Mixed Pickles - the Book log 2012

Never try and cover up. It's bound to come out in the end. That's the lesson that Nathan Redmond learns in the course of this efficient, tenseley written thriller by Neil Cross. A drug fuelled kinky encounter at a Z-list celebrity party ends very nastily, but a hasty cover-up seems to have done the trick and Nathan is able to lead a ... no - not a normal life, but an approximation of one. Until the day when his partner-in-crime turns up on the doorstep and tells him that the buried body is about to come to light.

Cross structures his story cleverly, sinking his hook deep early on and keeping the tension on throughout. Despite the dubious morality of his protagonist, Cross still manages to make the reader care about the outcome, and feel sympathy for the man trying to deal with the consequences of his earlier, more immature, actions.