This book has it all. A bent secret service agent's sister dies on a cruise and it is labelled as suicide. He knows better and he decides to take the case using money from dodgy dealings to investigate, Sebastian is a incredible pianist working on the ship, a child born addicted to heroin, with a penchant for murder, which has led him to cruise ships, the perfect situation and amount of people to hide in plain sight and kill a few off. This book is such a thrilling promise but suffers with an inordinate amount of detail. There is nothing the author will not explain down to the smallest intracacies that have no plot furthering point. A good read and great if you enjoy extreme detail,just not for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Loudhailer Books for the electronic copy. I didn't really enjoy this book at all. The jumps between timelines - between Sebastian McKenzie and Max Cutler's lives were really difficult to follow; you're reading about Sebastian, his childhood and his obsessions, then interrupted to read about a talented Secret Service agent-in-the-making, Max Cutler, and all the attendant boring detail of what his training consisted of; then his assignment in Europe tracking a counterfeiting gang. Meanwhile years are passing whilst Sebastian is perfecting his art of killing, torturing, with horrific and seemingly gratuitous violence, his chosen victims, as he cruises the high seas as a talented pianist. Their paths eventually cross but I found it all rather "contrived". The writing really didn't "flow". Not for me I'm afraid.