Hello and welcome to my stop of the Deep Dark Night Random Things Tours blog tour! A huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me to be part of this blog tour. I’ve been a big Lori Anderson fan ever since my first meeting two years ago and of course I’ve been looking forward to discover what dangers Lori has to overcome next… And this fourth book has once again confirmed me I’m 200% #TeamLori. Want to know why? Please join me while I share my thoughts!
Title: Deep Dark Night
(Lori Anderson #4)
Author: Steph Broadribb
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
First published: January 5th 2020
Publisher: Orenda Books
Finished reading: March 13th 2020
Pages: 320
“There’s no moon, no stars – nothing and no one to bear witness to the events of this deep dark night.
No one, except me.”
*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***
I first met Lori Anderson two years ago when I messed up and accidently read the second book first… Lori, in all her kickass bounty-hunter glory, charmed me almost instantly and I’ve been on #TeamLori ever since. I’m still not sure why it took me two years to finally catch up with the rest of the series, but trust me, I’m still kicking myself for not doing so before. Although I guess I did have the advantage of being able to binge-read all four books in a short period of time without the long wait in between to find out what Lori has to endure next. Boy boy it has been an explosive and intense few weeks with Lori! I’m still catching my breath as I try to recover from the adrenaline overdose…
So, book number four. Or Deep Dark Night, which is another more than fitting title if you ask me. Before I continue, I have to say that while you can technically read this book as a stand-alone, you won’t be doing yourself a favor for two reasons: (1) you might not get the dynamics between Lori, JT and the other characters if you don’t read the previous books, and (2) you are depriving yourself of some very thrilling and exhilarating reading hours. I strongly suggest just taking the time to read all four books in order to get the full Lori experience! Got that? Perfect, let’s continue with Deep Dark Night. The first thing that stands out is that this book has a completely different feel than the previous three books. Lori and JT still take up the spotlight and are omnipresent, but there is less moving about, less running and the danger feels different too. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t plently of action and violence though, but Deep Dark Night feels more like a locked-room thriller with a mafia angle rather than the typical bounty-hunter action thriller we’ve become used to. Coincidentally, as I have a weak spot for any locked-room plot in a story, you won’t see me complaining.
This time around, we are not in Florida either, but instead Lori’s fourth adventure is set in Chicago. Once again Lori finds herself entangled with mafia business, and this time only because her hands were tied after what happened in book three. I won’t go into details to avoid spoilers, but let’s just say that Monroe is one slippery bastard I wouldn’t under any circumstances trust even with something insignificant… So having Lori basically putting her (and JT’s) life in his hands made me feel tense from the very beginning. This feeling of dread didn’t leave me for one second either. I found myself to be on the edge of my seat the whole time, biting my nails as I wondered how on earth Lori and JT were going to be able to find themselves a way out of the situation… Deep Dark Night left me more breathless than an intense workout!
While I loved the style of the previous books, I also loved the new direction and the locked-room thriller feel of this story. The majority of Deep Dark Night takes place within a safe room on the 63rd story of the building where an important poker game takes place. Ten people are inside the room when everything escalates and things turn nasty for real… Imagine And Then There Were None, but mafia style, and you get some sort of an idea what might be going on soon after things are starting to go south. The plot development as well as the plot twists themselves are brilliantly handled and show us a perfect image of what Chicago might look like after a blackout. Action-packed, exhilarating and seriously disturbing: Deep Dark Night will go very dark indeed.
The story is told from both Lori and JT’s POV, which is great as they are not together all the time and it allows the story to tell us what happens from different angles as well as introduce even more suspense. Both characters have become very dear to me, so my heart stopped quite a few times with all the danger and imminent death around the corner every other chapter. The other characters in play, and especially those in the safe room during the poker game, have each been developed satisfactorily and feel well rounded; they each added their own touch to the story. Likewise, Cabressa makes for an interesting mafia character and you gotta hate Monroe all over again for the tricks he is pulling. It was great to see Lori and JT in action together again though, and that ending make me crave the next book instantly as I NEED to know what happens next…
As you might have guessed already, I’m a huge fan of this series and I’m still 200% #TeamLori. If you love a good action-packed and lighting fast thriller read, you should definitely go meet my favorite bounty-hunter Lori Anderson. Trust me, you won’t regret it!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steph Broadribb was born in Birmingham and grew up in Buckinghamshire.
Most of her working life has been spent between the UK and USA. As her alterego
– Crime Thriller Girl – she indulges in her love of all things crime fiction
by blogging at crimethrillergirl.com, where she interviews authors and reviews
the latest releases. She is also a member of the crime-themed girl band The
Splice Girls. Steph is an alumni of the MA Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) at
City University London, and she trained as a bounty hunter in California, which
inspired her Lori Anderson thrilliers, She lives in Buckinghamshire surrounded
by horses, cows and chickens. Her debut thriller, Deep Down Dead, was
shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader Awards in two categories, and hit number
one on the UK and AU kindle charts. My Little Eye, her first novel under her
pseudonym, Stephanie Marland was published by Trapeze Books in April 2018.
You can also find me at Goodreads. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Bloglovin’.
