Someone Else’s Skin – Sarah Hilary (DI Marnie Rome Book 1)

Someone Else’s Skin – Sarah Hilary (DI Marnie Rome Book 1) – Genre – Police / Crime

Blurb:  Winner of the Theakston’s 2015 Crime Novel of the Year, and a 2014 Richard and Judy Book Club pick.SOMEONE ELSE’S SKIN has been acclaimed as ‘stunning’ by Mark Billingham and ‘superbly disturbing’ by the Observer. Introducing D.I. Marnie Rome, this powerful novel that will enthral fans of Val McDermid and Mo Hayder.

No two victims are alike.

DI Marnie Rome knows this better than most. Five years ago, her family home was the scene of a shocking and bloody crime that left her parents dead and her foster brother in prison. Marnie doesn’t talk much about her personal life, preferring to focus on work. Not even her partner, DS Noah Jake, knows much about Marnie’s past. Though as one of the few gay officers on the force and half Jamaican to boot, Noah’s not one to overshare about his private life either. Now Marnie and Noah are tackling a case of domestic violence, and a different brand of victim.

Hope Proctor stabbed her husband in desperate self-defense. A crowd of witnesses in the domestic violence shelter where she’s staying saw it happen, but none of them are telling quite the same story, and the simple question remains: how did Leo Proctor get in to the secure shelter? Marnie and Noah shouldn’t even have been there when it happened but they were interviewing another resident, Ayana Mirza. They’re trying to get Ayana to testify against her brothers for pouring bleach on her face for bringing dishonor to the family, and blinding her in one eye. But Ayana knows that her brothers are looking for her, and she has no doubt that they’ll kill her this time.

As the violence spirals, engulfing the residents of the women’s shelter, Marnie finds herself drawn into familiar territory: A place where the past casts long shadows and she must tread carefully to survive.