Difference between revisions of "Newest Crime Reviews"

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[[Category:New Reviews|Crime]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Deborah O'Connor
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|author=Will Carver
|title= The Captive
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|title=Psychopaths Anonymous
|rating= 4
+
|rating=3.5
|genre= Thrillers
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|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Hannah knows the cage, intimately. It lurks in the corner of her eye. Soon, it will be occupied. Then what? What if he speaks to her? What if he escapes? What if he hurts her? What if she hurts him?
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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=1838772650
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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.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1784742775
 +
|title=A Change of Circumstance (Simon Serrailler)
 +
|author=Susan Hill
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Crime
 +
|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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1838887334
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|isbn=B09HTWX47X
|title=Deadly Cry (D I Kim Stone)
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|title=Endless Obsession
|author=Angela Marsons
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|author=Dai Henley
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=DI Kim Stone and DS Jim Bryant were on their way back from Diversity Awareness training.  The need for coffee overtook Stone - the course had been a complete waste of time for her as she knew that she was equally rude to everyoneIt was in the shopping centre that Stone caught sight of a little girl clutching a teddy bear in the absence of her motherStone and Bryant didn't realise the extent to which this case was going to occupy their minds as the body of Katrina Nock is discovered some hours laterHer neck had been broken and it had all the hallmarks of a quick, functional kill, but who would do that to a young mother out shopping with her child?
+
|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 investigatorHe's married to Laura, formerly his DS in the Murder Squad but now working in a forensics laboratoryFlood'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 needs.  Flood's business is going well and that was why he felt able to turn down the case of Lisa Black.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1838770046
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|isbn=1529379385
|title=Body Language
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|title=The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache)
|author=A K Turner
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|author=Louise Penny
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Twenty-five-year-old Cassie Raven is the senior mortuary technician and not only does she talk to the dead, she also hears what they have to say to herIt's not something she's inclined to share with people as she's pretty certain about what their reaction will be.  She's certainly not going to share it with the new pathologist, Dr Archie Chuff, wearer of a genuine Barbour jacket and old HarrovianHe's very conscious of his position and isn't even inclined to ask for the view of the anatomical pathology technicians despite the fact that they have a lot more experience than him and he has only a limited amount of time to spend on each body.  That will prove to be a mistake.
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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 normalThe villagers are beginning to return to the Bistro and the AubergeThey'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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1472255917
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|isbn=183885410X
|title=The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner)
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|title=The Dark Remains
|author=Quintin Jardine
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|author=William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin
|rating=4.5
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|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=On New Year's Eve, Sir Robert Morgan Skinner was celebrating at the golf club with his wife, Professor Sarah Grace, daughter Alex Skinner and the man with whom she shares a house, Dominic Jackson.  Jackson would be better-known to the criminal fraternity of Edinburgh as Lennie Plenderleith but he's reformed and the new name reflects a new manThe Skinners don't stay much after midnight at the clubhouse and are dropped home not long into the new yearSkinner's tempted to let the phone ring but knows that he cannot: it's Mario McGuire asking for his presence at a crime scene in the centre of EdinburghSkinner's not technically with the police now - he's chairman of InterMedia UK - but the police value his knowledge and experience.
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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 itHe 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
|isbn=1800321104
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|isbn=1942410255
|title=The Body on the Island
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|title=Tokyo Zangyo (Detective Hiroshi)
|author=Nick Louth
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|author=Michael Pronko
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=A prison transport left HMP Wakefield, heading for HMP Spring Hill.  Steve and Aaron were accompanying Neil Wright who was 67 years old and had served six years for the manslaughter of his wife.  Only that wasn't who he was. Sixty-three-years-old Neville Rollaston had served thirty years for the murder of five boys between the ages of ten and seventeenHe was being ghosted out of Wakefield and into a new identity set up in a deal whereby he divulged the whereabouts of the body of one of his victimsThe Bogeyman was going to be set free on 2 July 2019He appeared to be a reformed character but he had a list of people upon whom he wished to exact revenge.
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|summary=''Zangyo: overtime work, often unpaid''
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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 OnizukaWhen 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 earlierShe'd accused Onizuka of bullying her and forcing her to work an unreasonable amount of overtime.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B087JXQ3JQ
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|isbn=0241425425
|title=The Long Dark Road
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|title=The Man Who Died Twice
|author=P R Black
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|author=Richard Osman
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
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|genre=Crime
|summary=Two years ago Dr Georgia's Healey's nineteen-year-old university-student daughter went missing as she walked along the lonely A928 at Ferngate BridgeThere was a furious storm going on and she'd already refused the offer of help from one man in a big vehicleWe'll see - but no one else will know - that another car stops and Stephanie is bundled into the car and driven offThere has been no sign of her - or her body - in the two years sinceGeorgia is back is Ferngate, determined to find out what happened and she's not going to be stopped.
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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
|author=David C Mason
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|author=Antti Tuomainen and David Hackston (translator)
|title=Pandora's Gardener
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|title=The Rabbit Factor
|rating=3
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|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary= John Cranston is a gardener, although what he did before he became a gardener, he claims, is classified. That is just as well because he is about to be caught up in a criminal / spy / terrorist plot, where only he can save the day.  
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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=0956180523
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|isbn=191319387X
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1838773169
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|isbn=B0925KS87N
|title=Her Majesty the Queen Investigates: The Windsor Knot
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|title=Dead Man's Grave (DS Max Craigie)
|author=S J Bennett
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|author=Neil Lancaster
|rating=5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's early 2016 and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is at Windsor for the Easter CourtShe's having a dine and sleep at the request of Prince Charles, who's attempting to raise money from some rich Russians for one of his pet projects.  There'd been a distinctly Russian flavour to the evening and one of the performers brought in to play the piano has been found dead in what can only be called embarrassing circumstancesThe immediate reaction is that one of the guests is responsible.  The Queen mentally rules out her racing manager, an ex-ambassador to Moscow, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Sir David Attenborough.  One couldn't bear to go down any of ''those'' roads.
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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 doOnly, 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 worryTam 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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Roxanne Bouchard
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|author=Doug Johnstone
|title=The Coral Bride
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|title=The Great Silence
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Angel Roberts is an oddity - a female fisherwoman, making her living in a man's world. When her lobster trawler is found drifting off the coast of Quebec, Detective Morales is called in to come and head the investigation. Although the signs seem to point to an obvious conclusion, Morales feels something more sinister is going on, and finds himself frustrated at every turn by hidden agendas, fishing histories and secret family feuds. At the same time as trying to run his investigation, he also has his grown up son, Sebastien arriving at his door, weighed down with personal problems that he is unable to talk to his father about, which tie up with Morales own marital difficulties.
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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=1913193322
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|isbn=1913193837
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Susi Holliday
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|isbn=0008269041
|title= The Last Resort
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|title=Risk of Harm
|rating= 3.5  
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|author=Lucie Whitehouse
|genre= Thrillers
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|rating=4.5
|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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|genre=Crime
|isbn=1542020018
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|summary=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 childHe's married to Natalie, now and has a young child but he's still got it in for Robin.
}}
 
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=0571362672
 
|title=Snow
 
|author=John Banville
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime (Historical)
 
|summary=''Well, at least you're a Wexford man.''
 
 
 
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 missingStrafford 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=1846975719
|title=The Postscript Murders
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|title=For Any Other Truth (DCI Jim Daley)
|author=Elly Griffiths
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|author=Denzil Meyrick
|rating=4
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|rating=3.5
 
|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=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 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=1472127013
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|isbn=1409181669
|title=Agatha Raisin: Hot to Trot
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|title=The Maidens
|author=M C Beaton and R W Green
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|author=Alex Michaelides
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Raisin Investigations had quite a bit of work on handThe 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 manMr 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=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.
 
+
Then there was the murder.
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Everything - or so she thought - had begun with the death of Tara Hampton on the Paradise nature reserve in CambridgeShe'd been brutally stabbed and Mariana's niece, Zoe, had telephoned her in distressTara 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 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 earlierZoe had been their surrogate daughter after the death of Zoe's mother and Mariana's sister, Eliza.
 
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1408712288
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|isbn=0241400120
|title=Still Life (DCI Karen Pirie)
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|title=The Girl Who Died
|author=Val McDermid
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|author=Ragnar Jonasson and Victoria Cribb
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|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 potIt 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=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 teacherShe was thirty years old and money was tight.  Her 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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Michael J Malone
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|isbn=1529407249
|title=A Song of Isolation
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|title=The Perfect Lie
|rating=3
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|author=Jo Spain
 +
|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 forestry.  They have found a hideaway on a small Scottish estate, but things are starting to feel wrong between them.  
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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.
|isbn=1913193365
+
 +
Eighteen months later, Erin would be on trial for her husband's murder.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241425441
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|isbn=1788549759
|title=The Thursday Murder Club
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|title=The Distant Dead
|author=Richard Osman
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|author=Lesley Thomson
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=The first member of The Thursday Murder Club we encounter is Joyce Meadowcroft.  She 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=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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1509889515
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|isbn=0008404925
|title=The Darkest Evening (D I Vera Stanhope)
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|title=The Killing Kind
|author=Ann Cleeves
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|author=Jane Casey
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was a mercy that DI Vera Stanhope took the wrong turning as she drove home in the blizzardIf 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 habitationShe ''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 familyCalling 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=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 sentenceHe'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=1506909442
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|isbn=walker14
|title=The Worst Dogs: A Progressive Murder-Mystery
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|title=The Coldest Case  (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
|author=Matthew de Lacey Davidson
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|author=Martin Walker
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=''The greatest hatred, like the greatest virtue and the worst dogs, is silent.''
+
|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 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.
 
 
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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|isbn=1471181405
|title=The Nidderdale Murders
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|title=Nighthawking
|author=J R Ellis
+
|author=Russ Thomas
|rating=3
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was a Friday in mid-September when the shoot was held on the grouse moor near NiddersgillThe shooters at the butts were a strange mixture: Alexander Fraser (Sandy to his friends) was the owner of the moor and a retired judgeJames Symonds was a local landowner and Henry Saunders was a bankerHe and Fraser had known each other since their school daysThe fourth member was Gideon Rawnsley, who dealt in exclusive cars in nearby RiponRawnsley 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.
+
|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 eyesDCI 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.
 
}}
 
}}
  
 
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

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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

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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