Hanging Hill

I recently won a five book prize pack from HarperCollins Canada. This is one of those books.

Hanging Hill by Mo Hayder  

I didn't know, when I picked this book up, that it was going to be a murder-mystery-crime novel. Apparently I didn't read the back cover very closely. So the basic gist of things is this: Two very different estranged sisters - one newly divorced and penniless, the other a self-confident cop both with terrible secrets are brought back together after the murder of a teenage girl. There are also several sub-plots about drug dealers and the pornography business.  

I love mystery novels, but murder mysteries? They're my favourite. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out where they're going, too. But this book? I had no idea. Just when I thought I knew where it was going, there would be a new twist and we'd be off in the opposite direction. I lost track of how many twists there were. And then there was the ending. Don't worry folks, no spoilers here. I will say this though - the ending was the biggest twist of all. It was a major, major surprise.

I know it's cliché to say that I couldn't put this book down, so I'll just say this: I started this book on Saturday morning, and was finished by Sunday afternoon. You draw your own conclusions from that. On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically Awful, I'd give it a Pretty Awesome. It's a fast-paced page-turner that kept me guessing right to the end. If you like mysteries, you should be reading this book right now.