Sorry couldn’t get into this at all. From the moment Holyrood Palace was placed outside Edinburgh rather than its real location I started to lose interest. A silly brawl in the Palace car park that nobody could see going on was enough but after a further 50 pages I surrendered.

Don’t think I’ve read anything by David Leadbeater until this and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. I like thrillers and this has all the right ingredients for a fast paced story. There’s a cult intent on acquiring their ultimate goal, hellfire. This would enable world domination. Needless to say, the authorities aren’t going to let this happen and there’s a mayhem caper around the world as various leads are followed.

I enjoyed the settings around Europe. Well depicted with a strong sense of place, particularly the Vatican scenes with their secret tunnels. I’m fascinated by the machinations of the church and their strong links to secret societies from the Freemasons to Mafia and more. My issue with this book is the writing which I found incredibly irritating. It’s padded and there are some horrible similes and poor English…’his eyes rolled over the…’ I ended up spending more time looking for the howlers and lost the pace of the plot and action. Good idea but I didn’t enjoy it overall.

This is not my usual kind if book as it's more suited to my husbands genre but that said I really enjoyed reading it. Great storyline and characters made it a very captivating read.

This is a fast paced thriller which has dark undertones. I loved the historic sites visited and learnt new things about them. I liked how the team bonded and how a satanic group was brought down. Really atmospheric.

This had everything that I was looking for from a action thriller novel, it had that overall feel that I was looking for and enjoyed the overall story. The characters were everything that I was hoping for and enjoyed going on this adventure with them. David Leadbeater wrote this well and was left wanting more.

I got to the halfway mark but called it a day after this beauty; “A crisp-based snack sat before him”. Wouldn’t that just be a packet of crisps? There are other examples of clunky writing but the whole thing is just too silly. A hodgepodge of a gang are tasked with finding a long lost treasure. And wouldn’t you know it, everything is just where it should be. Even pictures in galleries are free for them to handle. I mean they would be wouldn’t they? The violence seems to be an add-on, it doesn’t really fit the story. I’ve nothing against a Scooby-Doo type caper but the writing needs to be a lot better than this.