Hi and welcome to my audio book review of The Tattoo Thief! I was planning on welcoming you to another #BiteSizeSaturday but this was turning into quite a chunk I could by no means refer to as bite-sized so let's just have a regular Saturday this week!
First of all, I would like to thank Drew a.k.a. @SarcasticEnigma over on The Tattooed Book Geek since it was his stop on the blog tour (featuring a guest post by Alison Belsham) that brought The Tattoo Thief to my attention and onto my TBR. If you want to check that out (which you definitely should), you can find it here.
A policeman on his first murder case
A tattoo artist with a deadly secret
And a twisted serial killer sharpening his blades to kill again.... When Brighton tattoo artist Marni Mullins discovers a flayed body, newly-promoted DI Francis Sullivan needs her help. There's a serial killer at large, slicing tattoos from his victims' bodies while they're still alive. Marni knows the tattooing world like the back of her hand, but has her own reasons to distrust the police. So when she identifies the killer's next target, will she tell Sullivan or go after the Tattoo Thief alone?
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The Tattoo Thief is a chilling thriller featuring a very likeable DI and his very annoying boss, a kick-ass (and yes, you can take that literally) female tattoo artist and her French ex-husband / womaniser / tattoo artist, Pepper the dog, a koi fish and many other tattoos, the Yakuza (if only by name), a tattoo collector AND a tattoo thief (go figure!). And how does one steal tattoos, you ask? Well, evidently by assaulting the tattooed person, flaying them and curing their tattooed skin. Yup, that doesn’t sound very appetising… And so part of this book is really rather upsetting to the stomach, but it does make for one hell of a thriller! I don’t have any tattoos (I’m notoriously indecisive, I can’t even decide what to wear or what book to read next, let alone choose an image or text to be permanently inked on my body), but I am fascinated by them. I had no idea there’s a whole tattoo community out there but I found that world, as depicted here in The Tattoo Thief, equally fascinating. Don't worry though if you're not at all interested in tattoos, this is a compelling read either way, for me it's was just a nice extra.
If you’re at all into audio books and you're interested in this novel, you should definitely listen to it: the narration is superb and the thief’s voice is utterly terrifying. I heard it first while driving. There I was, alone in a dark car on a dark road, and I absolutely had to check my rear-view mirror just to make sure no knife-wielding maniacs were hiding on my backseat!
Recommended to all you thriller fans who aren’t afraid of a gruesome crime or two