The Scribe by A.A. Chaudhuri | @Endeavour_Media

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The Scribe by A.A. Chaudhuri! My thanks to Hannah at Endeavour for the invitation to join and for the fab review copy!

Author : A.A. Chaudhuri
Title : The Scribe
Series : Kramer & Carver #1
Pages : 311
Publisher : Endeavour Media
Publication date : July 1, 2019

| ABOUT THE BOOK |

Making it as a lawyer has always been a cutthroat business.

But now that a sadistic serial killer is on the loose the consequences could prove deadly… A killer is targeting former students of The Bloomsbury Academy of Law. The victims – all female – are gruesomely butchered according to a pattern corresponding with the legal syllabus. Even more disconcerting are riddles sent by the killer to investigating officer, Chief Inspector Jake Carver, offering clues as to who is next and where they will die. 

Up-and-coming lawyer Madeline Kramer, a former classmate of a number of the slain, soon finds her life turned upside down by the savagery. And when she decides to help Carver track down the killer, she places herself in mortal danger. Can Maddy unscramble the complex riddles, and save her own life and those of others destined to die? 

| MY THOUGHTS |

A serial killer is roaming the streets and they’re on a mission. The victims this person is targeting are all female and former students of the Bloomsbury Academy of Law. Madeline Kramer finds herself smack-bang in the thick of things and decides to help detectives crack this case before more women die.

The Scribe is the first instalment in the Kramer & Carver series and does exactly what it needs to do to lay a good foundation for future books. It introduces us to the early beginnings of the working relationship between these two characters while on the hunt for quite the brutal killer.

That investigation is pretty enthralling. There’s something else that links these victims but is that why they’re being killed or is there something more sinister going on? I was completely unable to figure it out. Any ideas I came up with were more of the “that’s not going to be it” variety but the actual answer never quite came to me. Not helped by the red herrings that kept throwing me off the scent.

As far as characters go, there are quite a few fascinating and intriguing ones in this story. Chaudhuri also takes the time to introduce us to the victims before they meet their untimely deaths, which I quite liked. Some you’ll like, some you won’t but does that mean they deserve what’s coming to them? I mentioned “brutal killer”, right? Some of the murder scenes are quite graphic but somehow never gruesome.

My only little niggle was that Kramer seemed to do all the work. Sure, she’s smart and determined but she’s not a detective. It didn’t bother me that she was working with Carver, despite being a lawyer and seemingly forgetting all about her job, but sometimes I found that the solutions she came up with were things he should have figured out for himself, long before she did. Copper’s nose and all that.

All in all, The Scribe is a well-paced and well plotted serial killer thriller. Not one to overanalyse but one to be enjoyed by the pool. It’ll be interesting to see how things evolve in the next book.

The Scribe is available to buy!

Amazon US | Amazon UK

| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |

A. A. Chaudhuri is a former City lawyer.

Once a highly ranked British junior tennis player, she went on to gain a degree in History at University College London, then trained as a solicitor and worked for several major London law firms before leaving law to pursue her passion for writing.

In addition to books featuring the feisty Maddy Kramer, she has written four stand-alone novels, including racy thriller, Illicit Retainers, and political thriller, The Darker Side of White, yet to be published.

She lives in Surrey with her family.