Difference between revisions of "Newest Crime Reviews"
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| + | |author=Maria Angelica Bosco and Lucy Greaves (translator) | ||
| + | |title=Death Going Down | ||
| + | |rating=3.5 | ||
| + | |genre=Crime | ||
| + | |summary=In a strange time, in the years after World War Two, Buenos Aires is a strange city – peopled by her native residents, and many who fled the European theatre of war. And in a building that houses some of the more strange examples of those people on six levels of large apartments, something strange happens – one of them struggles home the worse for drink late one night and finds the lift descend to fetch him to his door, but carrying a blonde woman's corpse. A resident doctor soon turns up too, and the pair kicks into action the police investigation into her presence, which soon seems to point to suicide. This not being in a genre called suicide mystery, however, we know differently – but will certainly have to wait to piece the whole story together. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782272232</amazonuk> | ||
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|author= Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke | |author= Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke | ||
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|summary= In ''Silent Scream'', D.I Kim Stone is called to investigate the body of a woman found dead in the bath of a house that has been set on fire. As Stone and her team start to investigate the suspicious circumstances, it becomes clear that this isn't going to be an isolated case and they are in a race against the clock to find out who could be next on the killer's hit list and why. | |summary= In ''Silent Scream'', D.I Kim Stone is called to investigate the body of a woman found dead in the bath of a house that has been set on fire. As Stone and her team start to investigate the suspicious circumstances, it becomes clear that this isn't going to be an isolated case and they are in a race against the clock to find out who could be next on the killer's hit list and why. | ||
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785770527</amazonuk> | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785770527</amazonuk> | ||
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Revision as of 09:34, 8 December 2016
Death Going Down by Maria Angelica Bosco and Lucy Greaves (translator)
In a strange time, in the years after World War Two, Buenos Aires is a strange city – peopled by her native residents, and many who fled the European theatre of war. And in a building that houses some of the more strange examples of those people on six levels of large apartments, something strange happens – one of them struggles home the worse for drink late one night and finds the lift descend to fetch him to his door, but carrying a blonde woman's corpse. A resident doctor soon turns up too, and the pair kicks into action the police investigation into her presence, which soon seems to point to suicide. This not being in a genre called suicide mystery, however, we know differently – but will certainly have to wait to piece the whole story together. Full review...
The Sleeping Beauty Killer (Under Suspicion 4) by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke
Fifteen years ago, Casey Carter went to prison for the murder of her fiancée Hunter Raleigh. The evidence seemed indisputable; her fingerprints were on the gun that killed him and her skin tested positive for gunshot residue. She'd been known to be argumentative and passionate, qualities that earned her the nickname Crazy Casey thanks to a tell-all book by an ex-boyfriend. Even her family seemed to suspect her guilt. But now Casey is out of prison and determined to prove her innocence. Who better to help her than Laurie Moran and the Under Suspicion team? After hearing her case, Laurie promises to give her a fair hearing on her TV show and reinvestigate the circumstances of Hunter's death. Full review...
Mr Churchill's Driver: A Murderer's Story by Colin Farrington
2014: 50 years since William Gilbey's father Herbert was hanged for murder. This anniversary is different from those in the past in that it's given William the impetus to go and find out more about two mystifying parts of his father's history. Firstly the oddity of the murder: why randomly kill two women in the street in daylight? Secondly, when William was a child, Herbert had told him a story about a meeting between Winston Churchill and then Irish Teasoch Eamon De Valera during World War II. There's nothing in the history books so did this actually happen? This is definitely a good time to investigate, especially as William has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for murder himself. Full review...
Gathering Prey by John Sandford
Any fan of a long running series will dread the book that falls off the cliff. This is the story that just does not make sense, or is so reminiscent of previous outings that it may as well not exist. With 24 titles already written about Lucas Davenport, the Prey series by John Sandford is overdue this, but will Gathering Prey be the moment that the maverick cop Davenport becomes a shadow of his former self? Full review...
The Knife Slipped by Erle Stanley Gardner
Before we begin, I must confess. Confess that I am a hardboiled noir addict. Therefore, I approach each grisly tale of murder, private detectives and femme fatales with a sense of wonder but also scepticism. Surely, I think this one can't be as good as the last, it must have flaws, poor characters and lack the necessary grit to be a true hardboiled noir masterpiece? so you can imagine my trepidation when opening the Knife Slipped. I was wrong, wonderfully wrong. This book for me is the essence of the hardboiled noir genre and E.S. Gardner is a marvel. Full review...
Mercy Killing by Lisa Cutts
Albie Woodville was involved with the local amateur dramatic society and when it was decided that they would stage Annie and involve children from a local school the news was broken that he was a convicted paedophile. A local widow with two young children had started a tentative relationship with him: she terminated the relationship and the amdrams told him that he was no longer a member. It was bad enough, but deserved - then someone else took the law into their own hands and decided that the world would be a better place without Albie Woodville in it. He was brutally murdered. Full review...
Night School by Lee Child
The 21st Jack Reacher novel takes us back in time. Reacher is still an US Army MP. In the morning they gave Reacher a medal, and in the afternoon they sent him back to school. The medal was a Legion of Merit. Not his first, probably not his last, just another bauble to recognise what he'd done for his country and a plea for him not to talk about it. The 'it' in this case was some police work, in the Balkans, and a couple of shootings. Two weeks of his life. Four rounds expended. No big deal. Full review...
Rather be the Devil by Ian Rankin
It's forty years since Maria Turquand was murdered. She was beautiful, a bright light and promiscuous - and she was strangled in Edinburgh's Caledonian Hotel on the night that a famous rock star and his entourage were staying there. Her killer was never found: it's been preying on John Rebus' mind and it comes into conversation on the night that Rebus and his lady friend are dining at the Galvin Brasserie at the Cally. It's better than thinking about his health: he's got COPD and there's something on his lung which he calls Hank Marvin. Think about it. Full review...
Shoot by Kieran Crowley
I make something of a habit of being late to discover good writers, in this case getting to Crowley after he is no longer with us. The result is that what is billed as an F.X. Shepherd mystery with all the optimism of there being more to come has the poignancy of being, if not the last of a short line, certainly one of a few. F.X. Shepherd – he doesn't like his first name and prefers just "Shepherd" is, technically, a columnist. He's been sacked by one New York newspaper and is writing a weekly column for another. I don't know much about journalism, but I'm guessing one column a week doesn't pay much as a rule…which explains why Shepherd's soap-washed-foul-mouthed editor (read the book, you'll see what I mean) expects him to turn in some genuine journalism as well: front page, seat of your pants stuff. Full review...
Hidden Killers (Tennison 2) by Lynda La Plante
Coming to the end of her probation WPC Jane Tennison knows that she would like to work in CID, only there's some resistance. It's never quite said, but you have a suspicion that it might come down to the fact that she's a woman. But being female has its advantages when a decoy is needed to entrap a man who has been attacking women and Tennison finds herself walking the local park area dressed up like a prostitute and wearing a blue rabbit-skin coat. She is attacked and only just rescued in time, but suffers nothing worse than a cut lip and a fright. It seems as though this is the man who has been attacking women, but is he also responsible for the rape of a young girl? Full review...
Chain of Custody by Anita Nair
After the success of A Cut-like Wound published in the UK in 2014, Chain of Custody sees the return of Inspector Gowda of the Bengarulu (rendered throughout in its anglicised version: Bangalore) police, called in when an affluent lawyer is found dead at his home in a prestigious and well-guarded gated community. However, that is the prologue jumping ahead of the story – as is the current vogue. Full review...
The Loving Husband by Christobel Kent
When Fran met Nathan everyone assumed she was on the rebound from a lengthy stint at the mercy of Nick The Unsuitable. I imagine falling pregnant within those first few heady months may have added fuel to that particular fire particularly from where Fran's best friend is standing. But when this is followed by a hasty wedding and a move to an isolated farmhouse in the Fens, Fran feels sure that her new role as home-maker and mother, so very different from the London party-girl she used to be, is the right one for her. So when Fran wakes in the middle of the night to find Nathan's side of the bed completely cold, she goes to look for him. Finding him bloodied and very much dead was most definitely not part of the bargain. Full review...
The Storykiller by Humfrey Hunter
The first rule of Super Injunctions is that you don't talk about Super Injunctions. These powerful legalese prevent the likes of you, me and the papers talking about certain stories. The rich, powerful and meaningless use them to stop the type of tittle tattle that fuels a million conversations at work, but what do you do if you are not rich, powerful or meaningless enough to afford a Super Injunction? Perhaps you can hire someone called a Storykiller who specialises in quashing rumours Full review...
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
Meet Trudy. Successfully living in a large and valuable London home, she is heavily pregnant, and in between two men – she has swapped the homeowner, poet and publisher John, for someone completely different, namely Claude, a nasty, brutish and short type. Some people cannot work out why on earth she has made that decision, including our narrator. Oh, and he himself, our narrator, is the child she's pregnant with. He is a very alert young thing, with nothing else to do but kick here and there, and practice what you might well call mindfulness, and listen in on Claude and Trudy, as they calmly talk their way to plotting and carrying out murder… Full review...
Beneath the Ashes by Jane Isaac
Nancy Faraday woke up on the kitchen floor of the farmhouse where her boyfriend was living. She'd no memory of what had happened the night before, but she was injured, the house had been broken into and her boyfriend, Evan Baker, was missing.
The police had been called to the farm by the fire brigade. There'd been a fire in one of the farm's barns and when they investigated a badly-burned body was discovered. It's up to DI Will Jackman to discover who's responsible - and before whoever it is who is stalking Nancy makes her their next victim. Full review...
Shot Through the Heart (DI Grace Fisher 2) by Isabelle Grey
In many ways it was horrific, but quite simple. On Christmas day a man with a rifle shot and killed five people: the first was his ex-wife's new partner, a local policeman, but the other four were simply people who happened to be around. He then went to the local churchyard and turned the gun on himself. Six dead, no perpetrator on the loose and it looks as though all that needs to be done is to give evidence at the inquest, but DI Grace Fisher can't leave it at that. She wants to know where Russell Fewell got the gun and the bullets: she's also not convinced about the honesty of the dead policeman and that's an unpopular attitude to have about a local hero. Full review...
Crush by Frederic Dard and Daniel Seton (translator)
In this story of Thelma and Louise, it's Louise we meet first, through her narration. She's a seventeen year old, telling us of a quite awful and smelly satellite town of Paris she lives in, with the sight of factories and stench of food processing plants keeping her company. She lives at home with her mother, complete with hare-lip, and abusive step-father, and is working at one of those factories until she sees a paradise in their midst – the ever-sunny, sexy and sophisticated life of an American NATO worker and his wife. Impulsively, she asks to be their maid – and indeed moves into the couple's large, messy home. But little does she know what lurks in the shadows in that building, behind their gigantic car and their cute porch swing and al-fresco dining – the unhappiness, and even the tragedy… Full review...
Sinner Man by Lawrence Block
Everybody has to start somewhere, but if you are as prolific a writer as Lawrence Block, you may no longer be able to find the beginning. His first crime publication came and went in the early 60s and fifty years later he did not have a copy as the book had been published under an alias with a different title unknown to him. In 2016 that book has surfaced in the form of Sinner Man and has all the hallmarks of the veteran crime writer's early books; murder, dubious characters and a bit of pulp naughtiness. Full review...
Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger
Finlay Montgomery, like her grandmother Eloise before her is a very powerful and gifted psychic. Sensitive to the unseen, unheard and unknowable, she spends her days among the dead. Visited, bothered, harassed and sometimes taunted, Finlay does her best to manage the gifts that Mother Nature has sought to bestow. But life is not that simple and studying for your degree is testing with five other visitors in the room who are all trying to get your attention in the loudest and most distracting way possible. Full review...
Pushing Up Daisies (Agatha Raisin) by M C Beaton
'Allotments' sound as though they should be a haven of peace and tranquility, but it's surprising how often the reverse proves to be the case. The villagers of Carsley are up in arms because Lord Bellington has said that he's going to sell off the allotments for a new housing development. When he turns up dead, poisoned by antifreeze, no one is particularly sorry - and there's no shortage of suspects either. Lord Bellington's son, Damian, employs Agatha Raisin and her detective agency to discover who murdered his father. Full review...
Betrayals by Kelley Armstrong
Liv Taylor-Jones has come a long way since she discovered her parents were not her biological parents – that her biological parents were in fact convicted serials killers. But while she's coming to an understanding about her fae heritage, the strange visions that are a part of that, she's not yet ready to make the choice that destiny would have her make. Full review...
Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah
Lady Athelinda Playford had organised a house party at her home in Clonakilty, Ireland. It was mainly family, plus the two partners from the firm of solicitors who look after her affairs, but there are two extra guests who were not expecting to see each other - Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard and the Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. They weren't certain why they'd been invited, but Athie Playford, author of the popular children's detective novels, Shrimp Seddon, had a shock in store for the assembled company and particularly for her two children, Harry and Claudia. She'd changed her will, disinheriting her son and daughter and leaving everything to her secretary, Joseph Scotcher. Full review...
The Gem Connection by Michael R Lane
In the beginning it was simple. C J Kavanaugh, formerly of the Drugs Enforcement Agency but now making a living as Private Investigator was employed to prove that a man was having an adulterous affair. Antonio Fahrletti had confounded half a dozen PIs who'd been unable to prove that he was being unfaithful to his wife, but CJ was determined to be the one who got the proof. Luck was on his side, but not, it would seem, on Fahrletti's. In the meantime Clinton Windell knew that luck was on his side: he'd brought home twenty million dollars of uncut gems. The board hadn't believed that he could do it and a large part of his pleasure was that he was proving them wrong. Full review...
Dragon Games by Jan-Philipp Sendker
The putative cover of my advance copy of Dragon Games ties it to the international bestseller The Art of Hearing Heartbeats – Sendker's first offering in English translation. I'm hoping that the final edition that hits the market will have the confidence to reference Whispering Shadows to which this is the direct sequel. My hope is because the step between the first two Burmese books and the modern China mystery ones is a significant one. Many readers will love both, but I think the less lyrical, more prosaic, dare I say more political approach of the Chinese stories has a wider readership. It is a readership Sendker deserves. Full review...
In at the Death by Francis Duncan
Mordecai Tremaine is an elderly retired tobacconist, a fan of romantic fiction, and a wearer of pince-nez. Not a natural crime-fighting celebrity, you might think, but in In at the Death his burgeoning reputation as an amateur sleuth is both a blessing and something of a burden as he accompanies his good friend Inspector Boyce on the trail of a murderer in the city of Bridgton. The death of a local GP in an abandoned house looks like an unfortunate encounter with a tramp, but that doesn’t explain why the doctor had a gun in his bag. As the detectives get to work there are skeletons to be found lurking in a few closets. Full review...
Turning Blue by Benjamin Myers
It was just before Christmas when Melanie Muncy went missing from an isolated Yorkshire hamlet in a particularly harsh winter. DI Jim Brindle from the elite detective unit, Cold Storage, was sent to investigate and he could have been helped by Roddy Mace, a local journalist. Only Brindle, the obsessive compulsive, teetotal, vegetarian loner wants nothing to do with the writer. Mace is desperate to revive his flagging career. Well it's more than flagging: he left London in disgrace, so it's the two men living on the outskirts of life who are trying independently to trap the man they believe is responsible for Melanie's disappearance and that man is Steven Rutter, another loner, near destitute and living high on the moors, who knows all the hiding places. He knows the secrets of the local town too and there are those who fear that he might tell more than should be known. Full review...
The Mystery of the Three Orchids by Augusto de Angelis and Jill Foulston (translator)
All the ladies of O'Brian Fashion House are trying to do is to present their works in the best of lights to the best of Milanese and European society, but they're not going to find a dead person on their premises much help. Cristiana lives in Casa O'Brian, on the top floor of the building where everything key to her company happens, and it's on her bed that she finds the corpse – resplendent with an orchid perched nearby, an orchid that bizarrely means a lot to her. What could it signify? Was she correct in thinking she'd seen some people she really didn't want to see back in her life, in the audience below? And who here might not actually be who they first appear? It'll be a tough case for Inspector de Vincenzi, that's for sure. Full review...
Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano
Poldi had not long been widowed when she decided to move from Bavaria to Sicily with the intention of drinking herself to death. She could, of course, have done this in Germany, but she felt that a sea view was essential. Once there, new friends, family already resident on the island and the corpse of a young man, his face blown off by a shotgun, whom she found on the local beach, intervened to give her life some meaning. For a while she was a suspect, but that (and her wig) were no obstacle to her falling for Commissario Vito Montana who was assigned to investigate the case. Assisting him (or having him assist her) came naturally to Poldi and before long there was an investigative and personal partnership. At least so far as Poldi was concerned. Full review...
The Quiet Death of Thomas Quaid by Craig Russell
Everybody liked quiet Tommy Quaid, a professional burglar who like Norman Stanley Fletcher saw arrest and imprisonment as occupational hazards and on the rare occasion he was nabbed, he'd raise his hands and come quiet. Turns out that's not what his nickname meant at all. Turns out there was a lot about Quiet Tommy Quaid that a lot of people didn't know. Even those who thought they knew him well, who thought they were his friends. Full review...
Silent Scream by Angela Marsons
In Silent Scream, D.I Kim Stone is called to investigate the body of a woman found dead in the bath of a house that has been set on fire. As Stone and her team start to investigate the suspicious circumstances, it becomes clear that this isn't going to be an isolated case and they are in a race against the clock to find out who could be next on the killer's hit list and why. Full review...
