Review ~ Blog Tour ~Revenge Runs Deep by Pat Young.

Your boss is a bully. How far would you go to get revenge?

Thomas Smeaton is a powerful man who makes life a living hell for his employees.

 

When his bullying drives a woman to suicide, three of her colleagues decide it is time to take action before Smeaton destroys any more good people.

 

Six months later, a car is found submerged in a reservoir, with a single body inside. Suicide? Or murder?

 

Two people were there the night that car rolled into the depths of Loch Etrin. And one is still missing.

Review

I would like to thank the author and blog tour organiser Sarah Hardy for the ARC in return for an honest review.

Having read the authors other books, I was chuffed to be offered the opportunity to review revenge runs deep. There is always a slight nervousness on my part when I come to read a book by an author I have enjoyed in the past, in case you don’t love it, but I’m glad to say that those fears were unfounded in this case! This is a highly enjoyable mystery that delivers on both excitement and enjoyment.

Centred around the actions of three colleagues of a women who commits suicide after she is bullied by her boss, its the story of their actions against Smeaton, a smug, cruel, egoistic tyrant.

Why did I enjoy it? It’s simple really, Pat Young delivers a story that we can all understand in some way.  I’ve been bullied by bosses who feel it is their god given right to lord it over their employees and have harboured secret thoughts of retribution, never acted on, but I’m sure many of us have felt this way; and the reason this book is so clever is it shows us the possible repercussions of on acting on your pain, from the safety of your arm chair, admittedly with a coffee and possibly a packet of biscuits.

The story is not fast paced, it’s all about the characters, their actions and the consequences of those behaviours.  Three adults deciding to teach the bully a lesson they won’t forget and we get to take that ride with them.  We watch while they veer between determination to really make him suffer, to just wanting him to show remorse as they fight a battle with their own inner voices about how far they are willing to go, and between the rights and wrongs of taking his punishment into their own hands. It makes for a fascinating read that had me gripped from page one until the final word. I was left more than a little gobsmacked by the notion of how far an individual is willing to go, when pushed past the point of no return. It is full of tantalising questions for the characters, about how they a react to egoistical tyrants like Smeaton and the cracks that begin to show between the three, as they each reach the boundaries of how much they are willing to do for revenge. The writer cleverly makes us invest in them as she reveals the back story to why they individually hate this man and asks us to understand why they hate him so much.  Confusingly I felt sympathy with them, a little revulsion around how far they were willing to go and empathy for their suffering.  I both wanted them to turn back from actions they could never recover from and yet confusingly I felt an insight for why they act as they do. I personally don’t believe in revenge, but cleverly Pat Young at the same time as delivering an exciting and thought provoking read, makes me sit back and think, that I can begin to understand why others can’t turn the other cheek.

This is a first class thriller and won I would definitely recommend.

You can purchase this novel from Amazon.

About the author 

Pat Young writes psychological thrillers. Her debut Till the Dust Settles won the Constable Stag Trophy and an Amazon number 1 best-seller award. Her recent release, One Perfect Witness, sat for a while at number 2 in the Scottish Crime charts, nestled between Rankin and Cleeves and ahead of the mighty Val Mc Dermid!

But Pat never intended to be a writer. Then a story got inside her head, demanding to be told. She is fascinated by what happens when someone suddenly disappears and all her books have that theme.

Pat loves meeting readers and has been on the programme at Bloody Scotland and Tidelines. She is really excited about appearing at this year’s Boswell Book Festival at Dumfries House in May where she plans to launch her fourth psychological thriller Revenge Runs Deep.

You can follow the author on Twitter.