Difference between revisions of "Newest Crime Reviews"

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{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Susi Holliday
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|author=Will Carver
|title= The Last Resort
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|title=Psychopaths Anonymous
|rating= 3.5  
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|rating=3.5
|genre= Thrillers
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|genre=Thrillers
|summary=A group of strangers gather on a private island. They have been invited to an all-expenses paid retreat to test a brand-new product from the mysterious Timeo Technology company. The group includes a games designer, social media influencer, gossip columnist and hedge fund manager. Everyone seems to have an area of expertise that makes their attendance necessary. All except Amelia whose presence is a mystery. We follow the group as they explore the island, and each other's histories and it becomes clear that they all have a dark secret they would rather keep hidden. As the clock ticks down, these well-kept secrets are revealed, and it soon becomes clear that this luxury retreat is really a gilded cage. In a race against time, Amelia must struggle to uncover the reason for her attendance and protect the rest of the guests from the increasingly sinister accidents that befall them.  
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|summary=Maeve is a high functioning alcoholic, drinking continuously and also, curiously, addicted to attending numerous AA groups. She is also a self-acknowledged psychopath. Whilst analysing and critiquing the AA steps she is mainly using the groups to find targets...targets for sexual encounters, targets to feed her desire to hear of people's misery, and targets for her violent behaviour. Yet she also seems to be searching for others who think as she does, and when she's unable to find like-minded people in any of the groups she decides to set up her own, hoping to encounter others who share similar obsessions, and thus Psychopaths Anonymous is born.
|isbn=1542020018
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|isbn=1913193756
}}  
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1784165263
 +
|title=Invite Me In
 +
|author=Emma Curtis
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Crime
 +
|summary=Martin Curran's wife, Eliza knew that she had to be home to make his lunch for one o'clock on the dot, despite the fact that she was actually painting one of their properties prior to it being let.  If she didn't get home, there would be trouble.  There was some excuse: Martin was a paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair, but don't be too quick to be understanding.  He was also a very unpleasant person: he once told Eliza ''you're good at being a disappointment''.  All this was in Eliza's mind when she first met Dan Jones who arrived, unannounced, at the flat just as Eliza was about to leave: he wanted the lease of flat 2, 42 Linden Road and he was desperate to get in before it was advertised as being available.
 +
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0571362672
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|isbn=1784742775
|title=Snow
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|title=A Change of Circumstance (Simon Serrailler)
|author=John Banville
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|author=Susan Hill
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Crime (Historical)
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|genre=Crime
|summary=''Well, at least you're a Wexford man.''
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|summary=Drugs hadn't really been that much of a problem in Lafferton and Detective Superintendent Simon Serrailler had thought of drugs ops as a bit of a waste of time. They still were, to a great extent, but Serrailler knew that something had to be done. Children as young as nine were being recruited to transport the drugs and the operation running the county lines was tight. A mule might know the name (although it probably wouldn't be the correct one) of the person who was running him but he certainly wouldn't know anything about those higher up in the organisation. The police might catch a few of the runners but they'd never get anywhere near those higher up.
 
 
So said Colonel Osborne when he welcomed DI St John (pronounced 'Sinjun') Strafford to Ballyglass House just before Christmas 1957.  Osborne was master of the Keelmore Hounds and had done something memorable with the Inniskilling Dragoons at Dunkirk. The niceties had to be established even when there was a Catholic priest dead on the library floor with some precious bits of his anatomy missing.  Strafford was from Roslea at Bunclody and this, along with his good-but-shabby suit, marked him out as of Osborne's class and obviously Protestant. The dead priest was Father Tom Lawless from Scallanstown, who - despite the different religions - was in the habit of spending time at Ballyglass House.  His horse was stabled there.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1787477630
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|isbn=B09HTWX47X
|title=The Postscript Murders
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|title=Endless Obsession
|author=Elly Griffiths
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|author=Dai Henley
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=When a 90-year-old-woman with a heart condition dies peacefully in her armchair, it really shouldn't be suspicious and that was the view taken by DS Harbinder Kaur until she spoke to Peggy Smith's carerNatalka Kolisnyk was adamant that there was more to Peggy's death than met the eye - particularly as she knew that there was no heart condition and that Peggy had worried that she was being followedThen there was the fact that Peggy was a 'murder consultant' who helped authors with knotty plot lines in their books: she knew more about murder than any elderly woman should need to know.
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|summary=It's some years since we last caught up with Andy Flood, formerly a DCI in the Met but now a well-respected private investigator.  He's married to Laura, formerly his DS in the Murder Squad but now working in a forensics laboratory.  Flood's daughters, Gemma and Pippa, have flown the nest, Pippa to Australia, from where she has very little contact with the family, and Gemma to married lifeShe's had mental problems since she was abducted many years ago but Andy and Laura hope that married life will provide the support she needsFlood's business is going well and that was why he felt able to turn down the case of Lisa Black.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1472127013
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|isbn=1529379385
|title=Agatha Raisin: Hot to Trot
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|title=The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache)
|author=M C Beaton and R W Green
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|author=Louise Penny
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Raisin Investigations had quite a bit of work on hand.  The chairman of Philpott Electronics was concerned about his managing director, Harold Cheeseman, who had apparently returned from Australia because his wife did not like it thereThis was unusual, as his wife had died before Cheeseman went to AustraliaThen there was the Chadwick divorce:  Chadwick was convinced that his wife, Sheraton, was seeing another man.  Mr Gutteridge wanted Raisin Investigations to instal listening devices in the staff canteen: he wanted to know what the staff were saying about him and his secretary, who was from Geneva.  Apparently, the staff called her The Swiss Roll.
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|summary=In the Canadian village of Three Pines, we're post-pandemic: the scars are still there but life is starting to get back to normal.  The villagers are beginning to return to the Bistro and the AubergeThey're visiting each other's homes and having friends and relatives to stayA young Sudanese woman who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize is one such visitor and she soon proves that not all saints are necessarily pleasant people to be around - a bit like Vincent Gilbert, known in the village as the Asshole Saint.
 
 
Then there was the murder.
 
 
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1408712288
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|isbn=183885410X
|title=Still Life (DCI Karen Pirie)
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|title=The Dark Remains
|author=Val McDermid
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|author=William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin
|rating=4
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|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was the middle of February and bitterly cold when a fishing boat out of St Monans pulled a body out the Firth of Forth instead of a lobster pot.  It fell to DCI Charlie Todd and DS Daisy Mortimer to investigate and it didn't take too long to establish that the man was Paul Allard, ostensibly a Frenchman, but in reality James Auld of EdinburghA decade earlier he's gone missing when he was the prime suspect in the disappearance and possible murder of his brother, prominent civil servant, Iain AuldDCI Karen Pirie, as head of Police Scotland Historic Crimes Unit, had been the last person to review the case, a couple of years earlier and it seemed sensible to bring her into the case at an early stage.
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|summary=Bobby Carter was a lawyer and consigliere to one of the major crime families in nineteen seventies GlasgowDC Jack Laidlaw is on the CID team charged with the investigationI say ''on the team'' but Laidlaw never really seems to be a part of it.  He does his own thing, goes his own way and ''The Dark Remains'' uncovers the truth of why Bobby Carter's body was found behind one of Glasgow's seedier pubs.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Michael J Malone
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|isbn=1942410255
|title=A Song of Isolation
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|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)
|rating=3
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|author=Michael Pronko
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Film star Amelie Hart throws up a career that is only beginning to hit the heights to retire to the highlands with an ordinary guy…an accountant of all things, though to his credit he would rather be working in forestryThey have found a hideaway on a small Scottish estate, but things are starting to feel wrong between them.  
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|summary=''Zangyo: overtime work, often unpaid''
|isbn=1913193365
+
 
 +
It's the culture, isn't it?  The hours for which you're paid are really just a statement of the minimum you'll be required to do: you'll work more hours to get the job done and done to the satisfaction of bullies like Shigeru Onizuka.  When he was found dead in front of Senden Central's headquarters in Tokyo there was nothing in the way of regret or grief, even from his family, but there was a mild curiosity as to whether he'd jumped from the roof of the building or been assisted in his descentGossip revolves around the fact that he left the roof at the exact same spot that an employee, Mayu Yamase, had committed suicide some three years earlier.  She'd accused Onizuka of bullying her and forcing her to work an unreasonable amount of overtime.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241425441
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|isbn=0241425425
|title=The Thursday Murder Club
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|title=The Man Who Died Twice
 
|author=Richard Osman
 
|author=Richard Osman
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=The first member of The Thursday Murder Club we encounter is Joyce MeadowcroftShe used to be a nurse and is thus the perfect person for Elizabeth to consult about how long it would take a person who has been stabbed to bleed outDetails of where and how are exchanged and Joyce confirms that it would have taken about forty-five minutes and that the victim could have been saved if she'd received prompt medical helpIt didn't put Joyce off her shepherd's pie (which tells us that it was a Monday) but it does get her interested in The Thursday Murder ClubThey meet each Thursday (as you might have guessed) in the Jigsaw Room at Coopers Chase Retirement Village.
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|summary=Elizabeth Best was a little surprised when she received the letterIt came from a man whose body she had helped to pull from the Thames and who had never existed but then this is the sort of conundrum which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basisWhen she visits the sender of the letter (he's moved into the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise that it's someone with whom she has a long professional history - and who used to be her husbandHe's made a bad mistake - something to do with a mask being removed within the range of a CCTV camera on a raid, a missing twenty-million pounds in diamonds and a few death threatsHe's now in hiding with a young woman called Polly, who's his MI5 handler as well as being an incompetent waitress.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1509889515
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|author=Antti Tuomainen and David Hackston (translator)
|title=The Darkest Evening (D I Vera Stanhope)
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|title=The Rabbit Factor
|author=Ann Cleeves
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|rating=3.5
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was a mercy that DI Vera Stanhope took the wrong turning as she drove home in the blizzard.  If she hadn't the car might not have been found until the morning and who knows what would have happened to the toddler strapped into the car seat, particularly as the car door had been left open. Vera took the boy and drove to the nearest habitation. She ''thought'' it would be the village but it was Brockburn, the ancestral home of the Stanhopes: her father had been the younger brother of the man who inherited - and Hector was the black sheep of the family. Calling there unannounced, particularly as they seemed to have guests was going to be embarrassing, but there was little else that she could do in the circumstances.
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|summary=Meet Henri. With a mind so much more focused on maths and calculations than it is other human beings, he's perfect for his job in the insurance company – until they decide he's not a team-member, that they'd prefer everyone to be all open-plan, holistic and keen on stupid-as workshopping. This is when he finds his brother has died, having a heart attack while busy changing his Volvo's radio channel, and has left Henri everything. Unfortunately (or otherwise) that 'everything' is just an adventure park, and nothing else. ''YouMeFun'' is so not what Henri wants to occupy his mind, but he perks up a little when he sees huge holes in the finances – it runs at a steady money-moving pace, despite some desultory staff ideas, but loans have been made out and the amount vanished. Fortunately (or otherwise) some people are quickly on the scene to explain that missing money – it's been turned into a gambling debt that has also now been inherited by Henri, and the activities of these guys are not conducive to getting a cheap life insurance plan...
 +
|isbn=191319387X
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1506909442
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|isbn=B0925KS87N
|title=The Worst Dogs: A Progressive Murder-Mystery
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|title=Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)
|author=Matthew de Lacey Davidson
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|author=Neil Lancaster
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=''The greatest hatred, like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, is silent.''
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|summary=Tam Hardie had been determined to find the grave - and it took some finding, in an overgrown old cemetery. It was a strange thing for Scotland's premier criminal to do, but Tam was getting old and there were things he wanted to do.  Only, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he'd found the grave - the one which said that it shouldn't be opened - and his three sons began to worry.  Tam Junior, Frankie and Dave wouldn't normally go to the police but they weren't certain where their father had been and they were worried.
 
 
The title of this enjoyable crime procedural, is from German romantic writer Jean Paul. But who are the worst dogs in de Lacey Davidson's latest novel and for whom is the hatred? This mystery will last all the way to the very last and carefully plotted pages but you will be thinking about unwarranted hatred all the way through. It sounds uncomfortable - but it isn't: it's honest.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1542017432
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|author=Doug Johnstone
|title=The Nidderdale Murders
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|title=The Great Silence
|author=J R Ellis
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|rating=4
|rating=3
 
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was a Friday in mid-September when the shoot was held on the grouse moor near Niddersgill. The shooters at the butts were a strange mixture: Alexander Fraser (Sandy to his friends) was the owner of the moor and a retired judge. James Symonds was a local landowner and Henry Saunders was a banker. He and Fraser had known each other since their school days. The fourth member was Gideon Rawnsley, who dealt in exclusive cars in nearby Ripon.  Rawnsley had a gripe with Fraser: he'd sold him an expensive car and Fraser was being slow to pay. Other people had reason to comment on Fraser's attitude to money: his gamekeeper, Ian Davis thought he was stingy and very difficult to work for.
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|summary=For those who, like me, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of who's who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about it. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought to be, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinct, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been in the family for generations. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter is about to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join the academic staff next term.
 +
|isbn=1913193837
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008314721
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|isbn=0008269041
|title=Truth Be Told
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|title=Risk of Harm
|author=Kia Abdullah
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|author=Lucie Whitehouse
|rating=5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=The Hadids are an ''effortful'' familyFlowers are sent for the slightest problem or achievement: letters are sent to thank and this prompts a phone call in returnThere are two sons of the family, seventeen-year-old Kamran and sixteen-year-old Adam.  Their mother, Sofia, regrets that she didn't name them the other way round: 'Adam and Kamran' trips off the tongue so much more easily than 'Kamran and Adam'.  Sofia worries about that sort of thingBoth boys go to the prestigious Hampton school, where they board, despite the school being less than ten miles from their Belsize Park home.  Kamran has a place at Oxford next year and all seemed to be going well until the night when he was raped.
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|summary=DCI Robin Lyons is back in her native Birmingham after her less-than-comfortable departure from the MetShe might have been reinstated but the whole episode left a nasty taste in her mouthShe was now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years before.  She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved out of her parent's home into a rented house but there's still a difficult situation with her brother Luke who has gone out of his way to make life difficult for Robin since she was a young childHe's married to Natalie, now and has a young child but he's still got it in for Robin.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Agnes Ravatn and Rosie Hedger (translator)
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|isbn=1846975719
|title=The Seven Doors
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|title=For Any Other Truth (DCI Jim Daley)
|rating=4
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|author=Denzil Meyrick
 +
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Come here for a thriller that interestingly doesn't even try to suggest a genre of any kind until we're a full fifth of the way throughWe start with our couple, she a literature lecturer, he big in medical provision and decisions at the council, being forced to move out of their home, a building that had existed throughout her life since childhood and which they'd occupied for over thirty yearsThe building he's inherited, meanwhile, and which they let out to a single mother, is needed by their adult daughter, who quite blatantly says to its occupant 'take a hike, I'm moving in and you're moving out'Now, at this stage you may well, if you know this is a genre read, think it's going to be a throwback to those 'home invasion' thrillers Hollywood gave us in the 1980s, but noWe avoid genre completely, as I say – instead learning about Greek tragedy, in case that has any bearing on what happens here, and seeing how an older-middle aged couple live their lives.  Until at that twenty per cent stage we find something that raises an eyebrow as any crime book should – until the point where the evicted tenant is found to have completely vanished.
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|summary=We learn that MI5 is having its problems with environmental terrorists supergluing themselves to awkward placesBut that's London, isn't it?  What's happening in Kinloch?
|isbn=1913193381
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 +
When a light aircraft crash lands at Machrie airport, DCI Jim Daley and his colleague, Acting DI Brian Scott, head off for the airport straight awayIt soon becomes evident though that both occupants of the plane were dead before take offHow could that be?  The sort of tech which would make that possible isn't available to the paying publicAnd why have the man no identification on them - or even labels in their clothes?
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1471179273
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|isbn=1409181669
|title=House of Correction
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|title=The Maidens
|author=Nicci French
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|author=Alex Michaelides
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=When we first meet Tabitha Hardy, she's in prison, on remand.  She's sharing a cell with Michaela, who's more caring than she first appearsShe delivers tough love and gets Tabitha eating and drinking - and encourages her to have a shower, unpleasant as the whole processes might beAnd how did Tabitha get here?  Well, on 21 December the body of Stuart Robert Rees was discovered in her garden shed by Andrew Kane, who was helping with the renovations to Tabitha's houseSo far as the police are concerned, Tabitha is the only person who could have killed Rees - and when they arrived at her house she was covered in his blood.
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|summary=Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders and looked likely to get away with them both.  She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed.
 +
 +
Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on the Paradise nature reserve in Cambridge.  She'd been brutally stabbed and Mariana's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distress.  Tara had been her best friend and she was struggling to copeMariana wasn't ''entirely'' happy about having to go to Cambridge, but she caught the first fast train from King's CrossMariana and Zoe were close and had been made all the more so by the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlierZoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Eliza.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1408712415
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|isbn=0241400120
|title=Cry Baby
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|title=The Girl Who Died
|author=Mark Billingham
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|author=Ragnar Jonasson and Victoria Cribb
|rating=4.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's June 1996 and football's European Championships are about to start in London.  DS Tom Thorne is having a nightmare and it's one he has regularly.  It relates to a case from ten years earlier when he ''knew'' that a man was guilty, but didn't take any action until the man's wife and three children had been murdered and the man had killed himself.
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|summary=Una was not thriving in Reykjavik: it was some years since her beloved father had committed suicide without leaving any explanation and since then she'd given up her medical studies and retrained as a teacher. She was thirty years old and money was tightHer friend, Sara, showed her an advert for a job in Skalar on the Langanes PeninsulaThere were only ten people in the village but a teacher was required for two children: a salary would be paid and accommodation providedUna was the only applicant and the job meant that she could let her flat in Reykjavik and, hopefully, save some money over the winter which her contract covered.
 
 
Cat Coyne and Maria Ashton are with their sons Kieron and JoshIt's a happy combination in that the boys are devoted to each other and - despite differences in the where and how they live - the women are best friendsThe boys are seven-year-old and they play on the swings in the park and then dash off to play hide and seek in Highgate WoodJosh was the one doing the hiding - but he returned tearfully to the women: Kieron never came to find him and now he can't find Kieron.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529402271
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|isbn=1529407249
|title=Murder on the Moorland (Kitt Hartley Yorkshire Mysteries)
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|title=The Perfect Lie
|author=Helen Cox
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|author=Jo Spain
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=DI Malcolm Halloran and Kitt Hartley's relationship is developing nicely: they're even into a spot of bandage now, although the details are (mercifully) scant. After a night of passion Halloran is called away in the early hours of the morning.  There's been a murder in Irendale, where Halloran used to live and where his wife, Kamala, was strangled five years ago. There are sufficient details of the current murder to make Halloran suspect that the man who murdered his wife - and others - is in some way involved, despite being in prisonThe DI heads off to speak to Jeremy Kerr.
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|summary=It was July 2019 and Erin was happy.  She and Danny Ryan were planning a few days away: that's always a dangerous thing to do when you're married to a cop but she was hopeful.   They'd been married for six months and life was good with a decent apartment by the sea in Newport, Long Island.  The knock on the door was insistent and when it was opened, Danny's partner, Ben Mitchell was there with a couple of other officers.   Danny took one look, turned, walked to the open window and jumped to his death from the fourth floor.
 +
   
 +
Eighteen months later, Erin would be on trial for her husband's murder.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lilja Sigurdardottir and Quentin Bates (translator)
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|isbn=1788549759
|title=Betrayal
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|title=The Distant Dead
|rating=3
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|author=Lesley Thomson
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Meet Ursula, the stand-in minister, drafted in from outside the leading party to cover the post for a year.  You might get to meet her hunky husband she can't believe she deserves, and the children who are ignorant of just how she spent all her empathy for them on previous jobs in the foreign aid charity sector.  You'll meet her ministry's cleaner, who bizarrely has fallen into the task of helping a famous newsreader with her Tinder profileYou'll certainly meet a homeless tramp, who has taken one look at a newspaper image of Ursula, and, knowing her of old, decided she needs saving from the devil posing beside her.  You'll meet the ministerial bodyguard and driver the tramp almost immediately forces Ursula to acceptBut as for the first ministerial case, of a woman demanding her daughter's rape get looked at and pronto, nobody can say, for all records of Ursula's meeting with the woman have been wiped…
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|summary=It was December 1940 and twenty-four-year-old Maple Greenhill had gone out for the evening 'with her friend Ida' leaving her three-year-old son, William, at home with her parentsThe boy thought that Maple was his sister - it was better for the family than the shame of illegitimacy, but Maple had high hopes of putting her life (and William's) on a better footingShe was going to meet her well-to-do fiancé, hoping to persuade him to come and meet her family the following weekLater, her body would be found in the bombed-out home where he had taken her.
|isbn=1913193403
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1409187438
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|isbn=0008404925
|title=The First Lie
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|title=The Killing Kind
|author=A J Park
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|author=Jane Casey
|rating=3.5
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|rating=5
|genre=Thrillers
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|genre=Crime
|summary=On the second of October 37-year-old barrister, Paul Reeve, returned home at 9 pm to find his house in darkness and the front door openHis wife was in the bedroom in a state of shock and in the bathroom there was a dead man who had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck with Paul's paper-knifeIn that moment Paul takes a decision that will be irrevocable: he decides that he and Alice are not going to ring the police and tell the truth.  They're going to bury the body in woodland and go on as though nothing has happened.
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|summary=Difficult clients were nothing new to barrister Ingrid Lewis but John Webster came as something of a surpriseAfter all, it was her cross-examination of the 'victim' which saved him from a lengthy prison sentence.  He'd been accused of stalking the woman but it didn't take long to establish that - if anything - it was the other way aroundSoon Ingrid never seemed to be free of John Webster and then she came to see him as a threat and was forced to remember that the police officer at his trial had told her that this was the best chance they'd had to put Webster away for a long time: he was a very dangerous man.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529401801
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|isbn=walker14
|title=Grave's End (DS Alexandra Cupidi)
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|title=The Coldest Case  (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
|author=William Shaw
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|author=Martin Walker
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Gram Hickman, who worked for an estate agent, took his girlfriend, Angela Booth, to a house which his firm was marketingGuildeford Hall was an old Kentish oast house and was on the market for millions of pounds.  Gram was hoping that he could get Angela into bed and he'd brought a bottle of prosecco alongIt was when searching for somewhere to chill the bottle that he found the body of a man in the freezer in the garage. DS Alexandra Cupidi and DC Jill Ferriter are on the case.
+
|summary=It was when he saw Elisabeth Daynes' work in the prehistory museum at Les Eyzies that chief of police Bruno Courreges had the idea which he thought might help his boss, chief of detectives Jalipeau, known as J-J, to solve a case which had haunted him for thirty yearsThe body of a young male was found in the woods but he was never identified and his killer never brought to justiceWhat if an artist could recreate the face from the skull and the resulting publicity be used to identify the young man? J-J calls the skull 'Oscar' and has a picture on his door: he sees it every time he leaves his office: he doesn't want to forget Oscar until his killer has been brought to justice.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Anders de la Motte
+
|isbn=1471181405
|title=End of Summer
+
|title=Nighthawking
|rating=4
+
|author=Russ Thomas
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary= In the summer of 1983, little Billy Nilsson goes missingHe was chasing a rabbit, through the garden, and into the maize field behind.  He has not been seen sinceIn the present day, Veronica Lindh is a grief counsellor running group therapy sessions for the bereaved – although she clearly has problems of her own: anxiety, panic attacks, a scar on her arm that she keeps obsessively hidden and she is barely hanging on to her jobIt's clear that she has just returned to work after an episode that seems to have resulted in restraining orders against her, a deal of therapy, a change of location and her supervisor is watching closelyAs well, he needs to.
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|summary=Sheffield's [http://www.sbg.org.uk/ Botanical Gardens] (on Clarkehouse Road, if you'd like to visit) are an oasis of calm in what's otherwise thought of as an industrial city but this was disrupted when the body of a young woman was discoveredIt had obviously been buried in one of the beds but who would have started to dig her up?  It had been in the earth for months and could have been undiscovered for yearsThe police need to establish who stabbed her - and who left the two, very rare, gold aurei on her eyes.  DCI Diane Jordan is the Investigating Officer and her foot soldiers are DS Adam Tyler and DC Mina RabbaniThey're joined by DS Guy Daley who's just returned from extended sick leaveMina thinks he's as obnoxious as ever but suspects that he's not fully recovered from his injuries.
|isbn=1785768239
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
 
Move on to [[Newest Crime (Historical) Reviews]]
 
Move on to [[Newest Crime (Historical) Reviews]]

Revision as of 16:24, 21 October 2021

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Review of

Psychopaths Anonymous by Will Carver

3.5star.jpg Thrillers

Maeve is a high functioning alcoholic, drinking continuously and also, curiously, addicted to attending numerous AA groups. She is also a self-acknowledged psychopath. Whilst analysing and critiquing the AA steps she is mainly using the groups to find targets...targets for sexual encounters, targets to feed her desire to hear of people's misery, and targets for her violent behaviour. Yet she also seems to be searching for others who think as she does, and when she's unable to find like-minded people in any of the groups she decides to set up her own, hoping to encounter others who share similar obsessions, and thus Psychopaths Anonymous is born. Full Review

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Review of

Invite Me In by Emma Curtis

4.5star.jpg Crime

Martin Curran's wife, Eliza knew that she had to be home to make his lunch for one o'clock on the dot, despite the fact that she was actually painting one of their properties prior to it being let. If she didn't get home, there would be trouble. There was some excuse: Martin was a paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair, but don't be too quick to be understanding. He was also a very unpleasant person: he once told Eliza you're good at being a disappointment. All this was in Eliza's mind when she first met Dan Jones who arrived, unannounced, at the flat just as Eliza was about to leave: he wanted the lease of flat 2, 42 Linden Road and he was desperate to get in before it was advertised as being available. Full Review

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Review of

A Change of Circumstance (Simon Serrailler) by Susan Hill

5star.jpg Crime

Drugs hadn't really been that much of a problem in Lafferton and Detective Superintendent Simon Serrailler had thought of drugs ops as a bit of a waste of time. They still were, to a great extent, but Serrailler knew that something had to be done. Children as young as nine were being recruited to transport the drugs and the operation running the county lines was tight. A mule might know the name (although it probably wouldn't be the correct one) of the person who was running him but he certainly wouldn't know anything about those higher up in the organisation. The police might catch a few of the runners but they'd never get anywhere near those higher up. Full Review

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Review of

Endless Obsession by Dai Henley

4star.jpg Crime

It's some years since we last caught up with Andy Flood, formerly a DCI in the Met but now a well-respected private investigator. He's married to Laura, formerly his DS in the Murder Squad but now working in a forensics laboratory. Flood's daughters, Gemma and Pippa, have flown the nest, Pippa to Australia, from where she has very little contact with the family, and Gemma to married life. She's had mental problems since she was abducted many years ago but Andy and Laura hope that married life will provide the support she needs. Flood's business is going well and that was why he felt able to turn down the case of Lisa Black. Full Review

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Review of

The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache) by Louise Penny

4.5star.jpg Crime

In the Canadian village of Three Pines, we're post-pandemic: the scars are still there but life is starting to get back to normal. The villagers are beginning to return to the Bistro and the Auberge. They're visiting each other's homes and having friends and relatives to stay. A young Sudanese woman who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize is one such visitor and she soon proves that not all saints are necessarily pleasant people to be around - a bit like Vincent Gilbert, known in the village as the Asshole Saint. Full Review

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Review of

The Dark Remains by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin

3.5star.jpg Crime

Bobby Carter was a lawyer and consigliere to one of the major crime families in nineteen seventies Glasgow. DC Jack Laidlaw is on the CID team charged with the investigation. I say on the team but Laidlaw never really seems to be a part of it. He does his own thing, goes his own way and The Dark Remains uncovers the truth of why Bobby Carter's body was found behind one of Glasgow's seedier pubs. Full Review

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Review of

Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi) by Michael Pronko

4.5star.jpg Crime

Zangyo: overtime work, often unpaid

It's the culture, isn't it? The hours for which you're paid are really just a statement of the minimum you'll be required to do: you'll work more hours to get the job done and done to the satisfaction of bullies like Shigeru Onizuka. When he was found dead in front of Senden Central's headquarters in Tokyo there was nothing in the way of regret or grief, even from his family, but there was a mild curiosity as to whether he'd jumped from the roof of the building or been assisted in his descent. Gossip revolves around the fact that he left the roof at the exact same spot that an employee, Mayu Yamase, had committed suicide some three years earlier. She'd accused Onizuka of bullying her and forcing her to work an unreasonable amount of overtime. Full Review

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Review of

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

4.5star.jpg Crime

Elizabeth Best was a little surprised when she received the letter. It came from a man whose body she had helped to pull from the Thames and who had never existed but then this is the sort of conundrum which retired spies have to deal with on a regular basis. When she visits the sender of the letter (he's moved into the Cooper's Chase Retirement Village) it comes as no surprise that it's someone with whom she has a long professional history - and who used to be her husband. He's made a bad mistake - something to do with a mask being removed within the range of a CCTV camera on a raid, a missing twenty-million pounds in diamonds and a few death threats. He's now in hiding with a young woman called Polly, who's his MI5 handler as well as being an incompetent waitress. Full Review

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Review of

The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen and David Hackston (translator)

3.5star.jpg Crime

Meet Henri. With a mind so much more focused on maths and calculations than it is other human beings, he's perfect for his job in the insurance company – until they decide he's not a team-member, that they'd prefer everyone to be all open-plan, holistic and keen on stupid-as workshopping. This is when he finds his brother has died, having a heart attack while busy changing his Volvo's radio channel, and has left Henri everything. Unfortunately (or otherwise) that 'everything' is just an adventure park, and nothing else. YouMeFun is so not what Henri wants to occupy his mind, but he perks up a little when he sees huge holes in the finances – it runs at a steady money-moving pace, despite some desultory staff ideas, but loans have been made out and the amount vanished. Fortunately (or otherwise) some people are quickly on the scene to explain that missing money – it's been turned into a gambling debt that has also now been inherited by Henri, and the activities of these guys are not conducive to getting a cheap life insurance plan... Full Review

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Review of

Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie) by Neil Lancaster

4star.jpg Crime

Tam Hardie had been determined to find the grave - and it took some finding, in an overgrown old cemetery. It was a strange thing for Scotland's premier criminal to do, but Tam was getting old and there were things he wanted to do. Only, his family didn't hear from him again after he'd said that he'd found the grave - the one which said that it shouldn't be opened - and his three sons began to worry. Tam Junior, Frankie and Dave wouldn't normally go to the police but they weren't certain where their father had been and they were worried. Full Review

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Review of

The Great Silence by Doug Johnstone

4star.jpg Crime

For those who, like me, haven't come across the Skelfs before, I'll risk a quick synopsis of who's who – although Johnstone does a good job of bringing the backstory in without being heavy handed about it. Skelf isn't some fantastic creature, though it sounds as though it ought to be, it is merely the surname of a family of undertakers. Undertakers and private investigators. Dorothy is the matriarch – Californian by birth and instinct, she married a scot and ended up helping to run the Edinburgh undertaking firm that had been in the family for generations. Recently widowed and now involved with a black Swedish police officer. Swedish by nationality. Scottish police. Daughter Jenny, 46, is haunted by her still-living husband – a violent escaped prisoner. And grand-daughter is about to graduate with a first-class physics degree and join the academic staff next term. Full Review

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Review of

Risk of Harm by Lucie Whitehouse

4.5star.jpg Crime

DCI Robin Lyons is back in her native Birmingham after her less-than-comfortable departure from the Met. She might have been reinstated but the whole episode left a nasty taste in her mouth. She was now working for Detective Chief Superintendent Samir Jaffrey - then the man who had broken her heart nearly twenty years before. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter have moved out of her parent's home into a rented house but there's still a difficult situation with her brother Luke who has gone out of his way to make life difficult for Robin since she was a young child. He's married to Natalie, now and has a young child but he's still got it in for Robin. Full Review

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Review of

For Any Other Truth (DCI Jim Daley) by Denzil Meyrick

3.5star.jpg Crime

We learn that MI5 is having its problems with environmental terrorists supergluing themselves to awkward places. But that's London, isn't it? What's happening in Kinloch?

When a light aircraft crash lands at Machrie airport, DCI Jim Daley and his colleague, Acting DI Brian Scott, head off for the airport straight away. It soon becomes evident though that both occupants of the plane were dead before take off. How could that be? The sort of tech which would make that possible isn't available to the paying public. And why have the man no identification on them - or even labels in their clothes? Full Review

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Review of

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

5star.jpg Crime

Mariana was convinced that Professor Edward Fosca had committed two murders and looked likely to get away with them both. She needed to think carefully about what she knew and decide how she should proceed.

Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on the Paradise nature reserve in Cambridge. She'd been brutally stabbed and Mariana's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distress. Tara had been her best friend and she was struggling to cope. Mariana wasn't entirely happy about having to go to Cambridge, but she caught the first fast train from King's Cross. Mariana and Zoe were close and had been made all the more so by the death of Mariana's husband, Sebastian, in a swimming accident on Naxos some fourteen months earlier. Zoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Eliza. Full Review

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Review of

The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jonasson and Victoria Cribb

4star.jpg Crime

Una was not thriving in Reykjavik: it was some years since her beloved father had committed suicide without leaving any explanation and since then she'd given up her medical studies and retrained as a teacher. She was thirty years old and money was tight. Her friend, Sara, showed her an advert for a job in Skalar on the Langanes Peninsula. There were only ten people in the village but a teacher was required for two children: a salary would be paid and accommodation provided. Una was the only applicant and the job meant that she could let her flat in Reykjavik and, hopefully, save some money over the winter which her contract covered. Full Review

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Review of

The Perfect Lie by Jo Spain

4.5star.jpg Crime

It was July 2019 and Erin was happy. She and Danny Ryan were planning a few days away: that's always a dangerous thing to do when you're married to a cop but she was hopeful. They'd been married for six months and life was good with a decent apartment by the sea in Newport, Long Island. The knock on the door was insistent and when it was opened, Danny's partner, Ben Mitchell was there with a couple of other officers. Danny took one look, turned, walked to the open window and jumped to his death from the fourth floor.

Eighteen months later, Erin would be on trial for her husband's murder. Full Review

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Review of

The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson

4.5star.jpg Crime

It was December 1940 and twenty-four-year-old Maple Greenhill had gone out for the evening 'with her friend Ida' leaving her three-year-old son, William, at home with her parents. The boy thought that Maple was his sister - it was better for the family than the shame of illegitimacy, but Maple had high hopes of putting her life (and William's) on a better footing. She was going to meet her well-to-do fiancé, hoping to persuade him to come and meet her family the following week. Later, her body would be found in the bombed-out home where he had taken her. Full Review

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Review of

The Killing Kind by Jane Casey

5star.jpg Crime

Difficult clients were nothing new to barrister Ingrid Lewis but John Webster came as something of a surprise. After all, it was her cross-examination of the 'victim' which saved him from a lengthy prison sentence. He'd been accused of stalking the woman but it didn't take long to establish that - if anything - it was the other way around. Soon Ingrid never seemed to be free of John Webster and then she came to see him as a threat and was forced to remember that the police officer at his trial had told her that this was the best chance they'd had to put Webster away for a long time: he was a very dangerous man. Full Review

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Review of

The Coldest Case (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel) by Martin Walker

4star.jpg Crime

It was when he saw Elisabeth Daynes' work in the prehistory museum at Les Eyzies that chief of police Bruno Courreges had the idea which he thought might help his boss, chief of detectives Jalipeau, known as J-J, to solve a case which had haunted him for thirty years. The body of a young male was found in the woods but he was never identified and his killer never brought to justice. What if an artist could recreate the face from the skull and the resulting publicity be used to identify the young man? J-J calls the skull 'Oscar' and has a picture on his door: he sees it every time he leaves his office: he doesn't want to forget Oscar until his killer has been brought to justice. Full Review

1471181405.jpg

Review of

Nighthawking by Russ Thomas

4.5star.jpg Crime

Sheffield's Botanical Gardens (on Clarkehouse Road, if you'd like to visit) are an oasis of calm in what's otherwise thought of as an industrial city but this was disrupted when the body of a young woman was discovered. It had obviously been buried in one of the beds but who would have started to dig her up? It had been in the earth for months and could have been undiscovered for years. The police need to establish who stabbed her - and who left the two, very rare, gold aurei on her eyes. DCI Diane Jordan is the Investigating Officer and her foot soldiers are DS Adam Tyler and DC Mina Rabbani. They're joined by DS Guy Daley who's just returned from extended sick leave. Mina thinks he's as obnoxious as ever but suspects that he's not fully recovered from his injuries. Full Review

Move on to Newest Crime (Historical) Reviews