In Tell me a Lie PC Lucy Davies suspects Adrian Calder’s shooting dead of his wife and children is not quite the open and shut case others think.

But is it? Or not?

Hot on the heels of Spare me the Truth, in which we were introduced to the brilliantly conceived duo of Dan Forrester and our Lucy, we meet them again. I consider her ‘our Lucy’, which means that for me a writer has succeeded in sucking me into a character’s world. That character is PC Lucy Davies, who never feels more alive ‘than when on a blue light’.

But Carver, one of Frost Magazine’s favourite authors, has done the same for Dan Forrester, who is cursed with amnesia – a by product of a breakdown.

CJ Carver has created two complex characters in Dan and Lucy, characters who we first met twisting, turning, and weaving through a multi-layered plot in Spare me the Truth.

So has Carver done it again with Tell me a Lie (love the echo of the Spare me the Truth  title)?

Indeed, the girl ‘done good’. Never once does Carver drop the baton. We not only enmesh ourselves in the characters’ life problems, but in the Russian spider’s web of a conspiracy into which Dan is drawn, one which might threaten Dan’s wife.

First a sleeper agent in Moscow demands a meeting with Dan but when Dan’s cover is blown, he is on his own.

Lucy’s straightforward case proves not to be. Indeed, it is linked to Dan’s.

Does the situation indeed threaten Dan’s wife, Jenny, an accountant?

I have absolutely no intention of spilling the beans, but trust me, our Lucy and Dan combine their skills in a top gear screech through a world of high optimum cars, spies and chilling machinations, but, they’re operating almost in the dark. After all, how does anyone protect their family when they don’t know the predator?

This is an extraordinarily tense clever thriller.

Don’t expect to sleep, because this is unputdownable.

Valentine’s Day is on the horizon – forget the hearts and flowers, just go for the sleepless nights.

Great stuff, from an international thriller writer of inordinate skill.

Tell me a Lie     CJ Carver      Zaffre £7.99