Newest Crime Reviews

Review of Little Girls Tell Tales by Rachel Bennett Crime In 2004 Rosalie, Beth and Dallin were walking in the boggy wetlands by Rosalie and Dallin's cottage. Beth and Dallin, both twelve-years-old, got ahead of ten-year-old Rosalie and it wasn't long before she realised that she was lost. Trying to find her way back to the main path she found a skeleton, but when she finally got to the road she could never find her way back to the bog when she'd seen the body. Most people didn't believe her, putting the story down to her vivid imagination. Full Review

Review of Remain Silent by Susie Steiner Crime When we first meet Matis and Dimitri, Matis is in a bad way, vomiting and obviously traumatised. When he's able to speak he tells Dimitri that Lukas is dead. Lukas was in his late teens and he and Matis had come to Cambridgeshire from Klaipeda in Lithuania. They'd answered an advert offering good money and accommodation in return for their labour: they could have a decent life and send money home to their families. Sadly, it doesn't work out like that. When they arrive in the UK - on an old, uncomfortable bus, - they're dropped at a filthy house where several men have to share rooms and sleep on dirty mattresses on the floor. It's modern slavery, which isn't uncommon amongst agricultural workers. Full Review

Review of Killing Mind (D I Kim Stone) by Angela Marsons Crime It looked very like a suicide, and to begin with, that was how both DI Kim Stone and Keats, the pathologist called it. It was only later that Stone and her team realised that when Samantha Brown cut her throat, hers was not the only hand holding the knife. It was murder. Sammy's parents. Myles and Kate were a little bit reluctant to say what their daughter had been doing recently. The property where she was found was less homely than most hotel rooms: her mother was about to accuse her husband of saying that Sammy was ready... But what was Sammy ready for and where was their other daughter, Sophie? Full Review

Review of The Sideman by Caro Ramsay Crime No one thought that it could happen and can't quite believe that it has: Costello has resigned from Police Scotland. It's all down to her pursuit of George Haggerty whom she believes to be responsible for the murder of Abigail Haggerty (his wife) and Malcolm (her son). Haggerty has a water-tight alibi (caught speeding by Police Scotland, no less) and the powers that be have told Costello to lay off: she's decided to go her own way rather than be hampered by the badge. She didn't even bother telling her long-time partner, DCI Colin Anderson, that she was going. Since then there might have been the occasional text from her, but that's it. Full Review

Review of The Body Under the Bridge by Nick Louth Crime DCI Craig Gillard was annoyed to be pulled away from the funeral service for a serving police officer, particularly when he discovered that he was to take charge of the enquiry into a missing woman. Beatrice Ulbricht was twenty-five years old and a student of music at the Royal College of Music. She had been due to play with the other members of the Lysander String Quartet at the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields but hadn't turned up. Gillard didn't understand why his immediate involvement was necessary until Chief Constable Alison Rigby explained that Beatrice's father was Karl-Otto Ulbricht, Germany's Minister of Justice. Full Review

Review of Broken Silence (DS Nikki Parekh 2) by Liz Mistry Crime When we first meet him Stefan Marcovici has been in the UK with his daughter Maria for a while. He came expecting to work as a gardener and Maria was to be a nanny. Stefan ends up doing slave labour in a chicken factory: you can imagine what happens to an eighteen-year-old girl. Full Review

Review of Silent Cry (Gaby Darin Book 1) by Jenny O'Brien Crime Alys Grant was only a few days old when her father took her out for the first time. Her mother, Izzy, was tired and fell asleep, but when she woke a couple of hours later there was no sign of Charlie Dawson or Alys. There was a hand-delivered postcard which simply said: I've got Alys. Don't try to find us, Charlie Full Review

Review of The Cutting Place (DS Maeve Kerrigan) by Jane Casey Crime It was Kim Weldon who found the first bits of the body - she was a mudlarker on the banks of the Thames and when she turned over what looked like a stick she realised it was a hand, a right hand, in fact. DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent's team would later find three other body parts. Identification of the body was not going to be easy, but eventually, it would be given a name - Paige Hargreaves, a twenty-eight-year-old freelance journalist. Her friend, Bianca Drummond, another journalist, said that she was working on a story which she reckoned would be explosive - and she hadn't been willing to share any of the details with Bianca. Full Review

Review of Access Point by T R Gabbay Thrillers When we first meet Ula Mishkin she's having something of a professional success: using a device of her own invention she's helped a man who has been blind for decades to see an image of a hummingbird. She's thirty-six years old and her life is about to change radically as, cycling home, she's involved in an accident with a bus. It's two years before we meet her again and in the meantime, she's spent 392 days in a coma and now walks with a stick. A professional colleague persuades Ula that she should let out a spare bedroom to bring in some income. Full Review

Review of Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins Crime When we first meet Dee she's talking to Nick Law, the new college master. Law's lately of the BBC and he doesn't come with an entirely good reputation: he's a bit of a bully and Dee can sense something of that in their first conversation. She had been planning to return home to Scotland before taking on a new job as a nanny, but somehow she finds herself going to see Mariah, the Danish wife of the master. She's pregnant and looking for help, not with the new baby bit with the master's daughter by his first wife, Ana. Felicity is selectively mute: she does talk to her father, but to no one else. The eight-year-old is grieving for her dead mother and struggling at school. Full Review

Review of Where the Innocent Die (D I Ridpath) by M J Lee Crime It was easy to assume that the death of the young Chinese girl at the Immigrant Removal Centre was suicide. Her throat was cut, there was a lot of blood and the knife was on the floor at the side of the bed, She was due to be deported that day. But... how did the knife get into the secure centre and why was the girl's room the only one which was unlocked? DI Thomas Ridpath, the coroner's officer, is sent to investigate and he quickly becomes suspicious, There's a snag though: the inquest is due to open in a couple of days' time, the girl's parents are coming over from China and they want to take their daughter's body home with them. Ridpath has just five days to solve the case. The coroner is disinclined to delay the inquest: for her, it's about giving closure to the parents. Full Review

Review of Burnt Island (Ben Kitto) by Kate Rhodes Crime The 5th of November was D I Ben Kitto's thirty-fifth birthday and the occasion for the usual bonfire celebrations, but it would be marred this year by the discovery of Professor Alex Rogan's body on a bonfire. He'd obviously been alive when he was put on the fire and can only have died a terrible death. The body was first discovered by Jimmy Curwen, better known on St Agnes as the Bird Man because he speaks little or nothing and his only concern is the welfare of the birds he looks after. His instinct is to cover Rogan's body and he uses his sheepskin coat to do this, with the result that he's the prime suspect. Full Review

Review of Murder at Enderley Hall (Miss Underhay) by Helena Dixon Crime It's the summer of 1933 and Kitty Underhay is on her way to visit the family which she never knew she had, at Enderley Hall. Her grandmother, Mrs Treadwell, and Great Aunt Livvy are back at the Dolphin Hotel in Dartmouth. Kitty gets easily bored working at the Dolphin - every day is much the same - but her real reason for going away is that she needs a break after her recent adventures, which involved three vicious murders, an arson attack and an attempt on her life. Full Review

Review of Keeper by Jessica Moor Crime Katie Straw worked in the women's refuge and the women who lived there liked and respected her. She treated them well and seemed to have an understanding of what they were going through. Why then did she jump from the local suicide spot into the river below? There had been no signs that she was unhappy and she and her boyfriend seemed to have been content together - and Noah has a decent alibi for the time when she died, but what other explanation could there be for her death? The police are convinced that it's suicide, but the women who knew her believed otherwise. Full Review

Review of Keep Him Close by Emily Koch Crime Alice had two children: Benny (well, Benoît, actually) and Louis. Lou's seventeen and he's just got his A level results and he and his brother are going out to celebrate. Someone has to find something to celebrate in the letters, D, D and E. Alice has always had a good relationship with nineteen-year-old Benny but it's a touch problematic with Lou and being honest, he's not terribly likeable. The letters which kept coming to my mind were ADHD. Full Review

Review of Rules for Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson Crime Malcolm Kershaw was the co-owner and manager of the Old Devils Bookstore on Beacon Hill in Boston. The store specialises in crime novels, but Mal has given up reading crime. His life's been pretty chaotic of late: It's five years since his wife, Claire Mallory, died and he's never really got over it. She was driving whilst inebriated, having just been to see the man with whom Kershaw suspected she was having an affair. His interest in crime fiction comes back when he's approached by Special Agent Gwen Mulvey. She's interested in a blog post he wrote a few years ago: My Eight Perfect Murders. Full Review

Review of Bobby March Will Live Forever (Harry McCoy) by Alan Parks Crime In February 1964 Bobby March was on his way to London with fellow band members Tom, Scott, Barry and Jamie. He'd had to get his father to sign the contract for The Beatkickers, as Bobby wasn't old enough. And his father had been reluctant - he'd have preferred Bobby to get an apprenticeship, for the regular money. By July 1973 Bobby is back in Glasgow. The Beatkickers didn't survive and March is on his own, but hardly thriving. There's an obvious drug habit. Meanwhile, the police are consumed by the search for a missing girl, Alice Kelly. Full Review

Review of Little Doubt (D I Kelly Porter) by Rachel Lynch Crime Ella Watson was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was out running in the park when she was randomly attacked and stabbed to death. Her husband, Thomas, and children, Jordan and Millie were devastated and Detective Superintendent Neil Ormond was outraged that a decent, middle-class woman should be the victim of knife crime. Despite being a golfing partner of Thomas Jordan he declined to distance himself from the case and told DI Kelly Porter that he would be taking a great deal of interest in how the case was handled. He wasn't anywhere near as interested when a second woman was stabbed to death a few hours later. Keira Bradley lived on the Beacon estate and Ormond's view seemed to be that anyone living there should expect this sort of thing to happen. He could hardly bring himself to mention Keira's name. Full Review

Review of Firewatching by Russ Thomas Crime Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is in the Cold Cas Review Unit at South Yorkshire Police and there are those who think that he's lucky to be there, given that he decked a superior officer. He's there because Tyler came off worse in the exchange - there's a scar on his face to prove it - and the superior officer was forced to take early retirement. There's a suggestion too that Tyler's godmother (she's on the force too) has looked after him and that his current boss is keen to have a tame gay to put on the town hall steps come Pride. Either way, he's there, but without anything really interesting to get his teeth into. Full Review