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==Crime==
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{{newreview
|author=Catherine Aird
|title=Past Tense
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Jan Wakefield was surprised to find herself arranging the refreshments for mourners after a funeral, not least because she had never met the deceased and was unaware that her husband was the next of kin. He was working in South America and not expected home for sometime. Josephine Short has obviously been a feisty character though. Despite being unmarried she had had a child (at a time when this would have been frowned upon) and amassed a considerable fortune. Her grandson Joe was flying home from Lasserta for the funeral.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007648</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Ken Bruen
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>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=P J Parrish
|title=Dead of Winter
|rating=4
|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 wonderland. Louis 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 Kincaid. A 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847391346</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Rebecca Tope
|title=Fear in the Cotswolds
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Thea Osborne is a house sitter by profession. When people go away she moves into their homes and looks after their animals and the property. This 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 area. In 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007478</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Joe Gores
|title=Spade and Archer
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Sam Spade decides, bravely, to set up his one-man detective agency. It'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.
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>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Richard Jay Parker
|title=Stop Me
|rating=3.5
|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?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749007079</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|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>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Louise Penny
|title=The Brutal Telling
|rating=4.5
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755341031</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|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>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=C J Box
|title=Three Weeks to Say Goodbye
|rating=2.5
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848872917</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=David Barrie
|title=Wasp-Waisted
|rating=4
|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 investigations. His 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 murderer. Despite the provenance of the picture it's difficult not to be in awe of the skill and artistry which produced it. All Guerin has to go on is the ''very'' expensive underwear which the body is wearing – or you might almost say ''modelling''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251803</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Will Ferguson
|title=Hustle
|rating=4.5
|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 right. This is the art of fleecing a single person out of a lot of money all at once. It 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 possible. The short con may have a lower return, but that return comes a lot quicker and this is the basis for Will Ferguson's ''Hustle''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516438</amazonuk>
}}