Detective Inspector January David has always put his professional before his private life, but the two worlds are about to clash horrifically as he visits his latest crime scene.

He is confronted by a lifeless figure suspended ten feet above a theatre stage, blood pouring from her face into a coffin below.

This gruesome execution is the work of an elusive serial killer. Three women from three different London suburbs, each murdered with elaborate and chilling precision. And as January stares at the most beautiful corpse he’s ever seen, he detects the killer’s hallmark. But Girl 4 is different: she is alive – barely. And January recognises her…

My Review

It started with The Beresford, since which I have read everything Will Carver has ever written. So I decided it’s time to go back to the very beginning with Girl 4, book one in the January David series.

January David is our leading protagonist. He’s a police officer with a touch of the psychic. This doesn’t endear him to one of his colleagues, Murphy, the other, Poulson, being more open-minded about Jan’s visions.

I listened on Borrowbox and while there are only two narrators – one male and one female – there are many different voices and points of view. These include January himself, the serial killer Eames, and Jan’s dreadful wife Audrey, who I really disliked. Not only has poor Jan got to endure Poulson’s laddish idea of a stag night, he has to go along with Audrey’s over the top, pretentious wedding. I wasn’t always keen on the narration, Jan doesn’t sound like I imagine him, but the worst is Murphy’s Irish accent – luckily he doesn’t get to say much.

As with most of Carver’s books, Girl 4 is not for the faint hearted. The descriptions of the killings are extremely graphic, as are Jan’s visions of the ‘smiling man’, who is trying to tell him something. We also learn that Jan’s sister Kathy was taken as a child and never found, his father was a magician who blamed Jan for losing her, and he hasn’t seen his mother for years.

You will either love this book as I did, or you will hate it, and probably never read Carver again. I love all his work although he evolves over the years. Just because you don’t take to the January David series doesn’t mean you won’t love the (very) dark humour in The Beresford, or even darker in Psychopaths Anonymous.

Carver is an acquired taste but I personally believe he’s one of the best authors of our time.

About the Author

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series, which includes Good Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the mainstream international press. Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for both the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2020 and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by the literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous, The Daves Next Door, Suicide Thursday and Upstairs at the Beresford. Will spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He and his partner run their own fitness and nutrition company, and live in Reading with five children and a tortoise.