Zoë Boehm has harbored a distinct aversion to death ever since she shot the man intent on killing her. So when Caroline Daniels takes a deadly fall in front of a train and her lover fails to turn up at the funeral, Zoë wants nothing to do with the case. But Caroline’s boss is persistent, and as Zoë attempts to unlock the secrets of a woman she’s never met while in search of a man who could be anywhere, she starts to wonder if he’s found her first. And if he has, will that make her the next victim, or prove to be her salvation from a paralysing fear?

’The Last Voice You Hear’ was a twisty, sometimes violent, thriller, dominated by two strong women. It was a book that managed to feel character-driven while delivering unexpected plot twists and gradually revealing the relationship between apparently unrelated events. 

The novel takes place a couple of years after the events of ‘Down Cemetery Road’ (2003). This time, the story focuses not on Sarah Tucker, but on Zoë Boehm, the Private Detective who only became a main character in the last third of ‘Down Cemetery Road‘.

Much of the story is told from Zoë’s point of view, and one of the things I enjoyed most about the novel was getting to spend time inside her head. Her slightly unconventional and cleverly articulated thoughts made her an engaging character while effortlessly delivering plot exposition and manipulating the level of tension in the story. I enjoyed watching Zoë fail to keep the emotional distance from the people around her that she aspires to as she navigated a series of puzzling, sometimes threatening, encounters that lead, through a series of surprising twists and turns, to a very tense, very violent climax. 

In a mirror image of ‘Down Cemetery Road’, Sarah Tucker only appears in the last third of the novel. She is probably the only person who Zoë. The two women are quite different to one another, but the bond between them is strong. When Sarah entered the story, the tension rose as there was more at risk, and Zoë came more clearly into focus as Sarah provided a context that reframed my view of her.

I liked the intricacy of the plot, the credible levels of threat and the slow but inexorable convergence of people and events that kept me almost permanently in suspense. I loved the perfectly choreographed tension of the violent denouement. 

Even so, what I enjoyed most was the character-building, especially the way Zoe formulates her thoughts, and how the relationship between Zoë and Sarah seems to empower them both. 

I’m sold on this series now. I’ve already added ‘Why We Die’ (2006), the next book in the series, to my TBR pile..