Book Review: The Good Samaritan by John Marrs

“She’s a friendly voice on the phone. But can you trust her?”

The Good Samaritan by John Marrs follows End of the Line employee Laura, who offers her callers hope and reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die.

Laura hasn’t had it easy: she’s survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry. She doesn’t love talking to people worse off than she is. She craves it. But now someone’s on to her, though they have no idea of the desperate lengths Laura will go to. Because the best thing about being a Good Samaritan is that you can get away with murder.

Rating:

When you pick up a John Marrs book, you want dark and twisted, lots of shocks, and an original thriller with characters that get under your skin. And The Good Samaritan is definitely more of that!

Sinister, unnerving, and absolutely gripping, The Good Samaritan is an addictive psychological thriller that’s full of suspense.

Although Marr’s trademark more recently is to include a lot of small twists and a cliffhanger at the end of almost every chapter, I felt that the atmosphere in this one was a lot more subtle. While there are still a lot of fantastic big twists along the way, the effect of them crept up on me much more slowly, filling me with a sense of dread and making me nervous about what was to come.

Unpredictable and often uncomfortable, but also very compelling at the same time, I didn’t want to put it down!

I’m being nit-picky here by not giving the book five stars because I’m stubborn and I can’t help it. But I just wanted the final twist to have a bit more of an impact. It completely took me by surprise, but I reacted more with “Huh? How?! Oh, okay.”, than an “Oh my God, how is that possible?!” Am I making sense? Maybe I’ve had too much coffee…

But had that final twist taken my breath away more, I would have been left absolutely amazed. Still, everything else certainly ticked all of my boxes, and John Marrs definitely remains at the top of my favourite author list.