The Weekend

T.M. Logan

FINDERS keepers says the old adage but what if you found a backpack with £1.6million in used notes stashed inside it… would you do the right thing and hand it in to the police, or give in to temptation and keep it?

One of the most exciting authors writing for the ever-burgeoning crime thriller market, T.M. Logan (pictured below) – whose books have sold more than three million copies in the UK alone – is back with his tenth ingeniously imagined and perfectly executed page-turner, and this one is a mind-blowing thrill ride through moral conundrums, deceit, treachery and murder.

Packed with Logan’s gobsmacking plot twists, and an enthralling what-would-YOU-do premise, The Weekend features six friends – three couples – on their annual New Year weekend away in the Yorkshire Dales facing a decision that is set to change their lives forever. Lifelong middle-aged friends Helen and Jason, Kat and Dev, and Miranda and Christian have rented a converted farmhouse near picturesque Pateley Bridge.

While out on a walk in the rugged countryside on New Year’s Eve, they get caught in a storm and to escape the cold winter downpour and lashing wind, they take shelter in the mouth of an old lead mine. And in a hollow at the back of the cave they find a large backpack stuffed with bank notes wrapped in heat-sealed plastic packages. Telling themselves that it could be evidence of a crime and could help police crack an unsolved case, they agree to take it back to their rental house and hand the money to the police at the first opportunity the following day.

However, in the house that evening and after several drinks, the friends decide to open the packs and count the notes. And when the total comes to a staggering £1.6million, they privately contemplate what a share of £530,000 for each couple would mean… and start to think again about handing it over to the police.

It’s the beginning of a downward spiral of distrust and suspicion, and the friendship dynamics slowly start to fracture because there are toxic secrets festering at the heart of this group. There’s debt, obsession, a career on the brink… the sort of problems that could be solved instantly with an unexpected windfall. It seems the friends don’t know each other as well as thought they did and soon they find themselves sliding headlong into a world of deceit, treachery, betrayal and murder…

There won’t be a moment’s pause for readers as they are pulled into the lives of six authentically ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary situation which not only tests just how well they truly know each other but exposes the unseen fault lines in their relationships, and the covert lies and dark secrets that are undermining their friendships.

But reader beware because this is an author who loves to confound expectations, and as old and new resentments rise to the surface, loyalties that once appeared rock-solid are ditched, and the pressures of dishonesty and subterfuge take their toll, Logan launches into a series of his trademark shocking revelations.

Bristling with tension, powered by the psychological weight of temptation and the eternal sin of avarice, awash in moral dilemmas and dramas, and with a wholly satisfying final act, The Weekend sees a crime-writing conjuror at the very top of his game!
(Zaffre, hardback, £16.99)