Review: The House of Killers by Samantha Lee Howe

Synopsis: Killing Eve meets Jason Bourne in this nerve-shredding new thriller series simmering with obsession and espionage… Serial killer Neva has been conditioned not to ask questions of the mysterious Network, to remain perfectly incurious and perennially cold-blooded. She must simply execute the targets they text her and live to bury the tale. But then she’s tasked with terminating a fellow assassin and glimpses her own future in her colleague’s fate. When she leaves flowers on the gravesite, someone notices.

Agent Michael Kensington knows he’ll have his work cut out for him when he’s recruited by MI5 onto operation Archive to piece together patterns in cold cases. Nothing could ever have prepared him for Neva…

An assassin obsessed with hell, a fugitive tortured by the secrets of her past, a woman destined to unthread him

The premise and the cover drew me into this first class thriller! We follow Neva, a conditioned serial assassin, as she undertaken her latest missions. But when her next assignment is one her her own, things begin to fall apart, and as a result, that instilled conditioning opens up fragments to a long hidden past, one she now starts to question. Thrown into the mix is MI5 agent, Michael Kensington who has been hot on Neva's trail for some time. And then their paths inextricably cross (as you know they must!) - and Michael follows his own path of hide and seek, not only with Neva but with his own agency.

But it is always with Neva that the reader will empathise, as more and more of her past is revealed.  The author has provided the reader with an engrossing, well crafted cat and mouse game - assassin and victim - assassin and agent - assassin and employer. We never know if Neva will break free or will be drawn back into the tightly woven web that offers a rather curiously dystopian view where money and power and greed force humanity to take a backseat.  There are so many reveals, and twists and turns that one wonders where you - the reader - will eventually end up!

It is the start of what promises to be an enthralling trilogy!

Note: I believe the next books are "Kill or Die" (May 2021) and "Kill A Spy" (July 2021)

Visit Samantha's website >>> HERE