Profile K by Helen Fields

4.5 Stars from me

Beginning with the brutal and excessively horrifying murder of a local woman, the neighbourhood is soon fearful of what seems like inevitable further attacks. Sensible women, murdered in their own homes, who appear to be taking all the right precautions, seem to be welcoming this killer inside.

As one would expect from Helen Fields, who has written some breathtaking standalone thrillers as well as the DI Callanagh series, this book has some outstanding characters: take a bow Midnight Jones who not only has a cool name but is also an outstanding character!

Midnight also has a cool sounding job, she works for Necto who analyse the brains of volunteer suspects. Sometimes this is for job applications or uni placements and other times just for interest. It suits Midnight just fine, headphones in and get on with the work, ignoring the overbearing bosses! As the title suggests, one day Midnight runs the process and gets notification of a Profile K… I am sure you can join the dots there on what the K stands for given the context of the book – and once a Profile K is found we’d be confident that Necto would alert the relevant authorities, wouldn’t we. Would we?

Thankfully, our likeable protagonist Midnight Jones has a moral compass as big as the moon and this is highlighted by her homelife where she is a selfless carer for her sister Dawn. I was heartened by the arrival of Doris in the sisters’ lives, although my suspicious mind worried whether she was too good to be true. I liked that Doctor Connie Woodwine (from The Institution) played a part too as I love it when authors drop characters into different books, making them seem more real.

Overall, this is a gruesome but clever thriller and I loved it. My thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Avon Books UK for a copy in return for an honest review.

Blurb: He’s going to kill you. He just doesn’t know it yet…

There’s something wrong with me. For years I’ve hidden it. Suppressed it. Blended into society. But The Test awoke something within me. It was just a routine application designed to get to know me better – with results that would show me everything I was capable of. But it showed me that the wickedness is still inside me – and that I am capable of the worst possible things. And now that I know that, there’s no telling what I’ll do next…