At every turn, when David feels he’s solved one mystery, at least another two emerge and he feels as if he’s getting further from the truth. I really enjoy this series as it is so well written and a little different to other books in this genre.

The Last Goodbye (David Raker Missing Persons, book 12) by The Last Goodbye (David Raker Missing Persons, book 12) by

Within a few pages, we are informed that Fiona did not actually intentionally hurt people, she just had severe trauma that caused her to run off with multiple guys and leave everyone else in the lurch, and had a few arguments with a father figure before storming off. He says something to the girls and they smile again – and then, a moment later, they disappear into the dark. But, as the police circle Raker is focussed on a new missing person enquiry, helping an adult woman discover why her mother disappeared when she was five years old.Worse, there's someone terrifying hiding in the shadows - and they're going to make sure the truth never comes out. All of it, I imagined, had been cultivated in the emergency rooms and operating theatres of the hospitals she worked in back in New York, where she was an orthopaedic surgeon. I thoroughly enjoyed The Last Goodbye, which has an intricate plot that goes in a dark direction that I didn’t expect and some stunning twists on top of that. On the contrary, I can think of no female characters in Raker's series that have stuck in my mind the same way.

The Last Goodbye - Penguin Books UK

In a narrative that goes back and forth in time, Raker begins his inquiries and soon finds himself slipping into shocking, surprising and more dangerous territory than he could possibly have imagined. He is also the host and producer of the chart-topping Missing podcast and is currently developing an original TV series with the team behind Line of Duty. Also, two characters from the two previous novels (Rebekah Murphy from Missing Pieces and Martine Parkes from The Blackbird) are blended seamlessly into the narrative here as if all three novels were conceived together.Would have been 5 stars, but the outrageous coincidences which led to the denouement was a little too much, I thought. This book is quite far into the David Raker series and I am ashamed to say that this is the first book in the series I have read, despite owning a few. He also has to deal with the worry about his closest colleague, Healey, who is under arrest in prison and under pressure to tell the police about his and Raker’s activities. The conclusion of the book was very clever and it left me wanting to read more about both David and Healy and perhaps some of the other characters. The novel has it all, well, maybe not romance, with an interesting plot, violence, hidden agendas, jaw dropping twists, a genuinely creepy opponent, tension and some unexpected history.

Extract: The Last Goodbye by Tim Weaver - Dead Good

The narrative often flashes back to earlier years as we begin to learn more about Fiona’s past and the mysterious individuals who own and run the club. We see him cross swords with some disgruntled police officers who don’t like his methods or his success, whilst others actively support him. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. His novels have been selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club three times, and his work has been nominated for a National Book Award and the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.

He has been nominated for a National Book Award, selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club three times, and shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.

The Last Goodbye by Tim Weaver | Crime Fiction Lover The Last Goodbye by Tim Weaver | Crime Fiction Lover

I finished it with a huge sense of gratitude that it is a series and that it will not be the last I will be meeting the brilliant, driven, astute yet beautifully flawed David Raker. Somehow all these events seem connected to a sinister private members club in Holborn which lists celebrities, politicians, as well as senior members of the judiciary and law enforcement among its membership. This time too Raker is not just the hunter but also the hunted as the Met close in on him and Healy. We at Penguin Random House Australia acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians and the first storytellers of the lands on which we live and work. It’s lying on the floor, in one of the ghost house corridors, and it’s not until the member of staff brings it back outside, into the light – and then shows it to the guy working the entrance, who recognizes it as Leo’s – that the camera reveals what’s happened to the bag.In The Last Goodbye, David is hired by Rebekah who's mother upped and left when she was a small child, the other missing case which seems unrelated is a father and son who went into a ghost house and never showed up.