Difference between revisions of "Newest Crime Reviews"

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[[Category:Crime|*]]
 
[[Category:Crime|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Crime]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|Crime]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
==Crime==
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1035021803
{{newreview
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|title=The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder
|author=Jonathan Hayes 
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|author=C L Miller
|title=A Hard Death
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|rating=3.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=I haven't read Jonathan Hayes' bestseller 'Precious Blood' so I was a fresh reader, so to speak. His writing biography on the inside cover of the book is impressiveMy expectations were high. All the ingredients are in place for a good thriller.  The location is The Everglades in Florida.  Brooding, enigmatic, awe-inspiring and where we all seem to expect crocodiles to rear their heads out of the swampy waters every five minutes.
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|summary=It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up.  She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole.  Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badlyEven though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099538644</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1398524085
|author=Colin Cotterill
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|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?
|title=Curse of the Pogo Stick
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|author=Nicci French
|rating=4
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Dr Siri Paiboun usually managed to control his reactions in front of Judge Haeng, but occasionally he forgot himself and was more insolent than usualThis time the Laos national coroner (reluctant), communist (even more reluctantly) and shaman finds himself on a road trip with the judge and the Justice DepartmentNurse Dtui (pregnant and married, although not in the usual order of events) is left to run the morgue along with Mr Geung, who might, or might not be a help, but probably not in the way that you might expectAs if that wasn't enough Nurse Dtui discovers a booby-trapped corpse, there's a geriatric hit-person on the loose and Siri is kidnapped.
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|summary=Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned upHer children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is notShortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the riverIt was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt.  The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849160112</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529900360
|author=Cathi Unsworth 
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|title=The Ghost Orchid
|title=Bad Penny Blues
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|author=Jonathan Kellerman
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Step into the seedy underbelly of London on the cusp of the Swinging Sixties. 'Bad Penny Blues' is the story of the hunt for a brutal serial killer targeting prostitutes in the west of the city, at the time a melting pot of immigrants from the Caribbean and Ireland, bohemian artists and media types, and even peers. Carnaby Street was just becoming the fashion centre of London and a new decade promised exciting possibilities.
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|summary=It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while.  Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again.  She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed.  The next case did look simple, though.  Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air.  He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's not the Italian. But which of them was the primary target?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686784</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=178763681X
|author=Frances Fyfield
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|title=Knife Skills for Beginners
|title=Cold to the Touch
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|author=Orlando Murrin
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=There's something obsessive about Jessica HurlyWhen Sarah Fortune encounters her on a cold, dark London morning, she's distraught because the man who fills all her thoughts has rejected her and it seems that her mother wants nothing to do with herJess is a talented chef but she's short of work – the occasion when she emptied a tureen of soup over the host at a dinner party did not enhance her reputation even if all the other guests were secretly delighted.  Sarah senses her vulnerability, but it's Jess who organises the let of one of her mother's cottages in the sea-side town where she grew up so that Sarah can have a long break from the flat where she still smells a recent fire.
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|summary=Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in BelgraviaHe didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and women to do what he wantedPaul ''somehow'' got the impression that he'd be at the school to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, but it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and the problems - are all his own.  The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up dead.  Unfortunately, he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspect.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847441092</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529421284
|author=Helen Fitzgerald
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|title=Laying Out the Bones
|title=Bloody Women
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|author=Kate Webb
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Before reading ''Bloody Women'', I hadn't heard of the author Helen Fitzgerald and by the title and blurb, I expected a standard crime-thriller novel. But early on, I realised this wasn't the case. The novel was a kind of black comedy and written with wit and humour, despite the theme of murder and violence.
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|summary=It was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a heatwave.  In a gully, a human skeleton came to the surface and forensic testing proved the body to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earlier.  He'd been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, so it could have been a simple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. Geary was a townie, so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone?  There are connections to the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the time.  Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to you and me) investigate.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971330</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529425867
|author=Jeffery Deaver
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|title=Lost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)
|title=The Bodies Left Behind
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|author=Simon Mason
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=When lawyer Emma Feldman and her husband Steven decided to buy a holiday home to give them the opportunity for much needed breaks from their hectic professional lives, they brought an old colonial house in the woods by Lake Mondac in Wisconsin, on foreclosure – it seemed like the deal of a lifetime. But on their first evening in the place, a series of strange snapping noises outside begin to freak the couple out. They know they are in real trouble when a man with shotgun and stocking mask appears at their window. Another enters the building and the only hope they have is that someone will take notice of Steven's phone call to the police, cut off by the intruders after he is able to get out only one word – This.
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|summary=In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins.  Raymond Wilkins is of Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and father of Ryan, is not. He's not any of those things. He's white, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not ''really'' his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies.  They're usually in lime green or acid yellow.  You might wonder if you're being introduced to a police procedural written for laughs. Well, you're not. The two men are just different sides of the same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well.  Sometimes it's problematic.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340994037</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
|author=M C Beaton
 
|title=Agatha Raisin: There Goes The Bride
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Private investigator Agatha Raisin is not a happy woman. She is concerned with the rate at which her body is ageing; even worse, her ex-husband, James, is getting married to a much younger woman and Agatha has been invited to the wedding. She goes, with plenty of friends in tow and looks forward to the whole thing being over as soon as possible. She sees James just before the wedding, when he makes it clear that he has changed his mind and wants to pull out of the wedding. Then the bride is killed, by a bullet through the window, and James and Agatha are the primary suspects. Can they prove their innocence while finding out who the real perpetrator is?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845299531</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529431735
|author=Diane Janes
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|title=The Winter Visitor
|title=Edwardian Murder: Ightham & the Morpeth Train Robbery
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|author=James Henry
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Two murders took place in Edwardian England less than two years apart, one in the south-east and the other in the north-east.  At first glance they seemed to have nothing to do with each other, but years later a link between them was hinted at though never proved beyond doubt.  The author has investigated the connection and come up with a riveting book.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752449451</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)
 
|title=The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=[[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]], the first of Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy of thrillers, was a fine stand-alone novel. The second in the series, [[The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland (translator)|The Girl Who Played With Fire]], continues the adventures of Lisbeth Salander, Larsson's finely crafted anti-hero. If you haven't read this second volume yet I advise you to stop reading this review now. I'm about to spoil the ending for you…
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|summary=It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising.  He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade.  The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that she's ill and hasn't long to live. It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra.  Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694168</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0861541774
|author=Nigel McCrery
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|title=A Nye of Pheasants
|title=Tooth and Claw
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|author=Steve Burrows
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Another serial killer is on the loose, and yet again the police have failed to connect the deaths. Carl Whittley has just tortured a glamorous TV presenter to death - leaving a singularly gruesome tableau - and blown a hapless commuter to smithereens at a railway station. He's planning his next murder already, secreted away in the shed at the bottom of the garden of the house he shares with his invalid father. Carl is embittered and lonely - with his mother living away and pursuing a career as a forensic psychologist, there's only him to take care of his severely disabled father: to change the colostomy bag, to cook, to clean, to, well, just to bear it, really.
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|summary=DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the manNow he could be facing the death penaltyDomenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248071</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ryan David Jahn
 
|title=Acts of Violence
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Kat Marino is stabbed on her way home from work.  All she wanted was a hot bath after a hard day's work.  From this point the novel skips nimbly from one neighbour to the next, all of whom are absorbed in their own dilemmasThere is the draftee with a sick mother, the nurse who thinks she has run over a baby, the woman who suspects her husband of cheating and othersWe are shown what these characters were doing that evening, and how these events drag through to the morning. We are shown how in the midst of their own interesting, poignant and dangerous concerns a woman is stabbed in the courtyard onto which all their windows look, through which windows they witness the attack, and how these people did nothing.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230743595</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1521129886
|author=Nigel McCrery
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|title=They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries)
|title=Core of Evil
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|author=Keith Redfern
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Violet Chambers becomes Daisy Wilson through an aromatic cup of tea, flavoured with Christmas roses.
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|summary=Greg Mason's just beginning to get his confidence as an investigator to the point where he'll warn someone about how much he charges. It's a good job too because Greg and Joyce will soon have a baby and they're both delighted. Joyce will be more delighted about the baby when she gets past the morning sickness.  Greg is approached by an old friend whose brother-in-law appears to have killed himself.  Stuart's concerned about his sister, Lucy, who's struggling to make ends meet and her son is not thriving.  Lucy, he says, is convinced that Gil would never have killed himself - it simply wasn't in his nature. The police and the coroner have accepted that the death was suicide, but Stuart's prepared to pay Greg to find out what happened on the night Gil died.
 
 
'"There are all kinds of horrible things in the Christmas rose," she said, watching to see whether Daisy could still hear her. "Helleborin and hellebrin are both like digitalis, which I've also used before, but there's saporin and protoanemonin as well. It's a very nasty cocktail."'
 
 
 
And now Daisy has met her rather sticky - and graphically effluent - end, and Violet has become Daisy, Daisy sets her sights on a new town, a new identity and, most importantly, a new victim. Daisy has problems with her memory - the identities go back so far that sometimes she can barely remember who is she is now, let alone all the whos she's been before, and most certainly not the who with whom she began.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847243843</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B0CK3MYJ56
|author=P J Parrish
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|title=Responsibilities (Greg Mason mysteries)
|title=Dead of Winter
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|author=Ann Macarthur
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Loon Lake, Michigan is picture-postcard pretty – an idyll that sits serenely and snugly in the midst of a pine-peppered winter wonderlandLouis Kincaid needs a little serenity in his life and on arrival in Loon Lake he feels almost as if he has come home. Life has not been easy for KincaidA troubled, unhappy child of mixed race, passed around various institutions and foster homes, Louis figures that if he is going to put some integrity back into the world, he will need to wear a badge to do it.
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|summary=It's the 1990s and Greg Mason's twenty-eight years oldHe used to have a high-flying job in the city but it wasn't satisfying so he's now set himself up as a private investigator. 'Shades of Cameron Strike', you might be thinking. Nice bloke, but where's the life experience that backs up this profession?  On the other hand, he has been asked to look into somethingJoyce and Helen are half-sisters, or rather, they were until Helen was killed in what's been written off as a tragic accident at an unmanned level crossing.  Joyce - and her parents, Oliver and Pam Hetherington - can't understand what she was doing there - or how she could come to fall in front of a train.  Greg's been asked to investigate.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391346</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1838954481
|author=Rebecca Tope
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|title=The Misper
|title=Fear in the Cotswolds
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|author=Kate London
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Thea Osborne is a house sitter by professionWhen people go away she moves into their homes and looks after their animals and the propertyThis time it's winter and she's spending a month in the Cotswold village of Hampnett.  It wouldn't be a job for all of us but Thea delights in getting to know the local people and the areaIn the past she's also been involved with the police in solving various cases but it looks as though that might have come to an end as the relationship she had with DS Phil Hollis has crumbled.  For the first time Thea feels like an outsider – and a foolish one - when she finds footsteps in the snow which lead to a body in a nearby field.  When the police finally arrive the body has disappeared and the police obviously wonder if she's imagined it all.
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|summary=Ryan Kennedy killed a police officer: there's no doubt about thatHe was the fifteen-year-old holding the gun and pointing it at DI Kieran ShawHe pulled the trigger but due to the vagaries of the jury system he was found not guilty of both the murder and the manslaughter of the officerAnd so lives must go on.  For DI Sarah Collins that means leaving the capital and hoping for a quieter life in the countryside but when a missing teenager is found on her territory she's drawn into a wider investigation - and back into the orbit of Ryan Kennedy.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007478</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1448309743
|author=Joe Gores
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|title=The Devil Stone (DCI Christine Caplan)
|title=Spade and Archer
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|author=Caro Ramsay
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Sam Spade decides, bravely, to set up his one-man detective agencyIt's the 1920s in San Francisco so we have the prohibition era and all that that entails.  Many locals, of course, choose to disobey the law, stick two fingers up, so to speak and as a result there's lots of bootleg liquor.
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|summary=In the village of Cronchie on the West coast of Scotland, five members of a wealthy family are found murderedThe only item missing from the home is the Devil Stone: myth says that if the stone is removed from Otterburn House, death will followThe only suspects are known Satanists but in many ways, that's an easy conclusion given that two of them 'discovered' the body.   The Senior Investigating Office is DCI Bob Oswald but when he disappears, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in to 'shadow' him.
   
 
Straight away, it's evident that Sam is a man of few words.  He has the mannerisms of a cat - stealthy, quick on his feet. He's also a compulsive chain-smoker, but then again, most people were.  In that era, holding a cigarette was an elegant, almost essential accessory.  How times have changed.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140911323X</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529077699
|author=Richard Jay Parker
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|title=The Raging Storm (Two Rivers)
|title=Stop Me
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|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Spam E-Mails can be incredibly annoying, but most of us will have had to deal with them.  Fortunately, we can hit the delete button and forget about them as quickly as they came.  I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish on, no matter how bad my luck is supposed to become if I don't.  But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam E-Mail actually was a matter of life and death, rather than just claiming to be?
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|summary=''It's all bloody peculiar, isn't it, Sir?''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Well yes, it is.  Jem Rosco blew into the local pub one evening in the middle of an autumn gale, stayed for about a month and then turned up, naked and dead, in a small boat, anchored in Scully Cove close to the village of Greystone, in Devon. Rosco had the status of a national treasure: a renowned adventurer, round the world sailor and all round ''celebrity''.  I ''nearly'' said 'all-round good egg' but as we'll find out, he could be more than a little bit close with money and his background isn't exactly an open book.  Where did he get the money for his first boat?  How did he finance the trip?
|author=Kathryn Fox
 
|title=Blood Born
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=To give support to a vulnerable gang-rape victim, forensic pathologist Anya Crichton offers to drive Giverny Hart to the courthouse on the day she is due to testify against the notorious Harbourn brothers. But when Anya arrives at the house she finds Giverny close to death and faces a battle against time to save her. In the panic, Anya fails to take note of an important clue which might help tell whether it really was suicide or a cleverly staged murder. Worse still, in trying to save the girl's life, Anya has interfered with a crime scene and the case falls apart. She blames herself for the Harbourn brothers being allowed to walk free and only hours later there is news of another attack. A pair of sisters have been stabbed and raped resulting in the death of one, while the other clings to life.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340933097</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529427045
|author=Louise Penny
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|title=The Girl in the Eagle's Talons
|title=The Brutal Telling
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|author=Karin Smirnoff
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Early one morning, in the village of Three Pines, the local restaurateur is woken by the ringing of the telephone.  There is a body in the bistro and Olivier is stunned.  The man has been bludgeoned to death, but there's no sign of a weapon, no obvious reason for the killing and no clues as to the identity of the victim.  Meanwhile, in Montreal, Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec is called into investigate, along with his colleagues, Inspector Beauvoir and Agent Isabelle Lacoste.  They've been to Three Pines before, but this time the village is in chaos.
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|summary=''Life has more to offer than people - prime numbers for example''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755341031</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
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Lisbeth Salander has headed north to the small town of Gasskas, where the so-far-untapped natural resources of the area have sparked a gold rush. The criminal underworld has not been slow in coming forward. Salander's niece's mother is the latest woman in the area to have vanished without trace.  It was only with reluctance that Salander became her niece's guardian but it quickly becomes obvious that Svala is a remarkably gifted teenager who's unaware of the part Salander played in her father's death.
|author=Mike Carey
 
|title=The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor)
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Felix Castor is a talented exorcist living in London, with zombies, ghosts and succubi for friends, and the odd human. His best friend, Rafi, has been taken over by a demon called Asmodeus, for which Felix feels slightly responsible. As such, he needs to get Rafi back to normal - the problem is that Asmodeus has other ideas - basically to kill everyone who has anything to do with Rafi. Felix himself is probably on the list, but before he worries about himself, he needs to do something about his closest friends - namely Pen, his landlady, Juliet, a succubus (a demonic female spirit) and Sue, Juliet's lover. At the same time, there are horrible things going on in a central London gym, and Castor must do something about it before people start to die. Can he solve all his problems without losing any of his loved ones?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841496553</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1787636607
|author=C J Box
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|title=The Trap
|title=Three Weeks to Say Goodbye
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|author=Catherine Ryan Howard
|rating=2.5
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=''Three Weeks to Say Goodbye'' is narrated by Jack McMcGuane, who describes himself as a hard-working, regular guy (more of that in a minute though). Nine months previously, he and his wife Melissa had adopted a baby girl, Angelina, when their world is shattered by a telephone call from the adoption agency to say that there has been a mistake on the forms and the teenage biological father had not signed his consent and now wants to take the baby back. Even worse news is that the boy's father is an influential federal judge. They have, you've guessed it, three weeks to say goodbye to their daughter.
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|summary=It's a scene replicated all too often in the early hours of the morning.  Drunken revellers spilling out of clubs and looking for a way to get home.  Some are lucky and manage to get one of the few taxis available.  Others squash onto the night bus that will only go as far as one of the outlying villages.  The woman all regret the 'taxi problem', particularly in the light of 'the missing women'. For one young woman, the final stop on the bus leaves her a long way short of her home.  She had intended to ring someone to come and collect her - but her phone's dead. The bus had driven off before she had the chance to beg the bus driver to let her use his. There's no option but to start walking - unsuitably clothed and in high-heeled shoes.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848872917</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1405957174
|author=David Barrie
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|title=A Death at the Party
|title=Wasp-Waisted
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|author=Amy Stuart
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Franck Guerin used to be one of the elite, dealing with national security, but after an incident in Corsica which left him badly wounded he's been moved into criminal investigationsHis first case proves to be something of a problem when a young model is found dead in a luxury hotel in Paris.  Worryingly, a stunning photograph of the body is delivered to Exposé, a big-circulation scandal sheet, before the body is discovered and it can only have been taken by the murdererDespite the provenance of the picture it's difficult not to be in awe of the skill and artistry which produced itAll Guerin has to go on is the ''very'' expensive underwear which the body is wearing – or you might almost say ''modelling''.
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|summary=From the first page, we know that Nadine Walsh's party will not end wellThe victim - a man - is dying when we first meet him and Nadine consciously makes no effort to call the ambulance he so desperately needsWhat we don't know is who the man is or why Nadine prefers to have him dieI'd better give you a little more background so that you can understand what's happening.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251803</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0008530025
|author=Will Ferguson
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|title=Murder in the Family
|title=Hustle
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|author=Cara Hunter
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Cons generally come in two forms, the long con and the short con.  The long con is more elaborate and has more that can go wrong, takes a lot longer to set up but has correspondingly higher rewards if everything goes rightThis is the art of fleecing a single person out of a lot of money all at onceIt is this that the BBC TV show ''Hustle'' and Richard Asplin's [[Conman by Richard Asplin|Conman]] are based on.  The short con can be something as basic as a rigged game of ''find the lady'', which aims to part as many people from a little bit of money as quickly as possibleThe short con may have a lower return, but that return comes a lot quicker and this is the basis for Will Ferguson's ''Hustle''.
+
|summary=It was in December 2003 that fifteen-year-old Maura Howard came home and found the body of her stepfather, Luke Ryder, in the garden of their West London homeHe had an injury on the back of his head which could have happened if he'd slipped down the steps but the vicious beating his face had taken was obviously deliberateTwenty years later, no one has been charged with his murder and it's now the subject of ''Infamous'', a true-crime show.  A group of experts has been brought together to review the evidence and to take the investigation furtherMore to the point, they're going to do this live on camera, episode by episode.  There's no dump of the whole box set - and no shortage of cliffhangers.  It's compelling viewing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516438</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Richard Asplin
+
|isbn=0241996104
|title=Conman
+
|title=Coming to Find You
|rating=3
+
|author=Jane Corry
|genre=Crime
+
|rating=4.5
|summary=Thanks to the success of the BBC TV show ''Hustle'', the art of the long con seems to be more popular than I ever recallI've always liked the series, as it shows a battle of wits and there is so much that can go wrong the outcome is in doubt right until the endUntil Richard Asplin's ''Conman'', I'd not read anything with quite the same level of intricacy, although Jeffery Deaver's ''The Vanished Man'' comes close.
+
|genre=Thrillers
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184243294X</amazonuk>
+
|summary=Nancy's mother and step-father were brutally stabbed at their Sussex farmhouse and her step-brother, Martin, has been convicted of their murderWe first meet Nancy outside the court, after Martin receives a life sentenceThe barrister tells her that she's received a 'silent sentence' - she's not been found guilty of anything but will have to live with what happened for the rest of her life.  Of course, it's made worse because Nancy's rich - she inherited five million pounds from her mother - and the papers are making the most of it''Farmhouse slaughter daughter'' is one favourite epithet and ''rich bitch'' might not be printed but is undoubtedly spoken.
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ian Rankin
 
|title=The Complaints
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Working in 'The Complaints' is not the job for you if personal popularity matters, because they're the cops who investigate other cops.  Inspector Malcolm Fox has been there for some time and at the beginning of the book the Procurator Fiscal is taking on a case against a serving policemanMost people think that Glen Heaton is a good copper who has taken a few shortcuts and done some unorthodox swaps of information just to get the right result when justice might not be served otherwise. They don't reckon that he's bent and there's a degree of resentment against Fox.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0752889516</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529413680
|author=Sam Millar
+
|title=A Chateau Under Siege (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
|title=The Dark Place: A Karl Kane Novel
+
|author=Martin Walker
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Belfast PI Karl Kane is reluctant to take on the case of a missing teenager, but his secretary/girlfriend pushes him into it. As he looks into it further, it becomes apparent that a number of young women are being murdered in a peculiarly nasty way. The case soon becomes very personal as a friend who seemed to know something also becomes a victim. Karl finds himself looking for a serial killer who has abducted and murdered a number of very young women in an especially nasty way. It becomes all too clear that the police do not really care very much. Most of the victims are homeless women with a history of drug problems and a life on the wrong side of the law.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863224032</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=N J Cooper
 
|title=No Escape
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=I've long had an interest in psychology, particularly abnormal psychologyThe mind is a fascinating thing, but it has far more spectacular effects when things go wrongThe same is true of crime thrillers, which are a lot more entertaining when things don't work out too well for the police.  So a combination of abnormal psychology and crime thriller was always going to appeal to me.
+
|summary=One of the main events of the Sarlat tourist season is the re-enactment of the liberation of the town from the English in 1370 and Bruno's there to see the show with some friends.  It's all been very carefully choreographed but goes badly wrong when, Kerquelin, the man playing one of the main characters is seriously injured when he departs from the scriptLuckily, his doctor is there and the man is whisked away in a helicopter.  A local doctor (and friend of Bruno) wonders about his chances of survival but - as he's a senior government employee, the man who runs Frenchelon - the military has stepped inOne daughter lives nearby and another, who lives in California, is flying in with some of her father's friends for a pre-arranged holiday.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847394221</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529196388
|author=Paul Charles
+
|title=The Trial
|title=Family Life
+
|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=The Sweeney family along with wives, girlfriends and children were gathered at the family farm for Liam's birthday.  There was just one empty seat at the table and the family waited for Joe – the only one of the children who wanted to farm – to return homeIt wasn't Joe who arrived though – it was Inspector Starrett with the news that Joe's body had been discovered on land by a disused warehouse.  There were no injuries to the body and Starrett could only assume that Joe had been murdered.
+
|summary=Grant Cliveden was a hero: a policeman who stood for all that was good and honest and looked up to by just about everyone, so there was public uproar when he was murdered in plain sight at the Old Bailey.  There's just one man in the frame for his murder - Jimmy Knight - and it's not too long before Knight appears in court, charged with Cliveden's murder. Knight was told that the best barrister for him was Jonathan Taylor-Cameron of Stag Court Chambers and it's Taylor-Cameron and his pupil, Adam Green, who eventually represent himKnight's determined to plead not guilty, despite all Taylor-Cameron's recommendations to the contrary.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863224040</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Andrew Cartmel
|author=Mehmet Murat Somer
+
|title=Death in Fine Condition
|title=The Gigolo Murder
 
 
|rating=3
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=After a break-up, our unnamed hero (or heroine) has been wallowing in depression and self-pity for too long, so his friend, Ponpon, drags him out for an evening on the town in Istanbul. While out, he meets Haluk Pekerdem to whom he is immediately attracted, but unfortunately Pekerdem happens to be married. However, this meeting involves our hero in a new murder case, when Pekerdem's brother-in-law is accused of the murder of a gigolo. Our hero suspects that the brother-in-law is not guilty... but can he prove it? And if he is right, then who is the real killer?
+
|summary=Cordelia really loves classic paperback crime fiction, and in particular a series called Sleuth Hound. She spends her time hunting out copies that she can sell on for profit, sometimes 'tweaking' them, to add value, in somewhat fraudulent ways. One day she discovers a near perfect collection of these books after seeing them in the background of a photograph on her drug dealer's living room wall, and so she sets about discovering where this collection is, and how she can steal it!  It's a next-level step in her petty crime career, but has she reached too far, and what will happen when the owner of the collection comes looking for their books?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846686946</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1789098947
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1448309379
|author=Peter Lovesey
+
|title=Flesh and Blood (DS McAvoy 11)
|title=Skeleton Hill
+
|author=David Mark
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=When the Sealed Knot re-enact a Civil War battle on Lansdown Hill near Bath a couple of corpses sneak off for a crafty drink – one of them thoughtfully buried a six-pack in the shade of a fallen tree where he thought it would stay cool, but after unearthing two can he can find no more.  Further exploration produces a human bone which they agree to rebury – convinced that it's a relic of the battle.  One of the corpses goes missing – his car left at the nearby racecourse – and it turns out that the bone is nowhere near as old as they think, but the head of Bath CID still has difficulty in establishing who is buried in that lonely spot.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847443338</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nick Brownlee
 
|title=Bait
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Jake Moore was in the Flying Squad but a bullet put paid to his career and ten years later he's running a game-fishing business on the Kenyan coast.  Times are hard and there's every chance that the business will fold unless he and his partner, Harry, can find the money to pay their bills.  Some strange things are happening in the game fishing business too – one of their number has died in a mysterious explosion on his boat and the body of a man who shouldn't have been aboard has been washed up on the shore.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749928840</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Thomas Pynchon
 
|title=Inherent Vice
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=The close of the '60s, the dawn of the '70s.  San Francisco.  Some people say the most influential people are Nixon and his cronies.  Some people say they're Charlie Manson and his cronies.  Some people call the smog surrounding everyone in the Bay Area air pollution, others a drug haze.  Doc, the sole proprietor of LSD Investigations, is approached by different people, requesting two jobs of him, which both point to the same bigwig property developer.  One of these is from his ex, now with said mogul, another is from a man whose prime interest immediately dies.  How will this escalate into a manic mystery, hitting on mysterious yachts taking odd journeys, missing people, Nixon, dead people coming back to life, unusual retreats, and a host more?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022408948X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mark Billingham
 
|title=Bloodline
 
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Detective Inspector Tom Thorne becomes involved in what initially seems like an ordinary domestic murder. However, slivers of an X-Ray are found in the dead woman's hand, and it is soon discovered that the woman's mother was murdered by the serial killer Raymond Garvey some years before. Other deaths with the same modus operandi soon prove that someone is out to murder all the children of Raymond Garvey's... That someone may just be Garvey's bastard son, who believes that the tumour that killed his father meant that Garvey was not responsible for his actions. Can Thorne trace the killer's next victims before he strikes? And how can they trace the killer when his identity is unknown?
+
|summary=It's something of a surprise to find that you're dead, particularly when you're thinking that you're actually on a break with your wife and children, but that's what happened to DS Aector McAvoy.  Whilst he was relieved to find that he was still, officially, alive, it was difficult for Detective Superintendent Trish Pharoah.  Her protegee - McAvoy - was still alive but the partially clad man who'd dashed from her flat in the early hours of the morning when it was obvious that someone was tampering with her car, was not. Thor Ingolfsson was Aector McAvoy's doppelganger - and not everyone who commented on this was doing so kindly.  It had always been suspected that Pharoah was sweet on Aector.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408700670</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529135389
|author=Chris Mooney
+
|title=The Fall
|title=The Dead Room
+
|author=Gilly Macmillan
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=The third in the Darby McCormick series, the Dead Room sees the head of Boston's CSU investigating a horrific home invasion which leads to a woman's death and her son's hospitalisation. As McCormick becomes more deeply involved, she realises that the case is more complicated than she could possibly have imagined, with clues leading to people who are supposedly already dead, and suggestions that her father's death in the line of duty wasn't all that it seemed to be. Meanwhile, ex-cop Jamie Russo turns vigilante as she tries to avenge her husband's murder.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039876</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kate Ellis
 
|title=Playing With Bones (DI Joe Plantagenet)
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Two teenagers went to a nightclub and the following morning the body of one of them was found in Singmass Close – a sinister part of Eborby reputed to be haunted by the cruelly-treated children of long-defunct Ragged School.  The teenager had been strangled and mutilated – her left big toe cut off.  By her side there was a Victorian doll – similarly mutilated.  Back in the nineteen fifties there has been four murders in Singmass Close – young women who were strangled and mutilated and left with a doll by their side.  The killer had never been brought to justiceHe'd be likely to be in his seventies by now – was it possible that he was still fit enough to return to his old ways?
+
|summary=Nicole Booth had spent the morning at the county fair before she returned home.  There was no sign of her husband but opera was playing on the state-of-the-art music system installed in The Glass BarnThey'd not been in the architect-designed house on Lancaut Peninsula for long and were still getting used to all the high-tech systems Tom had insisted upon. Some of them fought with each other and didn't work as reliably as they should.  It had all come about through a ten-million-pound lottery win and they were still getting used to having that sort of money, tooEventually, Nicole found Tom dead in the swimming pool with a wound to his head.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749909323</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=George Dawes Green
 
|title=Ravens
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Shaw and Romeo are two friends, moving across country for a new life, when they stumble upon Nowheresville, GA, and find that one family has just had the only winning lottery ticket for a $318million jackpot.  The family involved is very average - slightly ineffectual father, mother who gets geared up for the weekly lottery and descends into a gin fug as a result, girl stuck on Facebook, boy glued to a PSP or somethingThere are enough gaps within the family for the pair of guys to break in between them, and have them under threat for half the winnings.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442889</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Alan Parks
|author=Leigh Russell
+
|title=To Die in June
|title=Cut Short (DI Geraldine Steel)
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=An au pair took her employer's young daughter, the next-door neighbour's son and his friend to the park, but the young girl was petulant about the inclusion of the second boy and with the wilfulness of a child who finds herself less than the centre of attention ran off into the bushes, where she knew that she must not go.  In there she used a stick to stir up some leaves and uncovered the body of a woman.
+
|summary=What first seems like the unfortunate, accidental death of a homeless man on the streets, suddenly starts to feel like something more sinister as another body is discovered, and then anotherThis is worrying enough for detective Harry McCoy, but all the more so because his own father is a down and out alcoholic, with no fixed abode, and he has been for years.  At the same time as facing these possible murders, Harry is also dealing with a move to a different police station, and the arrival there of a woman who claims her little boy has gone missing, only no record of the boy having existed can be foundSomething feels wrong - not just with the woman’s story but also with the other officers where he has been stationed, but can Harry uncover just what is going on?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1842432710</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1805300784
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Elliott J Gorn
 
|title=Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=History
 
|summary=John Dillinger was born and brought up in IndianaHis childhood was no better and no worse than most but the early part of his adult life was to be blighted by a spell in prison when he was convicted of an attack on a man in a botched hold-up.  Hoping for leniency he pleaded guilty but was sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment, whilst the man with him pleaded not guilty and when convicted received a shorter sentence.  It's easy to see where Dillinger's contempt for the law was spawned.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0195304837</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia
 
|title=Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia worked for the FBI.  That might sound rather glamorous but Jack had a special claim to fame.  He was one of those rare people who always worked undercover – not just for hours or days at a time but sometimes for years.  In ''Making Jack Falcone'' he tells the story of how he came to infiltrate the Mafia in New York and was responsible for a string of arrests which crippled the organised crime families.  If that doesn't sound impressive enough, then just consider that Jack Garcia was a Cuban-born American and he went undercover as an Italian amongst Italians.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847393942</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Nick Brownlee
 
|title=Burn
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Inspector Daniel Jouma was hoping that calm had returned to Mombasa the problems start mounting up again.  A nun has gone missing in mysterious circumstances and the local priest doesn't seem all that worriedAfter a meal with his friend Jake Moore a respected member of the local community falls to his death almost at their feet – but how he had got into the fort ion the first place? Jake hasn't got it any easier either.  Kenya's most ruthless and dangerous developer wants to sweep away the local village and build a five-star hotel in its place.  To top it all a paid assassin has accepted some local contracts and the FBI are in pursuit.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749929065</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1804545600
|author=Joseph Teller
+
|title=The Monk
|title=The Tenth Case
+
|author=Tim Sullivan
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=I am a great fan of courtroom dramas, which is one of the reasons why I enjoy [[:Category:John Grisham|John Grisham]] novels so much and I pretty much look on him as the master of this genre. So, when I discover a book that claims that it's ''better than Grisham or your money back'' I am bound to be interested. This was the claim made by the publishers of ''The Tenth Case'' and I had to read it. I do think that Grisham at his best is pretty unbeatable although not all that he writes lives up to expectations. So could this book beat, or at least match, what Grisham does? Read on...
+
|summary=The body in the woods near Bristol was a nasty shock - a monk strapped to a chair and dumped in a ditch.  He'd been savagely beaten. It's a while before D S George Cross and the Major Crime Unit establish that this is Father Dominic. He'd been missing for a few days and certainly hadn't asked permission to leave his abbey. As the team gradually unpick the monk's past it becomes clear that he'd been well-loved as an investment banker, brother, neighbour and friend.  He'd also been very wealthy but had given it all up for his faithWhy would someone savagely murder him?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>077830308X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Steve Mosby
 
|title=Still Bleeding
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Alex Connor has been trying to negate the memory of his wife's suicide by running away.  He's left all his friends behind and has barely been in touch with them for years.  But now Sarah, one of his closest friends, has been murdered and the prime suspect is her partner, Alex's brother JamesFor Alex, this is the one thing that could call him home, as Sarah was the one who told him to confront death, not run from it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409110095</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Crime (Historical) Reviews]]
|author=Denise Mina
 
|title=Still Midnight
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=On a quiet Sunday evening in the suburbs of Glasgow an old man is kidnapped from an unassuming house.  The kidnappers are incompetent – they don't seem entirely certain who it is they're after and one of them fires his gun, badly injuring a teenage girl.  As they leave, taking the old man with them, they demand a ransom of two million pounds.  Have they got the right house and if so, why do they think that there's so much money to be had there? DS Alex Morrow is certain that this is going to be her case – after all, she was promised – but it goes to her arch rival, DS Grant Bannerman and she is to work under his command.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409100529</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 10:37, 26 March 2024

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Review of

The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder by C L Miller

3.5star.jpg Crime

It's twenty years since Freya Lockwood has been back to the English country village where she grew up. She's back now because of a request for help from her beloved aunt, Carole. Freya's former mentor and Carole's close friend, Arthur Crockleford, is dead and the circumstances seem suspicious, to say the least. Arthur was the reason why Freya had not been back to the village: Arthur, she feels, let her down badly. Even though they were in business together as antique hunters, she has not felt able to be near the man or pursue the profession she loved. After the split, she worked in a cafe, met and married James (on the rebound from the love of her life, who was murdered) and Freya and James have now divorced. Full Review

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Review of

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French

5star.jpg Crime

Charlotte Salter was expected at her husband's fiftieth birthday party but never turned up. Her children, sons Niall, Paul and Ollie and her daughter, Etty. are all worried but - strangely - her husband, Alec, is not. Shortly afterwards, Etty and Greg, find the body of Greg's father, Duncan Ackerley, in the river. It was an easy assumption for the police to make that Duncan had murdered Charlie and then committed suicide when he couldn't stand the guilt. The Salter children are not convinced but there's little else they can do but get on with their lives and wonder about what really happened. Full Review

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Review of

The Ghost Orchid by Jonathan Kellerman

4star.jpg Crime

It hadn't been Lt Milo Sturgis's fault that Alex Delaware had been badly injured but he felt responsible and even after Alex recovered, Sturgis was reluctant to ask for his help on difficult cases. His assertions that there were only open-and-shut cases which didn't need the help of a psychologist only worked for a while. Finally, it was Robin, Delaware's partner, who nudged Milo into asking for help again. She knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed. The next case did look simple, though. Two lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel Air. He was the heir to an Italian shoe empire and she is married to an extremely rich man and it's not the Italian. But which of them was the primary target? Full Review

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Review of

Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin

4star.jpg Crime

Chef Paul Delamare took a teaching job at a residential cookery school in Belgravia. He didn't really want to but celebrity chef Christian Wagner had a way of getting both men and women to do what he wanted. Paul somehow got the impression that he'd be at the school to assist Paul, who had a broken arm, but it didn't turn out that way. The teaching - and the problems - are all his own. The one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up dead. Unfortunately, he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspect. Full Review

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Review of

Laying Out the Bones by Kate Webb

4.5star.jpg Crime

It was one of those flash downpours that the British weather often delivers in a heatwave. In a gully, a human skeleton came to the surface and forensic testing proved the body to be Lee Geary, who had disappeared nine years earlier. He'd been a known drug user and had learning disabilities, so it could have been a simple case of misadventure but DI Matt Lockyer wasn't convinced. Geary was a townie, so what was he doing out on Salisbury Plain alone? There are connections to the suicide of Holly Gilbert and to two other deaths which were not considered suspicious at the time. Lockyer and DC Gemma Broad of the Major Crimes Review Unit (that's cold cases to you and me) investigate. Full Review

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Review of

Lost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery) by Simon Mason

4.5star.jpg Crime

In Oxford, there are two D I Wilkins. Raymond Wilkins is of Nigerian descent, Balliol educated and always exquisitely dressed. D I Ryan Wilkins, son of Ryan and father of Ryan, is not. He's not any of those things. He's white, originated from a trailer park, barely educated (reading's not really his thing) and his wardrobe consists mainly of shell suits and trackies. They're usually in lime green or acid yellow. You might wonder if you're being introduced to a police procedural written for laughs. Well, you're not. The two men are just different sides of the same policing coin. Sometimes the combination works brilliantly well. Sometimes it's problematic. Full Review

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Review of

The Winter Visitor by James Henry

4star.jpg Crime

It's February 1991 and Essex is bitingly cold, which made Bruce Hopkins' return all the more surprising. He'd been exiled on the Costa del Sol as a wanted drug smuggler for a decade. The return has come about because he's had a letter from his ex-wife, saying that she's ill and hasn't long to live. It's hard to feel any sympathy when Hopkins is abducted, stripped to his underwear and sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. Is it a warning from a Spanish gang or a problem closer to home? Full Review

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Review of

A Nye of Pheasants by Steve Burrows

4star.jpg Crime

DCI Domenic Jejeune's close friend and former colleague, Danny Maik, has taken a short holiday in Singapore to meet up with an old ally, Guy Trueman. Maik was involved in a street brawl - he would later maintain that he was facing a man armed with a knife - and he killed a Ghurka. Initially, he faced a charge of manslaughter but evidence came to light that suggested that he might have planned to murder the man. Now he could be facing the death penalty. Domenic Jejeune can do nothing to help as any interference from another police force could provoke a diplomatic incident and wouldn't help Danny at all. Full Review

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Review of

They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries) by Keith Redfern

4star.jpg Crime

Greg Mason's just beginning to get his confidence as an investigator to the point where he'll warn someone about how much he charges. It's a good job too because Greg and Joyce will soon have a baby and they're both delighted. Joyce will be more delighted about the baby when she gets past the morning sickness. Greg is approached by an old friend whose brother-in-law appears to have killed himself. Stuart's concerned about his sister, Lucy, who's struggling to make ends meet and her son is not thriving. Lucy, he says, is convinced that Gil would never have killed himself - it simply wasn't in his nature. The police and the coroner have accepted that the death was suicide, but Stuart's prepared to pay Greg to find out what happened on the night Gil died. Full Review

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Review of

Responsibilities (Greg Mason mysteries) by Ann Macarthur

4star.jpg Crime

It's the 1990s and Greg Mason's twenty-eight years old. He used to have a high-flying job in the city but it wasn't satisfying so he's now set himself up as a private investigator. 'Shades of Cameron Strike', you might be thinking. Nice bloke, but where's the life experience that backs up this profession? On the other hand, he has been asked to look into something. Joyce and Helen are half-sisters, or rather, they were until Helen was killed in what's been written off as a tragic accident at an unmanned level crossing. Joyce - and her parents, Oliver and Pam Hetherington - can't understand what she was doing there - or how she could come to fall in front of a train. Greg's been asked to investigate. Full Review

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Review of

The Misper by Kate London

4star.jpg Crime

Ryan Kennedy killed a police officer: there's no doubt about that. He was the fifteen-year-old holding the gun and pointing it at DI Kieran Shaw. He pulled the trigger but due to the vagaries of the jury system he was found not guilty of both the murder and the manslaughter of the officer. And so lives must go on. For DI Sarah Collins that means leaving the capital and hoping for a quieter life in the countryside but when a missing teenager is found on her territory she's drawn into a wider investigation - and back into the orbit of Ryan Kennedy. Full Review

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Review of

The Devil Stone (DCI Christine Caplan) by Caro Ramsay

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In the village of Cronchie on the West coast of Scotland, five members of a wealthy family are found murdered. The only item missing from the home is the Devil Stone: myth says that if the stone is removed from Otterburn House, death will follow. The only suspects are known Satanists but in many ways, that's an easy conclusion given that two of them 'discovered' the body. The Senior Investigating Office is DCI Bob Oswald but when he disappears, DCI Christine Caplan is pulled in to 'shadow' him. Full Review

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Review of

The Raging Storm (Two Rivers) by Ann Cleeves

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It's all bloody peculiar, isn't it, Sir?

Well yes, it is. Jem Rosco blew into the local pub one evening in the middle of an autumn gale, stayed for about a month and then turned up, naked and dead, in a small boat, anchored in Scully Cove close to the village of Greystone, in Devon. Rosco had the status of a national treasure: a renowned adventurer, round the world sailor and all round celebrity. I nearly said 'all-round good egg' but as we'll find out, he could be more than a little bit close with money and his background isn't exactly an open book. Where did he get the money for his first boat? How did he finance the trip? Full Review

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Review of

The Girl in the Eagle's Talons by Karin Smirnoff

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Life has more to offer than people - prime numbers for example.

Lisbeth Salander has headed north to the small town of Gasskas, where the so-far-untapped natural resources of the area have sparked a gold rush. The criminal underworld has not been slow in coming forward. Salander's niece's mother is the latest woman in the area to have vanished without trace. It was only with reluctance that Salander became her niece's guardian but it quickly becomes obvious that Svala is a remarkably gifted teenager who's unaware of the part Salander played in her father's death. Full Review

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Review of

The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard

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It's a scene replicated all too often in the early hours of the morning. Drunken revellers spilling out of clubs and looking for a way to get home. Some are lucky and manage to get one of the few taxis available. Others squash onto the night bus that will only go as far as one of the outlying villages. The woman all regret the 'taxi problem', particularly in the light of 'the missing women'. For one young woman, the final stop on the bus leaves her a long way short of her home. She had intended to ring someone to come and collect her - but her phone's dead. The bus had driven off before she had the chance to beg the bus driver to let her use his. There's no option but to start walking - unsuitably clothed and in high-heeled shoes. Full Review

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Review of

A Death at the Party by Amy Stuart

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From the first page, we know that Nadine Walsh's party will not end well. The victim - a man - is dying when we first meet him and Nadine consciously makes no effort to call the ambulance he so desperately needs. What we don't know is who the man is or why Nadine prefers to have him die. I'd better give you a little more background so that you can understand what's happening. Full Review

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Review of

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter

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It was in December 2003 that fifteen-year-old Maura Howard came home and found the body of her stepfather, Luke Ryder, in the garden of their West London home. He had an injury on the back of his head which could have happened if he'd slipped down the steps but the vicious beating his face had taken was obviously deliberate. Twenty years later, no one has been charged with his murder and it's now the subject of Infamous, a true-crime show. A group of experts has been brought together to review the evidence and to take the investigation further. More to the point, they're going to do this live on camera, episode by episode. There's no dump of the whole box set - and no shortage of cliffhangers. It's compelling viewing. Full Review

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Review of

Coming to Find You by Jane Corry

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Nancy's mother and step-father were brutally stabbed at their Sussex farmhouse and her step-brother, Martin, has been convicted of their murder. We first meet Nancy outside the court, after Martin receives a life sentence. The barrister tells her that she's received a 'silent sentence' - she's not been found guilty of anything but will have to live with what happened for the rest of her life. Of course, it's made worse because Nancy's rich - she inherited five million pounds from her mother - and the papers are making the most of it. Farmhouse slaughter daughter is one favourite epithet and rich bitch might not be printed but is undoubtedly spoken. Full Review

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Review of

A Chateau Under Siege (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel) by Martin Walker

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One of the main events of the Sarlat tourist season is the re-enactment of the liberation of the town from the English in 1370 and Bruno's there to see the show with some friends. It's all been very carefully choreographed but goes badly wrong when, Kerquelin, the man playing one of the main characters is seriously injured when he departs from the script. Luckily, his doctor is there and the man is whisked away in a helicopter. A local doctor (and friend of Bruno) wonders about his chances of survival but - as he's a senior government employee, the man who runs Frenchelon - the military has stepped in. One daughter lives nearby and another, who lives in California, is flying in with some of her father's friends for a pre-arranged holiday. Full Review

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Review of

The Trial by Rob Rinder

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Grant Cliveden was a hero: a policeman who stood for all that was good and honest and looked up to by just about everyone, so there was public uproar when he was murdered in plain sight at the Old Bailey. There's just one man in the frame for his murder - Jimmy Knight - and it's not too long before Knight appears in court, charged with Cliveden's murder. Knight was told that the best barrister for him was Jonathan Taylor-Cameron of Stag Court Chambers and it's Taylor-Cameron and his pupil, Adam Green, who eventually represent him. Knight's determined to plead not guilty, despite all Taylor-Cameron's recommendations to the contrary. Full Review

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Review of

Death in Fine Condition by Andrew Cartmel

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Cordelia really loves classic paperback crime fiction, and in particular a series called Sleuth Hound. She spends her time hunting out copies that she can sell on for profit, sometimes 'tweaking' them, to add value, in somewhat fraudulent ways. One day she discovers a near perfect collection of these books after seeing them in the background of a photograph on her drug dealer's living room wall, and so she sets about discovering where this collection is, and how she can steal it! It's a next-level step in her petty crime career, but has she reached too far, and what will happen when the owner of the collection comes looking for their books? Full Review

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Review of

Flesh and Blood (DS McAvoy 11) by David Mark

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It's something of a surprise to find that you're dead, particularly when you're thinking that you're actually on a break with your wife and children, but that's what happened to DS Aector McAvoy. Whilst he was relieved to find that he was still, officially, alive, it was difficult for Detective Superintendent Trish Pharoah. Her protegee - McAvoy - was still alive but the partially clad man who'd dashed from her flat in the early hours of the morning when it was obvious that someone was tampering with her car, was not. Thor Ingolfsson was Aector McAvoy's doppelganger - and not everyone who commented on this was doing so kindly. It had always been suspected that Pharoah was sweet on Aector. Full Review

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Review of

The Fall by Gilly Macmillan

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Nicole Booth had spent the morning at the county fair before she returned home. There was no sign of her husband but opera was playing on the state-of-the-art music system installed in The Glass Barn. They'd not been in the architect-designed house on Lancaut Peninsula for long and were still getting used to all the high-tech systems Tom had insisted upon. Some of them fought with each other and didn't work as reliably as they should. It had all come about through a ten-million-pound lottery win and they were still getting used to having that sort of money, too. Eventually, Nicole found Tom dead in the swimming pool with a wound to his head. Full Review

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Review of

To Die in June by Alan Parks

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What first seems like the unfortunate, accidental death of a homeless man on the streets, suddenly starts to feel like something more sinister as another body is discovered, and then another. This is worrying enough for detective Harry McCoy, but all the more so because his own father is a down and out alcoholic, with no fixed abode, and he has been for years. At the same time as facing these possible murders, Harry is also dealing with a move to a different police station, and the arrival there of a woman who claims her little boy has gone missing, only no record of the boy having existed can be found. Something feels wrong - not just with the woman’s story but also with the other officers where he has been stationed, but can Harry uncover just what is going on? Full Review

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Review of

The Monk by Tim Sullivan

5star.jpg Crime

The body in the woods near Bristol was a nasty shock - a monk strapped to a chair and dumped in a ditch. He'd been savagely beaten. It's a while before D S George Cross and the Major Crime Unit establish that this is Father Dominic. He'd been missing for a few days and certainly hadn't asked permission to leave his abbey. As the team gradually unpick the monk's past it becomes clear that he'd been well-loved as an investment banker, brother, neighbour and friend. He'd also been very wealthy but had given it all up for his faith. Why would someone savagely murder him? Full Review

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