#danmalakin

Welcome back, my Fellow Book Dragons, to another Mystery Monday…I hope you are not prone to needing a night light after reading creepy mysteries, if so, our Gem this evening may have you checking your bulb..you won’t want it going out this evening. Let me take this Gem out for you to look at..looks harmless doesn’t it? Sort of dusty, that odd green, the color of an old cell phone sim card. Even looks a bit cracked. Don’t let it fool you. It’s quite dangerous I assure you. Don’t take your eyes off it for a second, don’t get comfortable with it, just put it back in the little jewel box and let’s lock it back up. There, now I can tell you all about it.

This is Gem Maker Dan Malakin’s “The Regret”. This is the tale of a game. Not a nice game.. this game is meant to hurt..this game is not catch and release, this is a game of catch and kill. Spear Phishing, it’s called. And it can happen to anyone..anyone with an email account, especially on a cellphone or mobile, if you will. That piece of equipment nearly all of us carry and glance at periodically all day long. Here and there. Some of us are slaves to the pings, vibes, tinkles, rings, beeps, flashes. We may not even really look at it, just glance and think we can get to it later. This is the story Rachel. Rachel is your average single mum. She has a three year old named Lily. She works as a nurse. She has a beau. She is harried and lives paycheck to paycheck. She has never been left a million by some maiden aunt. She has survived and battles anorexia. She has survived being stalked and abused on the Dark Web while a teen. She doesn’t have her life together, but she’s trying. And then one day, an email appears on her phone, from HR telling her there is an issue with payroll and she needs to reply. That’s all, one simple email. And that is when everything starts to go bad. Very, very bad. This is the creepiest book I have read in ages. Dan Malakin just gave Shirley Jackson a run for her money. I loved this book, I had to put it down from time to time because it felt like someone was either looking over my shoulder or staring at me. I shut the draperies. The last time I felt like this was when I read “The Haunting of Hill House”. The topics in this book are hard to read through at times, but they are timely. They are handled with class: human trafficking, the Dark Web, anorexia, identity theft and more. Malakin doesn’t sugar coat anything and admits in the acknowledgements there were times he thought about quitting. Thank God he did not. This book is phenomenal. If you want a book to read for a long, dark, cold winter’s eve, this is it. “The Regret” is perfect for the crime fiction, horror, thriller or psychological suspense lover. It is available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited for free now or in paperback for a very reasonable price. Do yourself a favor and get it today. I’m going to keep my copy and re-read it later this winter and probably again next Halloween. But then, I don’t need to sleep with the lights on…but I will probably never take my email lightly again, either. Until tomorrow, I remain, your humble Book Dragon, Drakon T. Longwitten I received a copy of this from the author in exchange for an honest review.