Every word by Ellie Marney

Allen & Unwin, 2014. ISBN 9781743316511.
(Age: 12+) Highly recommended. Crime, Thriller, Melbourne, London, Sherlock Holmes. When Rachel Watts hears her boyfriend, Mycroft has boarded a plane for London, accompanying the forensic investigator, Dr Walsh, she is devastated. She knows that he has been distracted by the news of a recent carjacking in London, where the conservator at the Bodlean Library in Oxford has been killed, but she has no idea how much this has absorbed him until Angela tells her he has gone. She is gutted. If he had told her they were over as a couple, she could have accepted this and then helped him through the investigation, but just to jet off leaves her distraught. She decides to go with Alicia to London and without much ado, books a ticket, grabs her backpack and goes. She has never been on a plane before and no one knows she it coming to London, let alone leaving Melbourne.
As with the first in this series, Every breath, the pace is non stop, the characters credible and well formed, the plot sparkling and the story inventive. That it gives a nod to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries gives another level of entertainment in this wholly satisfying mystery.
But in London, a copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays has been stolen and the murder of the conservator is part of the plot, so the brains of Mycroft and Watts are stretched as they help the investigative team and Dr Walsh, and with the added level of the death seven years before of Mycroft's parents in a similar way, the thriller moves along very quickly. Being kidnapped by the Colonel means torture to get to the bottom of the hereabouts of the Folio, but the plucky duo survive all means of extracting information, eventually turning the tables on their kidnappers with deadly results.
This is a heart stopping read, and entwined with unrequited love, a sexual longing which is never quite realised, the book will be a hit.
Fran Knight