Over recent weeks, it has become very clear to me that my favourite genre of books to read are mystery/thrillers. I love a complex, multi layered ,twisty-turny ( technical term ...) mystery book especially if it involves a dead body or 6 . After reading various online descriptions of this book, Identity theft seemed like it would be a perfect fit for me.

However once I started this book I quickly realised that maybe it wasn't .

The book was very hard to get into. The dialog between characters was difficult to follow due to the abundance of words that were used for what could have been said in a simple and clear way. The same applies to the descriptions of places, actions and the inner monologue of various characters.

The story line itself was certainly one with many layers which I appreciated and it went in a way that I didn't predict. What I thought would be a detective solving a mysterious case surrounding a murder or two , turned out to be a mystery involving the homeless community, possession, mind control and freaky events that happen in the woods.

I do feel that the thing that supposedly started the chain of events was weak. I don't overly see how it was significant enough to set the villain onto the path he took. That being said the villain isn't exactly sound of mind.

Overall I found this book incredibly hard to get through which unfortunately ruined the experience of reading it.I feel the story line itself had a lot of interesting concepts but they were over shadowed by the 'difficult to read' writing style .

Many thanks Netgalley and Black Rose Writing for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own and are in no way influenced by the nature in which I received this book .

This review is currently posted in Goodreads and will be posted on my instagram and blog (thetwoquills.wordpress.com ) at 5pm GMT on Friday 22nd May 2020.

Thanks to #netgalley and Black Rose Writing for allowing me to read and review Identity Theft by Bob Avey. I really liked this book but it’s hard to describe. It’s part Colombo and part Fringe. You never know which way or where the twists and turns are going to take you but it’s a very enjoyable ride!

Oh my goodness my head is still spinning from this book. I struggled to finish it as it as all the twists and turns instead of drawing me in simply turned me off.

This is my first Det Elliot novel, and it has an incredible number of twists, so it's not a light read. But it is pretty engaging and interesting. Even though it's categorized as a thriller, it's really a mash-up of several genres including "weird" (even though that's not a genre). Recommended for a brain teasing read.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

This twisty story will turn you onto your head and you won't know what to believe. I had a fun time with it and the characters and I want to read more from this author! Its one of those stories that you need to pay attention to it at all costs or you will miss something!!

I am afraid I did not finish the book. It was just too much going on for me. I do not blame the writer, my mind was just doing the OCD and had to stop. I am betting others will enjoy it.
Thanks, NetGalley for the advance copy to review.

Identity Theft is my first exposure to Bob Avey’s four-book Detective Kenny Elliot mystery series. This one works pretty well as a standalone, though, so if you’re new to the series like me, don’t worry too much about just jumping in at this point. I’ve done this enough times now to know how easy it is to go back and read the preceding books in the order in which they were published – in fact, that kind of binge-reading has a special appeal all its own. I did find myself wondering a bit about some of the references to Kenny’s past life and career, but not enough for that to hamper my overall enjoyment of the book.

Kenny Elliot is a Tulsa police detective who doesn’t intend to be one for much longer. But Kenny, who has investigatory skills bordering on the supernatural, is so effective an investigator that his boss refuses to accept his letter of resignation. Now, Kenny is the kind of guy who will always have a cop-mentality whether he wears a badge or not, but he is also a loner who relies more on intuition and gut-feel to get the job done than on anything else. Needless to say, this ensures that Kenny will never be nominated for Employee-of-the-Month honors.

Because of his general loyalty to the department and personal loyalty to his boss, Kenny decides to take some time off to reconsider his resignation – but he’s barely out the station door when he witnesses something so peculiar that all the warning bells in his mind start going off at once. He senses something very wrong about the assassination scene he sees playing out right before his eyes, including the fact that the potential assassin misses his target from pointblank range. But even more bizarrely, both the shooter and his intended victim seem equally confused about what is going on around them. Then when it turns out that both Kenny and his pastor have ties to the intended victim of the shooting, Kenny decides to go private until he figures out exactly what is happening in his city.

And that’s when things get very, very weird.

Bottom Line: Identity Theft is a mashup of several genres: crime fiction, thriller, fantasy, horror, and touches of Christian novel. Kenny Elliot is no ordinary police detective and the man he is chasing is most certainly no ordinary criminal. The most often asked question in this one is, “Do you have any idea what it feels like to die in someone else’s body?” Well, do you?

Want to find out?

Be careful when reading this book. The author draws you into a maze of mirrors with so many twists and turns, you’re not sure what’s happening. Detective Kenny Elliot had planned on retirement, but case comes to him that he can’t resist.