The Six by Luca Veste: Best read with the lights on and guaranteed to chill and thrill, The Six scores an impressive ten out of ten! - book review -

A series of shocking events at a Nineties revival music festival has dangerous repercussions for six close friends… and a year later one of them will be dead.
The SixThe Six
The Six

A series of shocking events at a Nineties revival music festival has dangerous repercussions for six close friends… and a year later one of them will be dead.

Steel yourself for another white-knuckle ride through terrifying serial killer country with a Liverpool author who continues to give his readers a masterclass in blending legend and crime thriller with bone-chilling horror.

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Luca Veste, who has an intriguing Italian and Scouse heritage, is best known for his Murphy and Rossi crime series but this second gripping hybrid – which follows the success of last year’s stunning standalone The Bone Keeper – harnesses the power of hearsay and folklore, and adds a dark and devilish twist.

The six thirty-something friends from Liverpool – Matt and Alexandra, Stuart and Michelle, Chris and Nicola – have known each other for years but now marriage, parenthood and respectability are beckoning so it’s time for one last blow-out.

The gig is a Nineties music revival festival in Bristol and they plan to set up camp near woodland, well away from the other revellers, and spend a nostalgia-filled weekend reminiscing and recapturing their youth.

But what happened on that Saturday changed everything. In the middle of the night, someone died, they made a decision they ‘couldn’t come back from,’ and the six friends promised each other that they would not tell anyone about the body that they buried.

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Trapped by that one dark secret and a choice that will define them forever, the friends drift apart but a year later, the pact has been broken. One of them is dead, and the killing has started again…

From its creepy opener right through to the high-octane, jaw-dropping dénouement, The Six is a haunting, heart-pounding and addictive page-turner full of brilliantly drawn characters, plotlines more twisted than a corkscrew, and an atmosphere tingling with menace.

Veste captures perfectly the uncertainty, fear and suspicion that erodes the group of childhood friends… the shared memories and camaraderie that once united them becomes shredded by fatal decisions taken during the events of one unforgettable night.

As the paranoia and the tension mount, so too does the list of suspects until a covert and deadly game of cat and mouse breaks out into the open with an unexpected and explosive power.

Best read with the lights on and guaranteed to chill and thrill, The Six scores an impressive ten out of ten!

(Simon & Schuster, paperback, £7.99)

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