Dead Links by Joshua Ingle is a book I requested from NetGalley and the review is voluntary. This is a great murder mystery with plenty of twists and turns. Surprises came up out of the blue that took me by surprise. I didn't see many things coming despite lots of clues. I must be a bad detective! I enjoyed the read.

This is a well written, fast-paced book about a PI trying to solve a murder. The setting is in the future although there's no time-frame referenced. I found it was a little confusing when it kept switching to the point of view of Alan. It didn't seem to have anything to do with the story line. Little did I know that it was an important element to the ending. It was also a bit frightening in it's depiction of future & our obsession with technology. I was given the opportunity to review an ARC of this book for NetGalley and the publisher.

Read Dead Links, by Joshua Ingle, started off playing catch-up, developed into an interesting scifi book with an ethical crisis. I mostly enjoyed it, especially when it morphed away from what I had figured out.

Dead Links is a well thought out piece of science fiction. Don’t be put off by the slow start. As you progress the story becomes more complex and far more interesting. What looks initially like a bog standard murder mystery set in the near future is in reality an exploration of what makes up reality and identity. It asks how far we are willing to go and what are we willing to sacrifice in order to be entertained. It questions the nature of our vast hunger for consumer goods and the difficulty we have connecting with other people. Though it brings up a lot of important questions, it doesn’t preach. Our answers and interpretations are our own. It is easy to feel contempt for Alan as he is an addict and in his own words a murderer. But is it possible his addiction mirrors our own, only to greater extreme? Ingle’s usage of current brands and company names made the situations in the novel at once uncomfortably real and a constant reminder of the separation of reader from novel.

Dead Links is thought provoking, and definitely shows that Joshua Ingles has great promise as a writer. While it has its minor faults, on the whole it is well written and raises questions that are extremely important.

4 / 5

I received a copy of Dead Links from the publisher and NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

--Crittermom

This is the first book I have read by this author. I have to admit that in the beginning of this book, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. Not because it wasn’t well-written (it was) or because it was boring (it wasn’t), but because the premise wasn’t exactly what I thought it was based on the blurb; it was close but a little…different. Well, about a quarter of the way, maybe a third of the way, into the book, the plot just exploded! I raced through the rest of the book trying to get to the end because I just had to know what was going to happen. I had a few ideas, and a couple of them were right, and a couple ideas were dead wrong. I really can’t say much at all about the plot because just talking about it would definitely spoil it, and I don’t want to do that as it is worth the end to be surprised like I was. Just give it a little time because this book is really, really worth a read. Highly recommend! Thanks to NetGalley and City Starlight Press/Pikko’s House for the e-book which I voluntarily reviewed.