"Eeny Meeny" by M.J. Arlidge

"Sam is asleep. I could kill him now. His face is turned from me - it wouldn't be hard. Would he stir if I moved? Try and stop me? Or would he just be glad that this nightmare was over."

People are getting kidnapped in pairs. They're locked up, given a gun and a choice: if you kill your partner, you'll be set free. If not, you'll both die of hunger and thirst. The work of a very sadistic -female- serial killer. An extremely difficult case for D.I. Helen Grace, especially when she finds out that she knew some of the victims personally.

"Eeny Meeny" is the first in a series of seven (and counting) about D.I. Helen Grace. It caused quite a stir when it was first published. I have to say I'm not quite sure why. Sure it's an easy read, but then for me, there was absoultely nothing that made it stand out from countless other thrillers. The very short chapters and many changes in point of view make this a quick read, but also make it seem very fragmentary. There's very little that's original and character development is just about zero. I never could relate to the protagonist, and the other characters are all rather flat, so that didn't help. Furthermore, some of the events were really a bit far fetched. People surviving without water for two weeks? I don't think so. Sabotaging a car's petrol tank, so that it runs out of fuel at exactly the place you want? Not very likely. Someone chewing their fingernails to the blood, and then being found with long, dirty nails? Oops.

Still, all in all it's a decent thriller, just nothing really memorable.

Author: M.J. Arlidge
Title: Eeny Meeny
Publisher: Penguin, London
Year: 2014
Number of pages: 421 p.
ISBN: 9781405914871