for his safety. DS Cody is a likable enough character, but he fits too perfectly into the mould of troubled hero for me and the ending didn’t entirely satisfy me either.

He adopts a female voice for the female characters, so it often sounds like the suspect is being interrogated by Mrs Brown's Liverpudlian sister. There is so much that I want to say about this story, but a lot of it is about the characters and the plot developments and it would almost certainly ruin the story for potential readers. Jackson's strength lies in being able to execute a challenging plot device with sensitivity, empathy and care. Every time the story slipped into some morose protracted groan by one of the main characters, I started to nod.There was a lot of mystery about what happened to him on his last case, and I was really intrigued about finding out the truth about him. This would have been a better story if author David Jackson had toned down the many, many pages of Cody's agonising about his past failure. Not only was the murder investigation really good, and kept me on the edge of my seat, I also really loved getting to know the main character Cody. Cody’s unit, the Major Incident Team, is housed in the police station here in this deprived area of Liverpool. Like so many central characters in crime novels, Cody is slightly damaged and has a lot of personal baggage when we first meet him.

When similar murders follow, it becomes clear that these are not random attacks but targeted ones by a sadistic but clever killer.

Of course, Liverpool is also very much a central character in this novel – with the author really invoking the city streets, pubs and people and a resolution which involves the past history of the city itself. As flashbacks from his past begin to intrude, Cody realises he is battling not just a murderer, but his own inner demons too. Then a second body turns up, presented in a similar way to the first victim but with a different dead bird.