I would like to thank Netgalley and Severn House Publishers Ltd for an advance copy of Death Shall Come, the fourth novel in the Ishmael Jones series.

Ishmael Jones is an alien who crash landed in England in 1963. Technology turned him into a human but erased his memories of his alien life. Nowadays he works for a shadowy group called The Organisation but only his girlfriend, Penny, knows he's an alien. His contact, the Colonel, asks him to do an off the books favour and accompany him to his father-in-law George Cardavan's house to do some snooping over George's acquisition of an Egyptian mummy. When George is murdered the Colonel and Ishmael investigate.

I didn't realise what I was getting in this novel from the blurb so I have rather mixed feelings about it. It is definitely a genre bending novel with crime, horror and science fiction in the mix. I love the crime element and the hunt for the killer as it has an old fashioned feel with a limited number of suspects and the solution comes from a process of elimination. The solution, however, is not to my taste and I found it impossible to swallow.

Ishmael Jones is a man of mystery, obviously as he is an alien with no memory of it, but as he has a human body and DNA I don't understand why he has to continually change identity and live life on the run. I don't read science fiction so there may be a common explanation for it that I am unaware of it just doesn't make sense to me. Otherwise he seems to be fairly normal, apart from a few superpowers.

I found the whole alien thing difficult to believe and almost gave up reading but the novel is intriguing and it drew me in. It is well plotted, written and paced so, with reservations, I can recommend it as a good read.