Peter James - Dead Tomorrow

review by showhost 9th June 2010
Peter James Dead Tomorrow
This was my first book by this author and it won’t be my last.
It’s described as another ‘Roy Grace’ novel. Roy Grace being an almost constant character in Peter James’s books. Superintendant Roy Grace is called to investigate when a teenagers mutilated body – missing the vital human organs, liver, heart, kidneys – is dredged up off the seabed near Brighton. But when 2 more bodies turn up, in the same condition Roy Grace and his team begin to look further afield than a sadistic, ritual, killer.
Caitlin a 15year old girl living at home in Brighton needs a liver transplant. She is very ill and has not many more months left to live but there is no suitable organ available. The NHS keep letting her down. Her mother will do anything to keep her alive even if it means borrowing thousands to buy a body organ off the internet.
In Rumania the street people, young children, steal, beg or borrow to survive. When they are offered a better life in England they believe their luck has changed and take it but it is a living hell for some and an end of life for others.

It is a powerful book, looking at the plight of people waiting for transplants, the street children in Romania and the trafficking of humans for their organs.

It starts off a little slowly and with too much mundane irrelevant info like:
“As Lynn spoke, she watched a traffic warden swagger down the pavement but she did not need to worry as there was over an hour yet to run on her pay & display sticker on her car window”. I was waiting for the traffic warden to become part of the plot, thought he was going to be some sort of mad killer but no – nothing.
But get through those first 40+ pages and you won’t want to put it down!