Deep Down Dead – Steph Broadribb – The Beardy Book Blogger

Deep Down Dead is the debut novel from Steph Broadribb (aka super blogger Crime Thriller Girl – check her out!), and it is a corker. In case you haven’t guessed from the end of that last sentence, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Lori Anderson is a bounty hunter working in Florida. She’s a tough take-no-shit kinda gal, as you’d need to be in her line of work, and she’s also a single mum to Dakota. Dakota suffers from leukaemia, and Lori is forced to take on jobs that she would rather not have to in order to keep up with the mounting medical bills on top of day to day living costs. This motivates her to take a job collecting her former mentor JT; the man who taught her the bounty hunting ropes, and who also knows the secret of her past. The problem with this job is that Lori has to take Dakota along with her. Well, that goes well!!! *face palm*

Deep Down Dead moves along at a cracking pace, keeping the momentum going and rarely letting up. The story of Lori’s early days as a trainee bounty hunter; her fractious and tempestuous relationship with JT; the dark secret in her past that she harbours, all develop beautifully along the way. For the most part DDD is a very strong and very competent road movie/novel: Lori meets the bad guys, pisses off the bad guys, bad guys piss off Lori, Lori chases after them; all great stuff, but then the story takes a truly disturbing turn as the Big Bad Guy’s motives become apparent and it’s proper shudder inducing stuff.

Deep Down Dead is a great debut novel and I shall definitely be picking up its sequel Deep Blue Trouble and anything else Steph writes in the future (FYI she also writes as Stephanie Marland and her ‘debut’, My Little Eye out now on ebook via Trapeze Books) 😊👌🏼