Cover Image: The Judas Flower

The Judas Flower

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Member Reviews

4 stars

Archie Wilson, a very rich man in his thirties, is walking down Hope Street when someone calls his name. Archie won’t be seeing any more mornings.

DI Aliya Pereira is at the school with her daughter in the principal’s office when she gets a phone call from DS Marc Bain about a body in the cemetery. She has to take her teenage daughter with her as she has just been suspended from school for hitting a boy.

The body is propped against a headstone, slightly mutilated about the eyes, but with a cross pounded into his skull. He is holding a flower from a tree. Bain recognizes him immediately. He is Archie Wilson, a lottery winner from a couple of months earlier: one hundred and thirty million. Pereira recognizes the kind of flower; it is from a Judas tree.

Pereira and Bain go to speak to Archie’s parents and then to his flat mate. They interview many, many people from his friends and acquaintances, reverends and business associates. Another person dies. The police get wind of a possible mission trust deal. Did they put pressure on Archie? Some kind of blackmail?

This book is very well written and plotted. The suspense begins immediately in the story and continues throughout the book. It was very well crafted. I liked the novel a lot. Mr. Lindsay’s writing is easy and flows nicely. I appreciated the way that Pereira’s team got along with one another and they worked well together. Well done!

I want to thank NetGalley and e-books for forwarding to me a copy of this great book to read and enjoy.

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I would like to thank Netgalley and Bastei Entertainment for an advance copy of The Judas Flower, the second police procedural to feature Glaswegian detectives DI Aliya Pereira and DS Marc Bain.

Pereira and Bain are called out to the Necropolis for a murdered body. The man has been stabbed round the eyes and a metal cross driven into his head with a branch of a Judas Flower placed in his hands. The symbolic nature of the scene alarms them but no one can work out why some one would want to kill recent lottery winner Archie Wilson.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Judas Flower which has an interesting plot with plenty of twists and turns and I had no idea of the perpetrator's identity until the dénouement. I like a well hidden perpetrator as trying to guess adds to my enjoyment of a novel. In this case I took too much at face value.

I come from Glasgow so I always like a novel set there but I didn't get much sense of place in this novel, either geographically or in the dialogue (the odd "youse" doesn't count!). Never mind, the twisting plot and various developments arising from the original murder more than make up for it. It had me glued to the pages from start to finish.

The novel is all about Pereira and there is little about Bain who seems to exist to support her. She is a single working mum with two children and obsesses that she isn't a good parent. Add to this that she is still pining for her ex girlfriend and you would imagine her to be a neurotic mess. In fact she is a capable and efficient detective who parks her neuroses at the door when she starts work. I really like her.

The Judas Flower is a good read which I have no hesitation in recommending.

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I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

A recent lottery winner is discovered dead in a Glasgow cemetery and other murders follow. The narrative is from the perspective of DI Aliya Pereira, who juggles solving the case, managing her boss, and finding time for her children. While there was a fair amount of time spent on Pereira's personal life (and the imperfect decisions she had made and continued to make), the main focus was the investigation itself.

I thought this was an excellent police procedural; I read it in one sitting and found the twists and turns compelling and the identity of the perpetrator both a surprise and entirely logical. There was a good sense of the Glasgow setting and of Pereira's "otherness". I would be keen to read more instalments of this series.

Highly recommended.

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A man has been found murdered in a cemetery in Glasgow. His death caused by the metal cross hammered into his skull, he holds a branch from a flowering Judas tree in u=is hands. DI Aliya Pereira and DS Marc Bain catch the case and learn the victim. Archie Wilson, has recently won the lottery. There definitely seems to be a connection between his winnings and his murder, but can Bain and Pereira find out what it is before someone else is killed? I love the contrast between the gritty, gruesome police work and the “real lives” of Bain and Pereira. Pereira in particular struggles with being a working mother and faces prejudice because of her perceived religious and racial background. A fantastic story on all levels

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