Difference between revisions of "Newest Crime Reviews"

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
Line 1: Line 1:
 
[[Category:Crime|*]]
 
[[Category:Crime|*]]
 
[[Category:New Reviews|Crime]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
 
[[Category:New Reviews|Crime]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
 +
{{newreview
 +
|author=Jamie Kornegay
 +
|title=Soil
 +
|rating=3.5
 +
|genre=Crime
 +
|summary=Jay Mize is a scientific man with a particular interest in soil and agriculture. He decides he is the one to pioneer a revolution in farming techniques and uproots his wife and son to set up an experimental farm on a plot of land in the country. Jay is also an obsessive man and his plans take over, becoming his only focus and causing his family to leave him. Then flooding ruins his crops and he is left at the end of his tether; things only get worse when Jay finds a dead body on his land and his tenuous grip on his sanity is released.
 +
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473607035</amazonuk>
 +
}}
 
{{newreview
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Donna Leon
 
|author=Donna Leon
Line 210: Line 218:
 
|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.
 
|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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147113847X</amazonuk>
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>147113847X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mette Ivie Harrison
 
|title=The Bishop's Wife
 
|rating=3
 
|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.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1616954760</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}

Revision as of 09:25, 12 March 2015

Soil by Jamie Kornegay

3.5star.jpg Crime

Jay Mize is a scientific man with a particular interest in soil and agriculture. He decides he is the one to pioneer a revolution in farming techniques and uproots his wife and son to set up an experimental farm on a plot of land in the country. Jay is also an obsessive man and his plans take over, becoming his only focus and causing his family to leave him. Then flooding ruins his crops and he is left at the end of his tether; things only get worse when Jay finds a dead body on his land and his tenuous grip on his sanity is released. Full review...

By Its Cover by Donna Leon

4star.jpg Crime

A prestigious library in the heart of Venice discovered that pages had been cut from many of its most valuable books and that several others were missing. This would normally have been investigated by a specialist department in Rome, but Commissario Guido Brunetti agreed to look into the thefts - partly for personal reasons and partly because it was the simplest way to move the problem forward. The staff at the library were certain that an American researcher was responsible, but there were quite a few factors which didn't quite add up for Brunetti and he decided to look at some of the other regular attenders at the library. Full review...

Elementary: The Ghost Line by Adam Christopher

3.5star.jpg Crime

Once an author dies, the characters they created are often left alone to live off this initial legacy, but it is increasingly normal to see past heroes rise again – quite literally in the likes of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Once out of copyright you can do what you like to a character; a character just like Sherlock Holmes. Not only do we get numerous new books starring Holmes set in the Victorian era, but there are currently two separate TV shows about modern Sherlockian adventures. Elementary is set in America and is more liberal than most adaptations with the lore, but can the tie in novel evoke any memories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Full review...

The Red House by Emily Winslow

4star.jpg Crime

On the face of it, it seemed quite simple. It was just that as you started to unravel what had happened, what might happen, there seemed to be more skins that on an onion. Maxwell Gant had taken his fiancee to meet his mother. He and Imogen were hoping to move to Cambridge, where Maxwell had applied for a job with one of the college choirs. Imogen had an unusual history - she had been adopted when she was eight after the deaths of her parents in a car crash. She'd managed to trace her two elder brothers after the four children had been adopted by different families, but she was still looking for her younger brother, Sebastian, who was only three at the time of the accident. Full review...

The Khazar Codex by Graham Fulbright

4star.jpg Thrillers

It's a brutal introduction to the story as a man is killed in the way that they did it in those days: two trees were pulled to the ground and the man lashed between them and then the trees were released. But that's only the background to the story which is set in the here and now and most of it is in The Kemble, a rather rundown theatre, which is presenting a revival of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. On the opening night there's apparently a fire, but whilst most of the hostages are shepherded out of the theatre a group of seven members of the audience, two cast members and the prime minister's son, Nigel Hastings, are taken hostage. The 'terrorists' (for what else can you call people who take others hostage?) represent New METRO, a group of activists who are campaigning for disused underground stations to be converted for use by the homeless. Full review...

The Devil's Detective by Simon Kurt Unsworth

2.5star.jpg Horror

There are some obvious things in life (and death), but one of the most clear is that Hell will be Hellish. This is a place that sinners go to be punished. However, for every Dante’s Inferno, there is a depiction of hell that is not so bad. Who really wants to read something depressing about the desolation of souls, apart from those pesky 14th Century types? According to The Devil’s Detective, people in the 21st Century do too. Full review...

Death of A Liar by M C Beaton

3.5star.jpg Crime

Hamish Macbeth is still enjoying the relatively easy life of running the two-man station in remote Lochdubh in the highlands of Scotland. He could maybe do without current side-kick Dick Fraser's eternal presence on site, but has to admit that the man's cooking skills and his tendency to whip out a stove and frying pan in the remotest of locations do have their advantages. Still and all, it's not doing our eternal Sergeant's love-life any favours. Full review...

Before He Finds Her by Michael Kardos

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

The newspaper reports at the time were unanimous: in September 1991 Ramsey Miller held a party for all his neighbours and then, when it ended, killed his wife Allie and toddler daughter Meg, then ran away, remaining a fugitive from justice. The newspapers were wrong. Meg isn't dead but has been kept hidden by her Uncle Wayne and Aunt Kendra, had her name changed to Melanie and has led a sheltered life. No photos, no internet, no friends after school, no holidays away from home. That's no way to live and now she approaches her 18th birthday, Melanie/Meg wants to end her half-life in order to live fully and yet to do that she must risk any form of life. She must find her father before he finds her. Full review...

Second Life by S J Watson

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

Julia lives two lives. Life 1: the wife of surgeon Hugh and adopted parent of her sister Kate's son Connor. Life 2: Secret erotic dating site surfer. It seems a bit extreme but she has good reason as Julia is searching for information while posing under an assumed name. This is the same site on which Kate hung out. Past tense? Yes, Kate's dead and Julia wants to find Kate's killer. Be careful what you wish for, Julia. Full review...

Nothing Sacred by David Thorne

4star.jpg Thrillers

Just over a year ago I described Thorne's first book East of Innocence as Raymond Chandler meets Ray Winstone. I gather that an eight-way auction saw Tiger Aspect securing the option rights for a TV series. I'm looking forward to it. Can't help wondering if they roped Winstone in (and if I'm up for a cut of the agent fees?). Full review...

Killing Time: True Fiction by Marcus Dalrymple

4star.jpg Thrillers

English university graduate James Cooper Brown is travelling around the US with his friend Toby. When Toby returns to England on family business, James decides to visit Mexico. Soon after arriving he's kidnapped by a local drug baron. Elsewhere in the country Monica Gonzales, a doctor, is looking forward to an evening of good company and pizza but it turns into an evening of other things as she too is taken. Behind each of the 402 kidnappings in Mexico during 2003 there is a story. This is the story of James, Monica and the people fighting for their return; sometimes literally. Full review...

Kill Fee by Owen Laukkanen

4.5star.jpg Crime

The internet has had one of the most profound effects on humanity since the invention of the printing press. A world full of knowledge is at your fingertips and you can access anything from your home. Want to order food? Easy! How about learning how to make a fake ID? It’s all on the net if you know where to look! Want someone killed by a professional for a reasonable fee? This may be depressingly easier than you think. Full review...

The Swimmer by Joakim Zander

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

'On a remote Swedish island, a little girl, Klara, grows up without a father. Now, twenty years later, she discovers a secret: a secret that powerful men will kill to keep hidden.'

The Swimmer begins in 1980, with a bombing in Damascus, and a tragedy that can be felt across decades. Full review...

Quarry's Choice by Max Allan Collins

4.5star.jpg Crime

If you are fed up with reading books about a hit man with a heart, why not try one of the Quarry series? This is a man who is hired to kill and does not think too much about it; it's just a job. Usually Quarry arrives in a town, makes a hit and gets out immediately, but there is something about the world of the Dixie Mafia that is making him stay a little longer. Is it the blackmail, the attractive young women, or the sense of revenge? Full review...

Border Angels by Anthony J Quinn

4star.jpg Crime

Lena Novak knew all about border country. She was an illegal immigrant from Croatia and whilst she wasn't having to cope with landmines, bears and wolves, the Irish border had its own problems. She had worked in the farmhouse brothel for two months when she met Jack Fowler but her plan to escape left bare footprints in the snow and more than one dead body. The investigating officer was Inspector Celcius Daly and it wasn't long before he found himself in the unprofessional situation of working with a prostitute and a hitman. Full review...

Behind God's Back (Ariel Kafka Series) by Harri Nykanen and Kristian London (translator)

4.5star.jpg Crime

Ariel Kafka, as the only Jewish detective in Helsinki's violent crime unit, has special insight into the Jewish Community. It goes without saying but it also provides Ari with a steady flow of cases. Therefore when a local company director and Jewish congregation member is murdered, Ariel is first choice of investigator. Unfortunately the victim happens to be the man who could have become Ariel's father-in-law a couple of decades before but Ari feels enough removed by time not to disqualify himself from the case. Gradually as the web of clues is carefully teased out, more worrying connections are discovered. The Mossad may be involved but then so may Ari's brother Eli. Full review...

Vigilante by Shelley Harris

4.5star.jpg Women's Fiction

Jenny Pepper is a forty-something wife and mother who is stuck wondering where her life has gone. Privately, Jenny is jealous of her husband, he has a wonderful creative career that people can’t wait to hear more about, while Jenny’s work as a mother and her job at a charity bookshop seems to put a stopper on conversation. Jenny envies her daughter, with her youthful figure and a whole life stretched out in front of her. When tidying up one night, Jenny discovers her husband’s secret and just like that her life changes. Full review...

The Wolf in Winter (Charlie Parker Thriller) by John Connolly

5star.jpg Thrillers

Private investigator Charlie Parker is surprised when Jude, a bum he's befriended and worked with in the past, is found hanged in a basement. It looks like suicide but Jude has been looking for his daughter Annie to rekindle their family relationship and has just raised over $100 to help find her. Odd time for suicide? It becomes an even odder prospect when Annie herself goes missing after heading for the small Maine town of Prosperous. Charlie decides to drop in on the good citizens of the small town and starts poking beneath the respectable veneer. It doesn’t take him long but there is a downside: this investigation may have a body count that includes Charlie. Full review...

The Death Season (Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson) by Kate Ellis

4star.jpg Crime

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 phone. He 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. Full review...

The Man With A Charmed Life and his part in saving the planet from WWIII by Graham Fulbright

3.5star.jpg Thrillers

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 duties. He 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 tempting. He'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 way. Before he does he's peripherally involved in a shooting - and that's not something which usually happens to someone like him. Full review...

Forty Days Without Shadow by Olivier Truc

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

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. Full review...

The Vanished Ones by Donato Carrisi

5star.jpg Thrillers

Room 13 in the basement of the state morgue is where the sleepers are kept. These are the unclaimed bodies that have been classified as PHVs. Potential Homicide Victims. They are kept indefinitely, because they are evidence that a crime has been committed, possibly the only evidence. Full review...

Abattoir Blues by Peter Robinson

4star.jpg Crime

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 crime. Then 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. Full review...

No Known Grave (A Detective Inspector Tom Tyler Mystery) by Maureen Jennings

4.5star.jpg Crime

By the middle of 1942 Detective Inspector Tom Tyler has had a difficult two years and he's making a fresh start in Ludlow. St 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 up. Many 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. Full review...

Sausage Hall by Christina James

4.5star.jpg Crime

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 holiday. Unfortunately 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 passports. Kevan travels back to the UK to answer questions but it gets worse. Skeletal remains are found in his cellar followed by a discovery elsewhere of an all too fresh employee's dead body. This is bread and butter to DI Tim Yates of the Lincolnshire Constabulary but it's another complication in Kevan's all too complicated life. Full review...

Sins of the Father by Graham Hurley

4.5star.jpg Crime

Rupert Moncrieff was beaten to death in his waterside home early one Sunday morning in December 2013. All his money had not saved him from his throat being cut and his face slashed and hooded. One of his sons and his daughter still lived with him, but during the past week an African had been staying with the family. Strangely no one knew his name, but when the body was discovered the man had disappeared. DS 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. Full review...

The Cinderella Murder by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke

4.5star.jpg Crime

'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. Full review...