Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC.

A thrilling crime thriller that reminded me of Silence of the Lambs. Pacing was superb, and the twists and turns kept me glued. Highest recommendation!

Thank you to NetGalley and Matt Hilton for allowing me to read this Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of Death Pact.

Everybody mark your calendar for July 2nd! Death Pact packs a punch - an amazing storyline filled with plot twists. This could be a movie or a criminal TV show episode. Nate and Will, two brothers rescued in childhood from the cult "Children of the Hammer". Both are placed into the system in the UK. Both grow up to lead very different lives. Or do they? One day a horrendous crime scene unfolds and at the center is a symbol drawn in the victim's blood. This symbol is no Satanic symbol. Quite the opposite. This symbol is angelic and heralds the coming of a new leader for the "Children of the Hammer" - and they want all their members back together, in the flesh, anthropodermic bibliopegy (now I know you're interested)! Deeprooted in heavy biblical undertones and religious beliefs, Death Pact is a classic serial killer cult classic that takes the reader deep into methodology, thought processes, and belief systems from the viewpoint of a survivor.

Will Will and Nate be safe? What is one of them is the rising leader and killer? What if it is brother against brother?

Gruesome Crime Horror/ Thriller Starts With A Bang. Seriously, the start of this book feels like Hilton read Jeff Guinn's Waco, because it truly feels like Hilton took Guinn's hyper realistic descriptions of what actually went down there to scaffold his own fictional version.

Which is actually a *phenomenal* way to begin this particular tale.

The rest of the tale then flashes forward a bit and crosses the "pond", becoming a UK based police/ crime tale featuring some particularly horrific murders that fans of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter trilogy or Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Pendergast series will absolutely enjoy. The pacing of the investigation is solid, and the way the various characters meld together is done quite well.

Surprises late are well executed, and by the end you're going to be questioning if this is meant to be a series starter afterall...

Overall truly a great crime story excellently told, and a solid change of pace from Hilton's Gey and Villere thrillers in particular in that while the action is equally intense, the criminals here feel so much more decidedly dark and truly evil. Very much recommended.

This was a good book. I really love the world building and the characters. The pacing was really good and it was an interesting story to read

As children Nate Freeman and his brother Will were part of a cult called the Children of Hamor, but they were rescued and then taken from the U.S. to the UK and adopted out, separately. Now former detective Nate doesn’t know where any of the children taken from the cult are until they begin turning up dead, minus a symbol branded into their backs.

Nate’s old boss asks for his help in locating this serial killer targeting the former cult members, but obviously he’s at risk too.

Reading this was painful and a bit of a slog as it is not well written. Awkward sentence structure. Clauses that don’t make sense. At one point author has the villain thinking that he’s immoral. What? That sort of thing.

I read this because I’m a big fan of books about cults, but this really doesn’t dive deeply into the life of the cult (which is fair, I guess, since Nate was a child,) plus I thought the killer was pretty obvious from the beginning of the book. So this one didn’t do it for me.