Difference between revisions of "Newest Crime Reviews"
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==Crime== | ==Crime== | ||
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| + | |author=JM Shaw | ||
| + | |title=Ten Weeks in Africa | ||
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| + | |genre=Crime | ||
| + | |summary=Stephen and Martha Odinga live with their younger siblings and ailing mother in the Makera slums, near Kisuru in Batanga, Africa. Their father was killed by the Army of Celestial Peace so they try to make a living on the streets. Corruption flows through Batanga like sewage through Makera though, and the protection payments they need to pay the police to continue trading are becoming prohibitive so Stephen searches for better paid employment in questionable career areas. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340934050</amazonuk> | ||
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{{newreview | {{newreview | ||
|author=Tom Grieves | |author=Tom Grieves | ||
Revision as of 07:39, 30 July 2012
Crime
Ten Weeks in Africa by JM Shaw
Stephen and Martha Odinga live with their younger siblings and ailing mother in the Makera slums, near Kisuru in Batanga, Africa. Their father was killed by the Army of Celestial Peace so they try to make a living on the streets. Corruption flows through Batanga like sewage through Makera though, and the protection payments they need to pay the police to continue trading are becoming prohibitive so Stephen searches for better paid employment in questionable career areas. Full review...
Sleepwalkers by Tom Grieves
Ben is the devoted proud father of two young children, the happily married husband of Carrie and a skilled car mechanic. He has all the makings of a wonderful life that would actually become one if he could just get a decent night's sleep. The problem is that he's haunted by vivid, violent nightmares. Meanwhile across town, 15 year old Toby also has nightmares and, on top of this, a body scarred with abuse, a fact his teacher, Anna, is determined to do something about. His parents have the appearance of people who love him but, where child abuse is concerned, that means nothing. Anna cares enough to get involved, not realising that it's an involvement that could cost her life. Indeed, as all three of them are about to find out, not all nightmares end on waking. Full review...
The Devil's Cave: A Bruno Courreges Investigation by Martin Walker
Easter was just two weeks away when Satanism came to St Denis. The naked body of a woman was spotted in an old punt drifting down the river. There looked to be a tattoo of a pentagram on her body and there were black candles at each end of the punt – but there was nothing to indicate the identity of the woman or where she had come from. Bruno Courreges, the Chief of Police had enough on his plate without this: he'd had an anonymous letter about some domestic abuse which had to be looked into and the town held a development proposal which seemed just too good to be true – even though it might mean that Bruno got the sports hall which he'd been after for quite a while. Full review...
No Sale by Patrick Conrad
The first suspect in a wife's murder is always the husband, and so it is with Shelley Cox, but Victor, a film professor, claims it must have been suicide. A picture emerges of a sad, alcoholic woman, who had an almost different identity and personality while out drinking in Antwerp's docklands area. Victor is happy enough to replace her with an enveloping relationship with a student who matches his knowledge and mimics his idols. But still, Shelley was the victim of a crime, and if the police who keep calling on Victor are correct, it could be but one of a series... Full review...
In Her Blood by Annie Hauxwell
Catherine Berlin is known to everyone simply as 'Berlin'. She's in her mid fifties, a civilian investigator with the Financial Services Agency - and she's been a heroin addict for more than twenty years. It's largely controlled by her GP - one of the few understanding ones left - who prescribes pharmaceutical-grade heroin on her weekly visit to his surgery. He's taught her to manage her addiction. Then two problems come together. On a pre-arranged meet with an informant who has information about a loan shark she finds the woman's body floating in Limehouse Basin - with the head nearly severed from the body. And when she visits her GP's surgery she finds another body. Then it's not just her job that's at risk. Full review...
The Silence by Alison Bruce
It seemed to begin when Joey McCarthy was stabbed to death in a pub car park. He'd arrived in his posh (if not quite new) car and lost his life in a random attack of violence. Charlotte Stone's mother died not long afterwards. There wasn't really anything suspicious about this (although her children thought that their father hadn't really done enough to help) and soon after two teenage friends committed suicide. Then DC Gary Goodhew found the body of another suicide victim and it brought to mind another investigation which had a profound effect on him - and a connection was made between him and Charlotte Stone. Full review...
The Caller by Karin Fossum
Lily's baby daughter was asleep in the garden when her husband came home and it was so peaceful that they allowed her to sleep on a little longer, but when they went to bring her in she was covered in blood. It seemed to be coming from her mouth - but when they got her to hospital there was no injury and it was apparently a practical joke. But that evening a message was left on Inspector Konrad Sejer's mat: 'Hell begins now'. It was the first in a series of such incidents. They weren't planned to cause physical harm but they left the victims shaken, feeling harassed and worried. Full review...
The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes by Marcus Sakey
A man struggles onto a deserted beach in Maine, United States, after almost drowning but, far from feeling relieved, he realises that something has been left behind – his memory. He finds an unlocked prestige car, a set of dry clothes that fit, some money, a gun and an urge to leave. (I know - if it had been a British beach, I'd have given it 5 minutes before it was empty and the wheels were off! Sorry... I digress...) So, driving to a local motel, he tries to find some glimmer of a past or an identity. The car belongs to a Daniel Hayes, so that's what he'll call himself for now. Then, by coincidence, it becomes more than that; it's becomes the name that the armed police yell as they surround his room. Can a man discover his past whilst outrunning his present? Someone is about to find out. Full review...
Hard-Hearted by David Barrie
It was difficult to think that anything was other than odd. A beautiful woman was savagely attacked in one of Paris' most elegant neighbourhoods, but all she took with her as she ran from the house was an old book - and a shawl. Even stranger was that she was a Sorbonne professor and she was dating a hedge fund manager. Then there was the influential Bank which did its best to persuade Captain Franck Guerin to carry out a couple of arrests - not necessarily because it would aid the case he was working on, but because it would help them. Throw in a billionaire who sleeps in the poorest hotels rather than at the beautiful home which he half owns and a serial seductress with an unusual line in honesty and you can see why Guerin is finding life a little confusing. Full review...
The Saint Zita Society by Ruth Rendell
Hexam Place in Pimlico is an exclusive street of white-painted stucco Georgian houses lived in by the rich and by those who serve them, who are far from rich. The help are a motley assortment of drivers, au pairs, cleaners and gardeners who decide to form the St Zita Society - Zita being the patron saint of domestic servants - but its purpose is occasionally hard to determine. There are minor problems they want to tackle, such as dog excrement being bagged and left in the street and situations where they have little hope of having any impact, such as none of the servants being invited to a particular social occasion. Perhaps the main purpose is to give an excuse for meeting in the pub. Full review...
Criminal by Karin Slaughter
The apartment in Atlanta was particularly sordid but made horrifying by the brutally-murdered body of a woman. Special agent Will Trent is almost involved in the investigation but his boss Amanda Wagner seems determined to keep him at arm's length. The murder brings back memories for Wagner of a murder in the city more than thirty five years ago - before Will was born - but Trent receives some disturbing news which has him going back to the children's home where he grew up. How does it all fit together? Full review...
The Village by Nikita Lalwani
A BBC film crew is sent to India to make a documentary about an Indian prison with a difference. There are no walls, the prisoners hold down jobs and their families live with them as a condition of acceptance. In fact, to all intents and purposes, it seems like an ordinary village which is all the more unusual when you consider that they all share the same crime category; all the prisoners have been convicted of murder. The programme makers (20-something British-born, Indian director Ray, ruthless producer Serena and ex-convict-turned-presenter, Nathan) are expecting an eventful shoot and, in return, the inhabitants are expecting a film unit exhibiting the standards for which the BBC has become world famous. Both parties will be sorely disappointed. Full review...
Eden Moore - Wings to the Kingdom by Cherie Priest
Dead soldiers from the American Civil War have been seen wandering around the Chickamauga National Park in Georgia, site of a notable Confederate victory in 1863. They don't speak, just point forlornly as locals turn and flee in the opposite direction. Eden Moore would rather ignore it completely, especially as show business psychics Tripp and Diana Marshall have already started investigating, complete with camera crew and full entourage. However, eventually her curiosity (and her friends' unstinting nagging) gets to her and she agrees to trespass after dark, quickly discovering that the gesticulating dead are a minor problem compared to the reason they've awoken. Full review...
The Blind Goddess by Anne Holt
Here is a rum do - a Nordic crime, and the launch episode of a currently successful series, that has sat untranslated for almost twenty years? What's more, when you start reading you may think the main character the author would choose to use as her principal heroine in future books should not be Hanne Wilhemsen, the too-good-to-be-true lipstick lesbian policewoman, but commercial lawyer Karen Borg, who is thrust into a world of criminal proceedings when a man who has clearly murdered another demands her and only her as the outlet of his truth. Is this a wise move from him - and just what is the game afoot, and who are the other main players? Full review...
The Black Path: A Rebeka Martinsson Investigation by Asa Larsson and Marlaine Delargy (translator)
In the far north of Sweden the frozen body of a woman was found in fishing hut out on the lake. She’d been tortured but the injury which killed her was clumsy, even amateur. Identification isn’t easy but it’s faily quick and Anna-Maria Mella and her colleagues hoped for a speedy end to the case. Then it all turned complicated when the body of a six-month-old suicide had to be exhumed and Mella and Rebecka Martinsson were drawn further and further into the investigation of corruption at one the country’s major mining companies. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the mining company had enemies of its won - ones who would stop at nothing. Full review...
Until the Darkness Comes by Kevin Brooks
Private detective John Craine has returned to Hale Island, the scene of many childhood holidays, to get away from a painful past, his guilt, and his loss. And there's another reason - the possibility that he has a half-sister he's never met. But within hours of arriving, John discovers the body of a dead girl concealed in a pill box on the beach. He calls 999 but when the police arrive the body has disappeared and the officers clearly see him as a drunken fool prone to hysterical imaginings. Full review...
Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva
Gabriel Allon and his wife, Chiara, decide to rent a nice little Cornish cottage; the perfect hideaway in which to renovate art. A rosy domestic picture that, as any spy thriller aficionado will tell you isn't going to last long. It lasts, in fact, as long as it takes some middle-eastern terrorists to bomb Paris and Copenhagen and then move on to London's Covent Garden. Gabriel and Chiara are there, about to have lunch, but Gabriel is unable to concentrate on the menu and just let things happen. Mr and Mrs Allon end up being dragged back into the day job as they and their multi-national colleagues brandish a spectrum of experience and talent in order to take on a rogue Yemeni cleric who, embarrassingly enough, had been supported by the Americans. Full review...
Bed of Nails by Antonin Varenne and Sian Reynolds (translator)
When you're a policeman in Paris and your involvement in office politics takes a turn for the worse, you could end up in charge of suicides. That would make it your job to cope with all the jumpers, the pill-takers, the apparent suicide with two types of bullet through his head - even the naked men running into the flow of traffic around the ring-road. You might not get the case of the American junkie who dies performing a pierced-man act in a seedy club. No, looking into that is that man's closest friend, John, fresh from living in the French wilds as an outdoorsman. But in a Paris where cause of death can be so bizarre, a reason for death can have very far-reaching consequences... Full review...
Harry Lipkin, Private Eye: The Oldest Detective in the World by Barry Fantoni
Harry Lipkin may not be the fittest private investigator in Florida once you take into account his indigestion and his arthritis, but at 87 he's definitely the oldest. Despite this he still manages to make a steady living, picking up the little jobs that don't interest the police and Norma Weinberger's problem comes into that category. Small but expensive knick-knacks seem to be going missing from around the house so could it be a light-fingered member of staff? The suspects (the gardener, the butler, the maid and the chauffer) each have their own story and motive, leaving Harry to get the four down to a short list of one. A task that's perhaps a little harder than it sounds. Full review...
The Gilded Edge by Danny Miller
London: 1965
These were the dark days, when the Krays had yet to be brought to justice and the underworld in London was based on protection rackets and armed robberies.
These were the days when a politician getting caught with a call girl was a national scandal and generated genuine fear and outrage rather than a few front page headlines soon forgotten. The headlines generated then are still quoted now. Full review...
Meltwater (Fire and Ice) by Michael Ridpath
A group of internet activists decided to base themselves in Iceland whilst they prepared their latest exposé. This time it was a video of a purported Israeli attrocity which needed verifying and preparing for publication. All would have been well - or as well as such things ever are - if one of the group hadn't been murdered on a visit to a volcano. It was a volcano which caused the second problem - not the erruption of the small, pretty one which the group had visited with fatal consequences, but the big, ugly one which no one could pronounce and which disrupted air traffic all over Europe in the spring of 2010. Yes. That one. Eyjafjallajokull meant that travel too and from Iceland was exceedingly difficult and it disrupted the investigation of the murder. Full review...
The Wrong Man by Jason Dean
Ex-marine James Bishop worked for an elite protection company. The idea behind his last mission was to protect multi-millionaire Randall Brennan and his daughter Natalie but, instead, he found himself framed for murder. Who? Why? These why may be questions that need answering but that's not going to happen whilst he's serving a life sentence. However, where Bishop is concerned, that's only a minor blip compared to the task ahead. Full review...
My Dearest Jonah by Matthew Crow
Jonah and Verity start to write to each other as part of a pen-pal scheme. They may only meet on paper but, as they reveal themselves and their pasts through their letters, they become the only constant in each of their existences, and what existences. Jonah has a troubled past (to put it mildly) including a stint in prison and a father serving a life sentence. Verity is the product of working class parents with aspirations which she has failed or refused to meet, splitting her working life between the local coffee shop and the local strip joint. Their futures begin to appear a lot brighter than their pasts but then clouds gather to prove that appearances can be deceptive. Full review...
Funeral Note: A Bob Skinner Mystery by Quintin Jardine
When a man's body was exhumed from a shallow grave in Edinburgh the initial reaction was that it was murder - I mean, why else would you dispose of the body in that way? But then, why would you bury it with obvious care and tell the police where it's buried? When the postmortem showed that the man had died from natural causes it seemed that it was case closed - but Chief Constable Bob Skinner didn't always think in straight lines. He had more pressing problems to deal with though. It seemed obvious that an Inspector on his force was corrupt and on the personal front it looked as though his marriage was heading for the rocks. Full review...
Tears of a Phoenix by Helen Noble
It was almost inevitable that Jed Johnson would follow his brothers into crime. The slippery slope from care to young offenders' institute to an eventual life sentence was almost predictable despite his mother's attempts to raise him for responsibility. However, once serving the life sentence, Jed has time to think and, aided by Elisabeth, a prison service psychologist, he assesses his past and decides how he'd like his future to look. Decision doesn't guarantee fulfilment though, and Jed has a long way to go before he knows how his story will end. Full review...
A Death in Valencia by Jason Webster
Chief Inspector Max Camara of the Cuerpo Nacional de Policia has rather a lot on his plate. A renowned local paella chef and restaurant owner went missing and then his body turned up in the sea. It's the eve of the Pope's visit to Valencia and there are threats against a local abortion clinic. The mayor and the town hall are set on demolishing El Cabanyal, the colourful fisherman's quarter on the seafront, to make way for modern development. To cap it all some ominous cracks have suddenly appeared in the walls of his flat. Well, he thinks they've suddenly appeared, but he's not quite certain. It's not exactly what you might call a home. Full review...
The Road to Hell: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith
DS Alice Rice is facing a disciplinary hearing which could result in her dismissal from the police force. She knows that she's innocent - that it wasn't her who'd been too free with some sensitive information - but it's all going to come down to whose word is believed and whether a couple of witnesses can remember exactly who said what in a very tense situation. It's a difficult afternoon and when she gets home that evening, Ian - the man with whom she lives - has a visitor and forgets the importance of Alice's afternoon. The resulting argument will stay in Alice's mind for some of the worst reasons. Full review...
The Dead Season: A Sandro Cellini Mystery by Christobel Kent
It's August and Florence feels hotter than it usually does in August - if that's possible. Businesses are shut up as anyone who can migrates to the coast, but Sandro Cellini isn't one of them. He used to be a policeman but he's now a private investigator but even this business is running very slowly. All he has to work on is the case of a young and very pregnant woman whose fiancé is missing. The manager of the local Bank won't be holidaying either - his body is discovered in the shrubbery on a normally busy roundabout - and it looks as though it's been there for a few days. Then there's a coincidence: it seems that the missing fiancé and the dead Bank manager both had the same name. Full review...
The White Lioness (Kurt Wallander) by Henning Mankell
Louise Akerblom was a young housewife, a mother, pillar of the local Methodist church and an estate agent. It was the last which would cause Kurt Wallander to investigate her disappearance and which would gradually bring to light a chain of events which led back to South Africa, to renegade members of the South African Secret Service and an ex-KGB agent who would do anything to live in South Africa. What they have in common is a determination to halt Nelson Mandela's rise to power even if the result is a blood bath. It didn't seem quite so complex on that Friday afternoon in 1992 but it would be one of Wallander's most complex cases and one which could cost him very dearly. Full review...
The Good Wife's Castle by Roland Vernon
We start with a father's suicide, a child watching as he steps of the chair in the milking room with the noose around his neck. A father who died for shame. Full review...
An American Spy by Olen Steinhauer
The Beijing Olympics approach and Xin Zhu has every reason to be proud: a high ranking position in China's espionage system, a beautiful new young wife and the satisfaction of having wiped out 33 American agents and so closing down their department. But the spy business is not a place for resting on laurels, especially when American Alan Drummond wants to avenge the death of his entire department. Meanwhile survivor of the massacre, Milo Weaver, just wants time to recover and space to be with his family. The unlikelihood of that happening is pretty high; however, it becomes a lot more remote when Alan disappears. Full review...
The Girl in Berlin by Elizabeth Wilson
Set in 1950s 'Austerity Britain', with detour or two to Berlin, Elizabeth Wilson's The Girl in Berlin is a stylish tale of espionage with a backdrop of the disappearance of Maclean and Burgess in a world where no one knows who to trust. Jack McGovern works at Special Branch but when Colin Harris, a known member of the Communist Party returns to the UK, MI5's Miles Kingdom draws Jack into investigate his intentions. Add in the fact that the wife of one of Harris's friends, Dinah Wentworth, works part time at the Courtauld Institute of Art where Dr Anthony Blunt is the main man, neither Jack, nor the reader, knows who is working for whom. Full review...
