The Last Voice You Hear

By Mick Herron

Book Overview

By the New York Times bestselling author of Slow Horses

The hunter becomes the hunted in the thrilling follow-up to Down Cemetery Road, now an Apple Original series.

After narrowly escaping an attempt on her life, Oxford private investigator Zo Boehm is determined to keep a low profile. So when Caroline Daniels takes a fatal fall in front of a train and her boyfriend fails to turn up at the funeral, Zo turns down the case--despite the insistence of Caroline's boss, who is convinced it was foul play. Then, a local teen boy plunges from the top of a London tower block and dies in disturbingly similar circumstances, and Zo has no option but to follow the evidence.

With the help of her close friend Sarah Tucker, Zo attempts to track down Caroline's boyfriend, who seems to have vanished without a trace. As her search uncovers dangerous threads, including police corruption and a potential serial killer at work, she begins to suspect she's being watched. Has the killer found her first--and if he has, will that make her the next victim?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1616955848
• ISBN13: 9781616955847
• Release Date: April 2015
• Publisher: Soho Crime
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Thoughtful, Well Crafted Thriller (3.5 stars)

Herron's second installment in the Zoe Boehm series is a thoughtful, slow-paced story of police officers and the justice system gone bad. Zoe is a forty-something private detective who's hired to find the elusive boyfriend who made Caroline Daniels' final weeks happy. Ms. Daniels fell in front of an oncoming Tube train--or was she pushed? Two other mysteries are carefully braided into this first storyline; and together, they add up to a satisfying story of revenge and ultimate justice. Much of the story, at least the first half of the book, has very little mystery to it. It concerns Zoe's apathy and depression. Many authors in this genre disappoint by not offering some details about the main character/detective and what makes her/his mind work. Herron probably goes a little too far with Zoe's negativity and skepticism, and the pacing falls pretty flat for the first half of the novel. On the whole, however, it is a well written story with believable characters, motives, and conclusion. The Last Voice You Hear is a fine novel and makes the reader know Herron is an author we'd better keep an eye on.

Great Female Detective Debut

I gather that in the US this is Mick Herron's first novel. That's fine, because the book stands proudly by itself as a psychological, noirish crime novel that deals in the issues of love, possession and ageing. Zoe Boehm his detective is a street-smart 40-something private eye based in Oxford, England. The plot kept me guessing and I guessed wrong most of the time. It is a slow-burner but the atmosphere more than compensates. If you are lucky enough to pick up on this novel, then I urge you to obtain on the net the real first novel written a year earlier, Down Cemetery Road. In it Zoe is dragged reluctantly into the private hell of another woman (Sarah Tucker) and together they have to deal with a crazily-mounting series of threats from the Secret Services. Apart from leaving you totally gripped (no lack of plot in this one, if anything it is a bit over-plotted) it will give you the background that formed the characters that we meet again, a few years on and scarred in their different ways, in The Last Voice You Hear. I have just finished Last Voice on vacation, and I want the next one now, please, Mr Herron..... If there is any justice this will in time become a classic TV detective series.