Difference between revisions of "Newest Crime Reviews"

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[[Category:Crime|*]]
 
[[Category:Crime|*]]
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Stuart Douglas
|author=Kate Ellis
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|title=Lowe and Le Breton Mysteries - Death at the Dress Rehearsal
|title=The Death Season (Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson)
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|rating=3.5
 +
|genre=Crime
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|summary=During location filming for his 1970's sitcom 'Floggit and Leggit', leading man Edward Lowe stumbles across the dead body of a woman on the edge of a reservoir.  The police seem happy to assign it as an accidental death, but something about the whole thing bothers Lowe, and he enlists the help of a fellow actor, John Le Breton to help him investigate matters further.  They travel across the country during their days off filming, uncovering more possible murders and, seemingly, a link to death during the Second World War.  But is there really a link between the deaths?  And will they manage to uncover who is responsible before more people lose their lives?
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|isbn=1803368209
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0008517061
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|title=Death in a Lonely Place
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|author=Stig Abell
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=When Wesley Peterson was called to investigate the death of a man in a hotel room he thought that it was going to be straightforward, but then there were the credit cards - in different names - and there wasn't a mobile phoneHe felt guilty about the little time he'd been able to spend with his family (and about the fact that he was ever so slightly attracted to one of his colleagues...) but the job had to come first and it wasn't long before he realised that there was a complex history to the dead man and that he was almost certainly a murderer.
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|summary= Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little SkyThere’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter?  For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349403139</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1786482126
|author=Graham Fulbright
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|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)
|title=The Man With A Charmed Life and his part in saving the planet from WWIII
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|author=Elly Griffiths
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
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|genre=Crime
|summary=Englishman Henry Wright is employed by the Common Market (which would become the European Union in 1993) in Brussels and he's not entirely satisfied with his lot: he ''should'' be an interpreter but he seems to be restricted to more administrative dutiesHe could refuse the offer he gets, but the chance to actually use his expertise in Russian, move across to the USA and make a point to his employers is just too temptingHe's also rather taken by Alexy Geary, the attractive woman from the intelligence-gathering agency who makes the offer, and it's not long before he's on his wayBefore he does he's peripherally involved in a shooting - and that's not something which usually happens to someone like him.
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|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway.  There was no skullWas this a ritual killing or murder?  Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry NelsonIt's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months agoHer condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784620203</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0008551324
|author=Olivier Truc
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|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)
|title=Forty Days Without Shadow
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|author=Neil Lancaster
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
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|genre=Crime
|summary=After an important Sámi relic is stolen from a museum in Kautokeino, a small, isolated village in the middle of the snowy tundra, tensions begin to rise between the residents. Local detective Klemet Nango and new recruit Nina Nansen are called upon to investigate the disappearance, whereupon they discover a second crime: a local reindeer herder has been brutally murdered. Nina soon suspects that the two events are linked, and, together with Klemet, embarks upon a journey full of secrets, mystery and brutality.
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|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police.  Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants.  And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date.  Not much to ask, is it?  The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847445861</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0008405026
|author=Donato Carrisi
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|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)
|title=The Vanished Ones
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|author=Jane Casey
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Thrillers
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|genre=Crime
|summary=Room 13 in the basement of the state morgue is where the sleepers are keptThese are the unclaimed bodies that have been classified as PHVsPotential Homicide VictimsThey are kept indefinitely, because they are evidence that a crime has been committed, possibly the only evidence.
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|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night.  She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt.  Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed.  Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious.  What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murderKerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349140030</amazonuk>
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0571379877
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|title=The Kellerby Code
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|author=Jonny Sweet
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|rating=3.5
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|genre=Crime
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|summary=Edward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and StanzaRobert's a theatre directorHe's also self-obsessed, demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him.  Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and he's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert.  Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the two of them kissing in a dark passageway.
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jo Callaghan
|author=Peter Robinson
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|title=Leave No Trace
|title=Abattoir Blues
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=When DCI Banks returned from a weekend away in Italy the theft of a tractor (even if it was a very expensive tractor) didn't seem all that important.  It was difficult to be enthusiastic about what seemed to be simple case of rural crimeThen an ex-soldier walking his dog discovered what looked like a pool of blood in an abandoned warehouse and the two young men who seemed to be the prime suspects for the theft of the tractor both disappeared without trace.  Suddenly 'another rural crime' began to take a very much more sinister turn.
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|summary=When a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock.  It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold casesBut when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project.  Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704982</amazonuk>
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|isbn=139851120X
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1035021803
|author=Maureen Jennings
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|title=The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder
|title=No Known Grave (A Detective Inspector Tom Tyler Mystery)
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|author=C L Miller
|rating=4.5
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|rating=3.5
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|genre=Crime
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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 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.
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1398524085
 +
|title=Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?
 +
|author=Nicci French
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=By the middle of 1942 Detective Inspector Tom Tyler has had a difficult two years and he's making a fresh start in LudlowSt Anne's Convalescent Hospital is on the outskirts of the town and it's staffed by nursing sisters who are Anglican nuns and they're there specifically to help people who have been maimed and injured by the war.  It should be a peaceful place of recovery but then a double murder in the grounds of the home shatters all that has been so carefully built upMany of the patients are blind or unable to walk and most are suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder - but it seems as though one of the patients must be a murderer as this is almost a classic 'locked room' mystery.
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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 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 guiltThe 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>178116858X</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529900360
|author=Christina James
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|title=The Ghost Orchid
|title=Sausage Hall
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|author=Jonathan Kellerman
|rating=4.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Kevan de Vries, food processing magnate and grandson of a Dutch immigrant to Lincolnshire, is trying to help his terminally ill wife Joanne relax on an exotic holidayUnfortunately the news he receives from home is less than relaxing: a random break-in committed by local opportunistic youths has uncovered a batch of counterfeit passportsKevan travels back to the UK to answer questions but it gets worseSkeletal remains are found in his cellar followed by a discovery elsewhere of an all too fresh employee's dead bodyThis is bread and butter to DI Tim Yates of the Lincolnshire Constabulary but it's another complication in Kevan's all too complicated life.
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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 casesHis 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 againShe knew that the involvement was something that the man she loved needed.  The next case did look simple, thoughTwo lovers were murdered in the swimming pool of a remote property in Bel AirHe 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>1907773827</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=178763681X
|author=Graham Hurley
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|title=Knife Skills for Beginners
|title=Sins of the Father
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|author=Orlando Murrin
|rating=4.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Rupert Moncrieff was beaten to death in his waterside home early one Sunday morning in December 2013All his money had not saved him from his throat being cut and his face slashed and hoodedOne of his sons and his daughter still lived with him, but during the past week an African had been staying with the familyStrangely no one knew his name, but when the body was discovered the man had disappearedDS Jimmy Suttle is investigating the case but like the family in the waterside mansion he has demons of his own to fight after the abduction and death of his daughter Grace and subsequent separation from his journalist wife, Lizzie.
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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 ownThe one thing he hadn't expected was for someone to turn up deadUnfortunately, he was the person who discovered the body and everyone knows that the police consider that person to be the prime suspect.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1409153371</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529421284
|author=Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke
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|title=Laying Out the Bones
|title=The Cinderella Murder
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|author=Kate Webb
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary='Under Suspicion' is a TV show that aims to shed light on cold cases by re-enacting the crime and interviewing those closest to the victim. The pilot episode was a runaway success when it led to the successful apprehension of the murderer and now producer Laurie Moran has been given the green light to continue the series. Her curiosity is piqued by a 20 year old case dubbed the 'Cinderella Murder', in which a bright young UCLA student was found dead in parkland, miles from her car and wearing only one shoe. The investigation will take Laurie and her team to some of the most glamorous locations in California, but it soon becomes clear that certain individuals will do anything to stop the truth from being revealed.
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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>147113847X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529425867
|author=Mette Ivie Harrison
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|title=Lost and Never Found (A D I Wilkins Mystery)
|title=The Bishop's Wife
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|author=Simon Mason
|rating=3
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|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Linda Wallheim, to most who know her, seems a woman who has everything. Loving mother to five beautiful children, devoted Mormon, and kindhearted wife of a Mormon Bishop, she lives at the centre of her community and has little to be unhappy about.
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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>1616954760</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529431735
|author=Tammy Cohen
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|title=The Winter Visitor
|title=Dying for Christmas
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|author=James Henry
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=The book starts off promisingly enough with an introduction by Jessica, the narrator, who informs us that she is imprisoned by a stranger who is handsome and charming and extremely sadistic. Jessica then recounts the events leading up to and during her incarceration, which takes place over the Christmas period. Her jailer, Dominic, has prepared twelve presents for her, for the Twelve Days of Christmas, and each present-opening episode builds up a sense of dread while providing a deepening understanding of the sinister and bitter mind at work. Genuinely creepy stuff.
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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>1784160172</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0861541774
|author=Otto Penzler (editor)
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|title=A Nye of Pheasants
|title=The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries
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|author=Steve Burrows
|rating=5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Nostalgia is a big part of the Christmas experience, and that's provided in sack-loads by this hefty tome of short stories. Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Brother Cadfael jostle Morse, Rumpole and Vic Warshawski for space on these tightly packed pages, while lesser known and long since forgotten writers furnish new and unexpected pleasures for even the most well-read of book worms.
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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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784082252</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1521129886
|author=Phillip Hunter
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|title=They Had It Coming (Greg Mason mysteries)
|title=To Kill For (The Killing Machine)
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|author=Keith Redfern
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=** Contains ''To Die For'' spoilers**
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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 chargesIt's a good job too because Greg and Joyce will soon have a baby and they're both delightedJoyce will be more delighted about the baby when she gets past the morning sicknessGreg 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.
Ex Falkland Campaign para Joe is out for revengeBrenda, a woman he could have loved, is murdered and Joe himself may have been the one forced to kill Kid, an abused young girl he'd sworn to protectJoe will find the name behind the deaths and make sure they too suffer fatallyThe only thing is, in a world of fluctuating loyalties and deceit, he may not survive long enough to carry out his ambition, even if he was the only one searching… But he's not!
 
 
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178185338X</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B0CK3MYJ56
|author=Herve Le Corre and Frank Wynne (Translator)
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|title=Responsibilities (Greg Mason mysteries)
|title=Talking to Ghosts
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|author=Ann Macarthur
|rating=4.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=French Police Commandant Pierre Vilar's young son Pablo went missing a while ago but he believes him to be alive; a belief that has wrecked his marriageMeanwhile elsewhere, 13-year-old Victor comes home to a brutally murdered motherIs there a connection between these two tragedies?  That's something that Vilar is desperate to find out, no matter what he has to do or what it does to him.
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|summary=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 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 trainGreg's been asked to investigate.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857052063</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1838954481
|author=Paul Doiron
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|title=The Misper
|title=Massacre Pond
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|author=Kate London
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=What is best for the great outdoors? Is leaving it to nature is the most sustainable option or does hunting help to protect the ecosystem? Each group has opposing viewpoints and are unlikely to reach common ground, therefore someone is going to have to stand between the two of them and make sure nothing bad happens.  Something like murder.
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|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472114655</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1448309743
|author=Andrea Camilleri
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|title=The Devil Stone (DCI Christine Caplan)
|title=The Fourth Secret (Inspector Montalbano)
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|author=Caro Ramsay
|rating=3.5
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Early one morning an Albanian construction worker - a legal resident with a work permit - fell from scaffolding and was dead when his co-workers found himWhat struck Montalbano was that there had been rather a lot of what were described as ''tragedies in the workplace'' - six in the last month, in fact, although he was sure that there would be statistics to prove that this was not abnormal within the EU.  Strictly it wasn't his case to deal with, but he received an anonymous letter telling him that Pashko Puka was going to be killed.  Admittedly the letter arrived ''after'' the death due to a malfunction in the local postal system, but it did mean that it was difficult to think of the death as a 'tragic accident'.
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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 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00NOC5JFW</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1529077699
|author=Jane Casey
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|title=The Raging Storm (Two Rivers)
|title=The Kill
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|author=Ann Cleeves
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=I'm quite picky with crime fiction. This oversaturated market seems to teem with mediocre products. There are thrillers with excellent plots that are are badly written, some that contain masterful prose but are, well... boring, and others that are so far-fetched that I end up throwing the book away in disgust. I read Jane Casey′s highly enjoyable stand-alone [[The Missing by Jane Casey|The Missing]] several years ago. ''The Kill'' was my first foray into her Maeve Kerrigan series and I was keen to see how it would stand up.
+
|summary=''It's all bloody peculiar, isn't it, Sir?''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009194838X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Dan Fesperman
 
|title=Unmanned
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=''Unmanned'', the title of Fesperman's latest thriller, refers to the drones, the Predators, that Captain Darwin Cole flew over Afghanistan, from a shed somewhere in Nevada.
 
  
It also refers to the state that those missions left Cole in, after one of them went badly wrong.  A poor call-down led to a misidentified target, a house destroyed, civilians killed, including two kids lying out in the open running away, and a girl, not dead but woundedCole could see her from his thousands of miles away, moving, agonising, separated by a considerable distance from the arm she would never use again.
+
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 DevonRosco 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?
 
 
A one-armed girl would haunt his dreams for a long time to follow.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857893424</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1529427045
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|title=The Girl in the Eagle's Talons
 +
|author=Karin Smirnoff
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Crime
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|summary=''Life has more to offer than people - prime numbers for example''.
  
{{newreview
+
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 forwardSalander's niece's mother is the latest woman in the area to have vanished without traceIt 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=Suzan Stainforth
 
|title=The Secret Locket
 
|rating=2
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Librarian Penny Knight was surprised when she came home on day and found a jacket belonging to her twin brother Joseph hanging in the hallHe was ''supposed'' to be in Moscow for six months, working as a croupierWhen she went through to the lounge he was lying on the sofa and her immediate reaction was that he was playing a trick on her - until she got closer and realised that there was something dreadfully wrong.  And then she saw the blood.  His last words were that he was innocent - and that she should look for a necklace in his jacket pocket.  He died before he reached hospital.  Penny and her parents were devastated - and then they realised that they were being watched.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848767854</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1787636607
|author=Anne Holt
+
|title=The Trap
|title=The Lion's Mouth
+
|author=Catherine Ryan Howard
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=This is the first Anne Holt novel that I have read and I am going back for more. Jo Nesbo is quoted describing Holt as 'the Godmother of modern Norwegian crime fiction' and judging only from identikit cover design – grey mist, loneliness, treacherous ice, snow-encrusted gun, red typeface to hint at fresh blood – readers could be forgiven for expecting another volume of semi-standardised Scandinavian noir.
+
|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>0857892282</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1405957174
|author=A D Garrett
+
|title=A Death at the Party
|title=Believe No One
+
|author=Amy Stuart
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=Scottish forensic science expert Professor Nick Fennimore,  and English DCI Kate Simms are both, for various reasons in St Louis, just as Nick planned.  Fennimore and Simms have worked together in the UK when Nick's wife was murdered and daughter kidnapped.  In fact they were together the night they first went missing having a less than professional dinner.  Nick's daughter is still missing but while he follows new leads, he and Kate have other things to work on.  St Louis has a serial killer to contend with: the victims are all mothers and their children are taken at the same time.  Not so pure coincidence?  Nick sees connections so will try to make everyone else see them.  Whether his tactics work or not remains to be seen.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472114191</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Gillian Galbraith
 
|title=Troubled Waters: An Alice Rice Mystery
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=When [[The Road to Hell: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith|we left]] DI Alice Rice she was newly widowed, but time has moved on a little and she's thinking about what to do with her lifeProfessionally she's more settled and now faced with an investigation into a body washed up on the foundations of the new bridge that's being built across the ForthEstablishing the identity of the young woman is the first problem and this leads Rice back to members of a religious sect with some very strange rulesAnd then a second body - that of a young man - is washed up on a beach and it's difficult not to assume that there's a connection between the two.
+
|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>1846972930</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008530025
|author=David Barrie
+
|title=Murder in the Family
|title=Tight-Lipped
+
|author=Cara Hunter
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It's a little bit different in the UK but in Paris intellectuals are lauded in much the same way as rock stars.  Jean-Jacques Marsay is a philosopher and equally as famous as his wife, the beautiful and talented actress,  Carine DufourMarsay is writing a book about ''Appoghiu Terra'' - an eco-terrorist organisation -  and its leader  Gabriel Agostini.  His editor is Virginie Desmoulins - or rather was - because Virginie was murdered at her flat in a rather unusual way.  The case is being investigated by Captain Franck Guerin of the ''Brigade Criminelle'' and he and Agostini have a historyAgostini shot and seriously wounded Guerin when Guerin was with his previous employers, the French version of the security services.  He was moved on to the ''Brigade Criminelle'' when it was thought that he might have become just a little too sympathetic to Agostini - and Agostini to him.
+
|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 episodeThere's no dump of the whole box set - and no shortage of cliffhangersIt's compelling viewing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251889</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mark Morris
 
|title=The Wolves of London - The Obsidian Heart Trilogy (Book 1)
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Alex Locke has grown from the young petty criminal he once was.  Now a psychology lecturer with a beautiful 5-year-old daughter he has every incentive he needs to stay straightIt would take something devastating to make him return to his former life but devastation happensAlex is coerced into doing on last job: stealing a piece of heart shaped obsidian from someone it didn’t belong to in the first placeWhat are the consequences?  What's so special about this piece of rock?  As all hell breaks loose, Alex is about to find out.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781168660</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Charles Williams
+
|isbn=0241996104
|title=Confidentially Yours
+
|title=Coming to Find You
 +
|author=Jane Corry
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Carthage was what you might call 'backwoods' and there wasn't really all that much to do there.  For recreation, hunting probably came top of the list and John 'Duke' Warren went for an early morning duck shoot before going to workWhilst in the shoot he heard two shots from an adjoining blind and on the way out saw the car of a fellow shoot memberIt was only later that he found out that the shots had caused the death of Dan RobertsAt first it looked like suicide, but Warren and the police realised that it's not often that suicide victims shoot themselves twice.
+
|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 lifeOf 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649116</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529413680
|title=Black Noise
+
|title=A Chateau Under Siege (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
|author=Pekka Hiltunen
+
|author=Martin Walker
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=It was just one of them quirky internet things to begin with.  Empty videos appearing on the internetDark expanses of time: no images, no sound.
+
|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 friendsIt'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 helicopterA 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.
 
 
They'd been uploaded from hacked accounts: teenagers who didn't know anything about it or about each otherThere were ten of them altogether.  If it had stopped there it would have been one of those 9-days-wonders of the webAn oddity talked about for years, freaking a few people out, but sinking, ultimately without much trace.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843915227</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=1529196388
|author=Leif G W Persson
+
|title=The Trial
|title=Falling Freely, As If In A Dream
+
|author=Rob Rinder
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=In 2007 Lars Martin Johansson, the head of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Sweden, was approaching retirement and he had one unsolved case which he would dearly love to clear: the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.  Palme, without bodyguards, had left a cinema in central Stockholm with his wife and was walking home when he was shot in the backHe died almost instantly and his wife suffered a minor injury, whilst the assassin sprinted away into the people milling around in the city. There were witnesses to the killing and people who saw the killer as he escapedSome time after the death a man was convicted of the murder, but he was later cleared and more than twenty years later the identity of the killer is still a mystery.
+
|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 BaileyThere'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>0385614217</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Crime (Historical) Reviews]]

Revision as of 08:03, 26 April 2024

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Review of

Lowe and Le Breton Mysteries - Death at the Dress Rehearsal by Stuart Douglas

3.5star.jpg Crime

During location filming for his 1970's sitcom 'Floggit and Leggit', leading man Edward Lowe stumbles across the dead body of a woman on the edge of a reservoir. The police seem happy to assign it as an accidental death, but something about the whole thing bothers Lowe, and he enlists the help of a fellow actor, John Le Breton to help him investigate matters further. They travel across the country during their days off filming, uncovering more possible murders and, seemingly, a link to death during the Second World War. But is there really a link between the deaths? And will they manage to uncover who is responsible before more people lose their lives? Full Review

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Review of

Death in a Lonely Place by Stig Abell

4star.jpg Crime

Former Metropolitan Police detective, Jake Johnson, has settled into his rustic life at Little Sky. There’s perhaps a little uncertainty about the future of his life with his vet girlfriend, Livia and her daughter Diana, as moving in together would mean a lot of compromise: does Jake give up his off-grid and relaxing life to move in with Livia or does Livia move to Little Sky despite her reservations about whether or not this is the future she wants for herself and her daughter? For the moment they’re enjoying life in the present and putting the future on the back burner. Full Review

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Review of

The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway) by Elly Griffiths

4.5star.jpg Crime

Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness. Full Review

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Review of

The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie) by Neil Lancaster

4.5star.jpg Crime

It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening. Full Review

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Review of

A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11) by Jane Casey

5star.jpg Crime

It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced. Full Review

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Review of

The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet

3.5star.jpg Crime

Edward Jevons is a working-class young man, obsessed with his upper-class friends, Robert and Stanza. Robert's a theatre director. He's also self-obsessed, demanding, handsome and entitled and uses Edward to run errands for him. Edward has been in love with Stanza since their university days - and he's drunkenly confided how he feels to Robert. Most men in Robert's position would stay away from Stanza or tell Edward that a relationship had begun between them but he's not like most men: Edward is left to stumble upon the two of them kissing in a dark passageway. Full Review

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Review of

Leave No Trace by Jo Callaghan

4star.jpg Crime

When a man is found crucified on the top of a hill in Nuneaton, DCS Kat Frank finds herself assigned to the case alongside her sidekick, the AI detective Lock. It's their first live case together, having previously been very successful with several cold cases. But when there is a second body found crucified a few days later, Kat is suddenly struggling with a potential serial killer and a very high profile case that draws a lot of unwanted attention to their AI Future Policing project. Will they be able to solve the case in time, or will Kat find herself taken off the case and, potentially, out of a career? Full Review

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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

4star.jpg Crime

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

4.5star.jpg Crime

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

5star.jpg Crime

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

4.5star.jpg Crime

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

4star.jpg Crime

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

0008530025.jpg

Review of

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter

4.5star.jpg Crime

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

0241996104.jpg

Review of

Coming to Find You by Jane Corry

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

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

1529413680.jpg

Review of

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

4star.jpg Crime

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

1529196388.jpg

Review of

The Trial by Rob Rinder

4.5star.jpg Crime

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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