Newest Crime Reviews
Crime
Dead in the Water by Veronyca Bates
The novel opens with a couple of fishermen enjoying their hobby ... until they fish out of the water a dead body. The body of a middle-aged woman. Enter a couple of rather endearing, local policemen intent on getting to the bottom of it all. The plot develops nicely. We discover that the dead woman had two names, two identities. Why? It seems to make the job of the police twice as difficult. And Bates' conversational and over-the-garden-fence style is engaging and very easy to read. I romped through the chapters, no problem. The dead woman is becoming more of a mystery as time goes on. Her past is delved into and looked over with a fine tooth comb and the bobby-dazzler question 'What makes a girl of nineteen marry a man of sixty?' is soon asked. A good section of the book is spent trying to answer that question. The obvious answer would appear to be - money. But is it in this case? And all sorts of puzzling questions are thrown up left, right and centre. Full review...
The Herring In The Library by L C Tyler
Tall, elegant Ethelred is a gentleman, and a third-rate author. Elsie, his literary agent, is short and dumpy, and not afraid to speak her mind. It is Elsie, in fact, who constantly assures her client he only occasionally aspires to the giddy heights of being second-rate. This could be the business partnership from hell, but not only do these two seem to get along, they even manage to solve crimes together. In this, the third outing for L C Tyler's eccentric sleuths, we are provided with a locked room mystery, a cast of possible villains of the most stereotypical type, and a fresh, funny tale which will make you laugh so much you'll get a stitch. Full review...
A Darker Night by P J Brooke
The location is the beautiful and historic city of Granada. The husband-and-wife writing duo, aka P J Brooke, impart their knowledge of this area to the reader almost straight away. The hot and dusty terrain is described in detail, along with some tempting snippets of local history; for example, some of the locals still choose to live in old cave houses. Very primitive living indeed, as you can imagine. And one inhabitant, a gypsy, is found dead. As his cave is so bare and sparse there's not too much evidence for Sub-Inspector Romero to go on. But, he does find something of interest... Full review...
Scent of a Killer by Kevin Lewis
D I Stacey Collins is beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea to introduce her teenage daughter to the father she's longed for all her life. Professional Standards at the Met are wondering about her links with the underworld and telling them that Jack Stanley, a major figure in the criminal world, is Sophie's father might well end her police career for good. She gets away with what she says on this occasion, but finds herself side-lined in the next major case – and dong jobs which could well have been handled by a rookie constable. And what a case it is. Three headless corpses have been found in a parked car in a London street and as their hands have been removed too the first major problem is identification. Full review...
Dark Water by Caro Ramsay
This is a big, meaty and satisfying read from the pen of Caro Ramsay. I haven't read any of her previous books to date but I will certainly look them out now. The location is in and around the city of Glasgow so lots of Scottish humour and a nice line in the local dialect from several characters. This all helps to get the reader involved early on. And I was. Full review...
A New Omnibus of Crime by Tony Hillerman (Editor) and Rosemary Herbert (Editor)
Clive Wilkes is a delivery boy for a grocery store somewhere in America. Miss Oyster Brown is a devout spinster in a Berkshire town. An unnamed Scottish doctor works in Swaziland. What do these disparate characters have in common with the learned Horace Rumpole, Queer Customer, and Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh? All of them are connected with crimes – either as victims, perpetrators, or investigators – in this brilliant anthology. Full review...
All the Pretty Girls by J T Ellison
We're in Nashville and a local girl has gone missing. She's a pretty twentysomething with the rest of her life to lead. Until now, that is. A gruesome find and a gruesome 'trophy' left by the killer. Who and why - are the important questions for both Taylor Jackson of Homicide and Dr John Baldwin, FBI profiler. Straight away this novel is shaping up nicely, I thought. And it gets better. The police have their work cut out in more ways than one. 'A decomposing body in ninety-degree heat could fell even the strongest professional.' And Ellison then goes on to describe in detail how all that unrelenting heat and all that cruel humidity affects a dead body. Full review...
Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder
One cold, dark morning in December 2006 a man was driving to work when he began to have problems with his car. It was a fairly deserted part of the Swedish coast but he had vague memories of a car-repair business in the area. When he limped his car in there he discovered a body: the man had been shot in the head and his lower body crushed as a car had been driven over it. The man panicked and called his neighbour for help. Seja was a trainee reporter and when she arrived she was fascinated by the murder victim, but her lies to Inspector Christian Tell are soon discovered. It's not the end of the matter though as there's an immediate attraction between Seja and Tell – and he's well aware that he's breaking all the rules by getting into a relationship with a witness and even a potential suspect. Full review...
The Whole World by Emily Winslow
The Whole World is a sort of crime/suspense novel set in Cambridge, England, told in turn from the viewpoint of five different characters. The first two narrators, Polly and Liv, are friends, and seem to have much in common – they are both American students with things to hide, and they are both attracted to the same young man, Nick. One night things come to a head as Nick somehow ends up kissing them both, then goes missing and is presumed dead. Then Nick, a blind woman called Gretchen and a local police officer, Morris, tell their stories, and the novel takes several weird twists. It is hard to say more without revealing too much about the plot. Full review...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Seance for a Vampire by Fred Saberhagen
Holmes and Watson are called in by a bereaved father who's convinced a pair of spiritualists have deceived his wife by holding a séance in which their daughter seemed to return. When the pair attend a second séance, the girl comes back again, and it's clear that this is no ordinary trick. Holmes gets assaulted and kidnapped, and Watson realises that for the second time in their investigative career they're dealing with vampires. He's left with only one choice, and turns to Holmes cousin, the legendary Prince Dracula, for aid. Full review...
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Easy Rawlins is a little down on his luck, having just been laid off from his job and with a mortgage payment due. So when DeWitt Albright walks into Joppy's bar and offers him money for finding a young woman who has gone missing, it seems like the perfect opportunity for him to keep his house, as well as to pass some time. Of course, what Albright doesn't mention is that the reason he's looking for this woman is that she's run off with a large amount of someone else's money and quite a few people on the streets of Los Angeles are prepared to kill to get that money back. Full review...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Seventh Bullet by Daniel D Victor
In 1911, author, journalist and celebrated dandy David Graham Phillips was shot multiple times by Harvard educated musician Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, who then committed suicide. The journalist had received on the morning of his death a threatening telegram signed with his own name, but had shrugged it off as during his career as a 'muckraker', to use the term coined for him by Theodore Roosevelt, he'd made many enemies. Full review...
Love Songs From A Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill
Dr Siri Paiboun is about to celebrate his seventy-fourth birthday but it looks as though it might be his last. Instead of being at home with Madam Daeng, his wife of three months, he's in jail. It's not your average run-of-the-mill jail either. Siri is chained to some lead piping and conditions are not exactly five star. Meanwhile Phosy and Dtui are having marriage problems whilst he struggles to investigate the deaths of three women, all skewered by an epee and their thighs showing a letter engraved with a knife. Full review...
Dead Like You by Peter James
Brighton is faced with a serial rapist who appears to have a fetish for shoes - after the rape, he removes the woman's shoes and takes them with him. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is immediately reminded of a previous unsolved case that he was involved in several years before, during which a young girl disappeared, never to be found. It was precisely at that time that Grace's own wife, Sandy, disappeared and, although he is now having a child with another woman, he has never been able to forget Sandy. If the rapist has reared his ugly head again, why has he chosen to do so after so long? Could it be a copycat rapist? And will Grace's memories of Sandy help him to find some clue as to her disappearance? Full review...
I Kill by Giorgio Faletti
Monte Carlo: not generally a place associated with moderation and temperance of any kind and therefore probably the perfect setting for a killing spree by a serial killer with a particular fetish for extreme souvenir gathering. Full review...
Where the Shadows Lie (Fire and Ice) by Michael Ridpath
Magnus Jonson was in some difficulty in Boston. He'd overheard another detective getting himself involved in something illegal and when he reported this he found that even the good guys weren't terribly fond of him – and the others would prefer to see him dead before the case came to trial. The solution was simple but unusual: Jonson was born in Iceland although he'd mostly grown up in Boston and the police in Iceland wanted someone to give them some help in beefing up their murder squad. Jonson disappeared from Boston, telling no one where he was going and resurfaced in Iceland. Simple? No. Full review...
Death and the Maiden by Gladys Mitchell
Edris Tidson used to grow bananas on Tenerife. Not the world capital of banana growing so far as I know, but I guess such plantations could have existed and certainly they'd be believable when Mitchell penned this classic crime caper in 1947. Full review...
No-one Loves a Policeman by Guillermo Orsi
It is December 2001 and Argentina is in crisis. Pablo Martelli used to be a policeman – not just any policeman, but part of a force now referred to as 'the National Shame' for its role doing horrible things to opponents of the military regime. Now he sells bathrooms, but it seems he cannot escape his past – once a policeman, always a policeman. Full review...
The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri
Inspector Salvo Montalbano’s immediate reaction when Caterella rang him at home was that a dead man had been found somewhere. Cat soon puts him right though. It’s a woman. She’s been found, naked but particularly clean and on the edge of the local rubbish tip. Most of her face had been blown away, which was going to make identification particularly difficult. Two things were obvious though – she was particularly beautiful and she had a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder blade. Full review...
City of Strangers by Ian Mackenzie
Paul Metzger – mid thirties, with a failed marriage, a broken relationship with his brother (who converted to Judaism), and a dying father (who is an ex-Nazi). Straight away there are obvious flaws with his family dynamic. As his writing career fails to take off he's left to churn out thousands of words for articles that have no meaning to him, the dregs of the publishing world. His life isn't quite as high flying as he hoped. But then Paul gets offered a lucrative book deal; the one thing he has wanted for years. The only catch is he has to write about his father. Full review...
Shoedog by George Pelecanos
If you ever find yourself as a character in a work of fiction, it’s probably best to avoid hitchhikers. The chances are it’s going to turn out very badly for either the driver or the hitchhiker - or both. Constantine is a denim-clad, Marlboro-smoking, drifter and loner with a strong sense of right and wrong who has just returned from a period of travelling around the world and is heading south back home in the US when he is picked up by a man named Polk, driving a muscle car. So what could possibly go wrong? Full review...
Night-Scented by David Barrie
Isabelle Arbaud is determined to make her mark in the world of luxury brands. Most perfumes are off-shoots of established fashion houses (or celebrity names, but let's not go down that road), but Isabelle has poached her rival's most talented perfumer and given him free rein to produce an irresistible scent which will take her upstart fashion house straight to the top. But – it would seem that someone is determined that she won't succeed. First on and then a second of her financial backers died, the first in circumstances which might have been a accident, but probably wasn't. About the second there could be no doubt. Two bullet holes are fairly conclusive evidence of a suspicious death. Full review...
The Suffocating Sea: A DI Horton Marine Mystery Crime Novel by Pauline Rowson
Anyone who loves murder mystery novels will know there is a big difference between a policeman and a copper, and Pauline Rowson’s character DI Andy Horton in The Suffocating Sea is every bit a copper. Tough on the outside, soft on the inside Horton is just the chap to start nosing around a suspicious fire on board a boat – at least that’s where it starts, because DI Horton is about to discover he is more involved in the mystery than just as an investigating officer. Full review...
Murder in the Latin Quarter (Aimee Leduc) by Cara Black
Aimée Leduc is back and this time she might just have found the sister she's always longed for. When a Haitian woman arrived in the offices of Leduc detective in central Paris and announced that she was Aimée's father's illegitimate daughter Aimée allowed enthusiasm to overrule logic as she'd been lonely since her mother's disappearance and her father's death. René, her partner in Leduc Detective, is wary but he can't dissuade Aimée. It's not long before she's involved in the murky world of Haitian politics and murder in Paris' bohemian Latin Quarter. Full review...
A Darker Shade of Blue by John Harvey
There are eighteen short stories covering the East Midlands, those parts of London you'd generally really rather avoid and rural East Anglia. You'll see broken families, revenge killings, prostitution and drugs. There's corruption – not unusual when you have an overstretched police force and underpaid men and women staffing it. And then there are the people who, in spite of everything, fight for justice. Full review...
The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop by Gladys Mitchell
A body is found in a butcher's shop one morning in Wandles Parva. It has been expertly chopped up and hung just like a piece of pork, but because it is missing a head, identification is impossible. There are soon suggestions that it must be Rupert Sethleigh, a land-owner who had supposedly gone to the US. His cousin, Jim Redsey is the obvious suspect. The two men didn't like each other - in fact, nobody actually liked Rupert Sethleigh. The local vicar's daughter, Felicity, and Aubrey, related to Jim and Rupert, decide to play detective. Before long, they are joined by Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, an elderly woman who fancies herself a detective. Can they sort out the red herrings and find the killer? Full review...
For Everything a Reason by Paul Cave
Meet Joseph Ruebins. He is one second away from a very satisfying climax to his boxing career, and winding up for his ultimate punch, when he freezes, and suffers a stroke, and ends up in hospital. Overnight someone kills the elderly man in the next bed. Meanwhile, a policeman hunts down the man who killed his son. Where are the connecting links - and how could the fact that Joseph was put in the wrong ward due to a mishap with the forms imperil the rest of his close-knit family? Full review...
King Death by Toby Litt
Skelton, that's the musician, adores his girlfriend. She's certainly exotic with ' ... her hair ... like black oil flowing over a stone.' However, they are only a heartbeat away from breaking up when it happens. What looks like some internal part of the body, animal or even human is hurled from a London train. The pair just happen to be travelling on that very train and they also just happen to witness this unsavoury action. Full review...
No Sorrow to Die: An Alice Rice Mystery by Gillian Galbraith
Straight away, DS Rice has a gruesome murder on her hands. The victim, a Mr Brodie (a suitably Scottish name) has had to give up a lucrative and interesting career due to ill-health. He's now merely existing. He's waiting to die, basically. He wants to die. So straight away, the plot starts to thicken nicely. We're introduced to a clutch of characters, or, more appropriately, suspects. Apart from the immediate family, the extended family, there's also various others, home helps etc. It seems several people have an axe to grind as far as the recently deceased Mr Brodie is concerned. You have to ask yourself the question at this point, who'd murder a frail, almost-dead man? It would take a particularly callous person. Mr Brodie would have been virtually unable to have put up any sort of struggle. It would have been similar to killing a tiny, helpless kitten. He's so far gone, why not just play the waiting game? Full review...
Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell
Miss Ferris would not normally have been entertained for a major part in Hillmaston School's production of The Mikado. She was self-effacing, meek and not very talented. But – she had offered to finance the cost of the production and this swung matters in her favour. It did mean that she couldn't afford the holiday she had planned for the summer and had to spend it in her aunt's boarding house, but she'd been pleased to make the gesture as she'd been happy at the school. Full review...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Man From Hell by Barrie Roberts
Noted West Country philanthropist Lord Backwater is killed – by poachers, according to the police investigating. His son disagrees, and calls in Sherlock Holmes, who quickly establishes that the true solution to the mystery is much stranger – involving a feared criminal brotherhood, crimes from many years past, and the Gates of Hell themselves. Full review...
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : The Stalwart Companions by H Paul Jeffers
After replying to an article written by the world's first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, young Teddy Roosevelt, about to study law at Columbia, strikes up a correspondence with him. They're pleased to finally meet when Holmes is acting in America – and naturally, Roosevelt introduces him to another friend, NYPD Detective Will Hargreaves. Of course, foul play is in the air – and the three men are led into an investigation which starts off as 'just' a dead body, but leads them to discover a plot against the President himself, Rutherford Hayes. Full review...
Any Human Face by Charles Lambert
1983: Alex enjoys the attention of his latest lover. Bruno is generous with his money and his time; he lends Alex the flash car, dines him extravagantly, treats him well, takes him seriously. "It was not that he was not fond of the older man… or that he didn't appreciate the longer term view of a leg-up into journalism…", it's just that he doesn't realise he is lying to himself. What he feels for Bruno is a bit more than affection, as he is about to discover. Full review...
Trail of Blood by S J Rozan
Lydia Chin takes on a new case helping another private investigator, Joel Pilarsky, to find missing jewellery which belonged to an Austrian Jewish refugee in wartime Shanghai – she has been hired for her ability to operate in New York City's Chinese community. She is quickly drawn into Rosalie Gilder's story, told through letters written to her mother, and when Joel is shot dead the next day, being fired by the client doesn't stop her wanting to find out more. She is glad when her old associate Bill Smith, who has been out of touch for a while, returns to help her. This detective story linking past and present is compulsive reading. Full review...
Random by Craig Robertson
A man is planning his first murder and he's doing it with some care. We'll gradually realise that he's been making preparations for some time but the oddest thing is that this murder must be completely random. He mustn't be diverted from his chosen system even if the person who is selected is someone he would rather not kill. It's not a whodunit – for the killer tells us the story as it progresses – or even a 'why did he do it' as even that will become obvious, but the suspense is in whether or not he will get caught. Full review...
A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah
There's a classic Agatha Christie style hook at the start of this story. TV producer Fliss Benson receives a card with no message other than sixteen numbers arranged in four rows of four. On the same day Fliss takes over work on a documentary about cot death mothers and miscarriages of justice. Simultaneously, one of the mothers is found dead at her house with an identical numbered card in her pocket. Work out what the numbers mean and you will find the killer. But as this is a typically densely plotted Sophie Hannah story you will have to note every detail in every part of the book to reach the right conclusion. The plot has more twists than a spiral staircase, though there are clues that could help you, including one rather cheeky feature - if you can spot it. Sadly, I didn't until I was writing this review… Full review...
