Book Review
BY: Hannah Marcella Ogong
Name: Cold Granite
Author: Stuart MacBride
Pages: 453
Cold Granite written by Stuart MacBride is a book with an- eerie and cold mysterious plot. Located in Aberdeen, Scotland where after a long sick leave from work, DS Logan McRae is assigned the case of David Reid. A four-year-old boy whose body was found mutilated and strangled in a ditch. The body of the poor little boy had been there for 3 months, but the thing is this murder is only the first. A serial Killer is on the loose sending more and more little children to the morgue during the winter season in the Granite City of Aberdeen. Logan could join them if he isn’t careful and smart about what he does.
When another body of an unknown little girl is found by a group of kindergarteners in a garbage bag near an apparent complex that’s when Logan, WPC Jackie Watson and his superior DI Insch knew they had a serial killer on their hands. Not even a day passes and another little boy, Richard Erskine goes missing. Everyone is at a dead end when they have no leads. The boy is still missing, and the serial is still roaming the streets of Granite City. The townspeople feel endangered, so they start grasping at straws. Bernard Duncan aka Roadkill who picks up dead animals from off the city’s streets gets blamed for being the murderer just because of his being schizophrenic and his job. Parents resort to mob justice and attack the man, stabbing him in the middle of a cold forest where he’s left to die. The police start to get somewhere and have a suspect in mind who wasn’t roadkill. Martin Strichen, the new top suspect is being staked out by the police after he kidnapped Jamie McCreath, another poor little boy, and WPC Jackie Watson. A chase breaks loose in the dark snowed forest as Logan chases Martin down when the icy ground above a quarry gives way and the black waters swallow Martin where he was never seen again. That wasn’t how anyone expected the case to end. Out of the four victims, one only survives to live another day.
This book is in a very liked genre of mine, murder mystery. With its gruesome and heart-racing events, it’s hard to stop reading. The setting and language were different from most books and don’t get me started on the plot twists. It’s stimulating to see your favourite character suspected of a murder you know they didn’t commit, or did they? When someone escapes the walls of prison and when all the victims die but then there is a lucky survivor. Cold Granite is so engaging, makes you escape from reality and enter a totally different world of adventure.
