The Fallen

Rating:
Summary: Murder, Sex, Lies and Lust in this Super Mystery Thriller
Review: Benjamin Iain Hogan has been a little down on his luck, His wife has left him for an American, is threatening to take his kids to the States and he's lost his last job at a London newspaper, but he's been given a second chance to be a reporter with a small newspaper on the Isle of Wight.

On the island, but before he starts his new job, he follows a police car and arrives at the scene of a young girl who appears to have fallen off a cliff onto the beach below. Because he arrieves on the heels of the police, he's mistaken for a police officer and he uses that to get close to the scene. While trying to gather enough information so he can report on the story, he sees that the girl isn't dead. However she has no ID, nobody on the island seems to know who she is and she doesn't match any of the missing person reports.

PC Emma Thomas is assigned the case and it's not long before she and Hogan become lovers. A witness comes forward who claims to have seen the young woman arguing with a local man on the cliff path. The police arrest him, but Hogan believes they have the wrong man. He doesn't think she fell at all.

When Emma, who is ambitious and not above using her sexuality to get ahead, receives a tip that Clara and Maria Forbes, two sisters might know something about the girl's accident, she questions them and quickly sees that Clara finds her attractive and she decides to take advantage of it. The next morning Clara tells her that the sweet time they had the night before, which involved Clara's maid, was illegal, as the maid is only fifteen. Then she blackmails Emma.

Emma, afraid that she's going to be found out, tries to use her relationship with Hogan to turn his attention away from the sisters. But when the maid is found dead, he begins to look into the sister's background and discovers that they run an adoption agency for Romanian children. However he's never seen any children in their home so he suspects there's something rotten in Denmark.

His search for the truth leads him from the Isle of Wight to Romania, where he digs for information among the orphans who live like sewer rats and among the wealthy bosses of the Eastern European sex trade. As he begins piecing the puzzle of it all together, he finds there is someone who doesn't like what he's doing and wants him out of the way and before he knows it, he's in a battle to save his career and his life and he's willing to risk both to discover the truth and bring down an evil killer.

THE FALLEN is both a mystery and a thriller and it had me flipping through the pages, eager to see what happened next. Lots of lust and lies in this murder story too. Lots of interesting and off beat characters and some pretty slimy ones as well. Lots going on in this five star mystery, more than you'd ever believe at first glance. THE FALLEN is just one wonderful read.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene