Newest Crime Reviews
The Murder of Harriet Krohn by Karin Fossum
It was early November and Charlo Torp, an obsessive gambler who was so deep in debt to the people he should not owe money to that he feared for his life, set out to solve his problems. An expensive bunch of flowers which needed a signature on delivery would get him into the house of Harriet Krohn - and a spot of burglary would net him enough to pay off his debts. All goes according to plan up to a point - but then it all goes wrong when Harriet Krohn fights back and Torp uses the butt of the revolver he brought to frighten her to bludgeon her about the head and she's found dead the following morning. The only clue for Inspector Konrad Sejer is the abandoned bunch of flowers. Full review...
Riccarton Junction: 1 by W Scott Beaven
Kikarin (Kiri to her friends), moves with her family from cosmopolitan London to the wilds of the Scottish borders where not all accept her Japanese/English mixed heritage. Her father works in forestry for the local laird and her mother lives for the day when Kiri's brother, Keith, is released from the Young Offenders' Institute. However, bringing Keith home again doesn't mean the end of their problems or indeed his. Full review...
Borderline by Lawrence Block
I can imagine the scene back in 1950s America. The Hays Code was at full force meaning that movies where forced to dull their more exuberant edges. Comic books had been vilified as perverting the minds of the youth; horror had turned to All American Superheroes. That left the hidden Dime Novel, a book you could pick up for only 10 cents to revel in its vicarious pleasures. Anyone could don an old Macintosh coat and pick up something like Lawrence Block’s ‘Borderline’, a book that purports to be crime noir, but is something very different indeed. Full review...
Complex 90 by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins
If you ever decide to revisit the Film Noir genre of the 40s and 50s may I suggest ‘Kiss Me Deadly’, a pretty looney film about a shining briefcase and the maverick PI sent out to recover it. This Private Investigator was none other than Mike Hammer, star of a series of books written by Mickey Spillane. Unfortunately, Spillane is no longer with us, but before his death he gave some unfinished manuscripts to prolific crime writer Max Allan Collins. ‘Complex 90’ is the result of one of their collaborations and you may be glad to know that it is almost as insane as the movie. Full review...
Hour of Darkness: A Bob Skinner Mystery by Quintin Jardine
The naked body of a woman was washed up on an island in the Firth of Forth. The mutilation had obviously come from a ship's propeller but the result was that there was no means of identification. Several days later detectives were called to a flat in Edinburgh: a meter reader had found the kitchen covered in blood and it wasn't long before a connection was made between the missing occupant of the property and the unidentified body. The name - Isabella Spreckley - didn't ring immediate bells but she had been Bella Watson and that was a name which many people, not least Bob Skinner, would have preferred not to hear again - even if she was dead. Full review...
A Dark And Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton
Lacey Flint. Lacey is soft and pretty; Flint is sharp and hard. Lacey Flint is all of those things.
She is also, now, a Constable in the Met's Marine Unit. Lacey had fought hard against whatever traumas lie in her past to get into the police force, and harder still to get into plain clothes. A couple of years as a DC were enough to make both her and her bosses think it was all way too much for her. Full review...
Judges by Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo
I'll confess that it was the name of Andrea Camilleri which brought me to this book. I'm a long-time fan of his Inspector Montalbano series and a recent reading of a spin-off novella had proved to me that the concise nature of his full-length novels was no fluke. In Judges we had another novella - worth buying for its own sake - and the bonus of two more stories from better-than-decent Italian authors. All that was needed was a glass of wine and a comfortable chair. Did the book live up to expectation? Full review...
Bryant and May: The Bleeding Heart by Christopher Fowler
The Bleeding Heart is the eleventh outing for Fowler's distinctive detectives from the Peculiar Case Unit. If you've been along for the ride so far you'll either have fallen in love with them, or really not be able to see the joy of them. Either way, this review isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know, other than, yes, Fowler's still on form. Forgive me then, if I address the rest of my thoughts to those who've yet to stumble into the is backwater of the Metropolitan Police. Full review...
The Lying-Down Room (Commandant Serge Morel) by Anna Jaquiery
There is a reason why everyone who can leave Paris in August does so: it's swelteringly hot and deeply unpleasant. Commandant Serge Morel and his assistant, Lila Markov don't have the choice and to add to their problems they're short-staffed. The murder of the old woman seemed strange from the beginning: she was frail, inoffensive but she'd apparently been drowned and then laid out with care, garishly made up and adorned with a red wig. The bed sheet was tucked in tightly around her. Why would anyone want to murder her? And why was Fauré's Requiem playing whilst the murderer worked? Full review...
Ghost Girl by Lesley Thomson
We first met Stella Darnell in The Detective's Daughter - a book which seemed to take everyone by surprise. I didn't expect to meet her again but a year after her father's death Stella hasn't moved on. She's still visiting his house regularly and cleaning it as though he could return any day. Cleaning is what she does best - and she runs her own cleaning company. Her father was Terry Darnell, Detective Chief Superintendent at Hammersmith police station and there's a folder of photographs in his darkroom. They're all unlabeled and they're of deserted streets. Is a crime involved - and why are the photographs at Terry's home? Full review...
The Book of You by Claire Kendal
Clarissa is 38, secretary to a university department head and just emerging from a broken relationship. Rafe also works for the university, wants Clarissa and Clarissa wants him. He's absolutely certain she does, no matter how vehemently she denies it, no matter how fast she runs. Full review...
Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas
Despite losing his official post, Louis Kehlweiler still has the contacts, the drive, and seemingly nothing else to do, to keep him solving crimes. While using a certain park bench to trail a potentially suspect connection between someone nefarious and a politician's relative, he finds something else to spark his interest. Where, hours before, there had just been dog mess, now there is also a human toe bone. Clearly there is a crime, although nobody is reporting anything like having a half a toe missing. But not even he could predict what the simple legwork of trailing passing dog-owners would lead to… Full review...
Promises to Keep: A Short Story by Elizabeth Haynes
Jo is haunted by the death of a teenage asylum seeker whilst in police custody and she only hangs on to her fragile sanity by running. Whilst she's out in the woods (where she'd been warned that she really shouldn't go) she discovered a young boy living rough and she knew that she had to do everything in her power to keep him safe. There were complications. Her partner was DS Sam Hollands who had a direct involvement with asylum seekers - and the boy living rough in the woods was the younger brother of the dead teenager. Sam wanted to get her relationship with Jo back onto an even keel, but one night she returned from work to find a stranger in her house. Full review...
Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley
Many eleven year olds would be excited at the thought of a five-hundred-year-old tomb being opened to (hopefully) reveal the bones of the local saint, but Flavia de Luce had what might almost be called a professional interest. Before the opening of the tomb she'd been associated with four dead bodies (to say that she was instrumental in solving the murders sounds just a little too much like bragging doesn't it?) but this time she really wasn't expecting to find Mr Collicut, the church organist who had been missing for six weeks. Still, there he was, dead - and wearing a gas mask. Full review...
A Lovely Way to Burn (Plague Times Trilogy 1) by Louise Welsh
The summer of the great heat wave is also the summer of death. Stevie thought nothing of the three establishment pillars turned snipers; the news just didn't register. Then the illness came: plague-like symptoms sweeping across the world. When Stevie's boyfriend dies it's easy to put it down to the pandemic but Stevie has a hunch and she won't stop till she's followed it, no matter what happens or who tries to stop her. Full review...
Water Music by Margie Orford
Cassie is out riding on a bridle path hardly used in the height of summer, totally deserted in winter. Her horse takes a tumble, and she goes with it, and stumbles into a tiny, plastic-wrapped child, maybe three-years old, and painfully thin, foot-soles like marble and skin blue with cold. Full review...
Poppet by Mo Hayder
DI Jack Caffrey has been around for a while now, I just haven't previously stumbled into his deep dark world. This is the sixth in the series of books featuring the plain clothed Detective Inspector of Bristol's Major Crime Investigation Team, but you don't need to have read any of the others to enjoy - if enjoy is the right word - this (not quite the) latest offering. Full review...
The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley
Flavia de Luce is nearly twelve but she's grown up without the presence of her mother who is presumed to have died in a mountaineering accident in Tibet when Flavia was just a baby. The loss has left its mark on the family: Colonel de Luce is a broken man and as it was Harriet who owned the family home - Buckshaw - they've lived in a financial limbo. But now Harriet's body has been found and we join the family as it's brought back to the village on a train commissioned by the government. The great and the good are there - including Winston Churchill - but there's also a mysterious death. And the man who has died whispered a warning to Flavia just before he went under the wheels of the train. Full review...
The Madness of July by James Naughtie
A dead body is found in a Houses of Parliament broom cupboard on a hot 1970s summer day. A sinister enough event normally but for Foreign Office Minister Will Flemyng it heralds greater concerns. The fact the deceased has Will's phone number in his pocket triggers a series of events that not only tests his loyalty to work, country and family but will take Will from the everyday political cut and thrust to his old job. The job he hoped he'd walked away from: spying. Full review...
Scandal at Six: A Lois Meade Mystery by Ann Purser
Lois Meade leads a busy life. As if running her own cleaning company isn't sufficient she can never resist doing a bit of ferretin' when something strange happens in the village of Long Farnden. She's so good that local police inspector Hunter Cowgill is only too pleased to involve her as his assistant. Mind you, it probably helps that Cowgill is very fond of Lois and his nephew (also a policeman) is married to Lois' daughter, Josie. This time, local zookeeper, Robert Pettinson and his nephew, Justin Brookes are involved in trading endangered animals and they'd prefer that Lois and her family kept their noses out of their business. Full review...
A Man of Sorrows: An Inspector Carlyle Novel by James Craig
Inspector John Carlyle has a lot on his plate. His attack on a paedophile priest left Father McGowan injured and angry and Carlyle in a vulnerable position. The fact that the Pope is due to visit ups the political pressure and brings Carlyle into conflict with his old nemesis, Christian Holyrod, the Mayor of London. Then there's the armed robbery at a very upmarket Mayfair jeweller when tens of millions of pounds worth of stock goes missing - along with one of the assistants. Normally he'd have had some support from his boss, but she's on secondment in Canada and the man replacing her has great hopes for Carlyle - mainly that he can get him dismissed. Then Carlyle's wife has a serious health scare and his daughter is growing up very fast. Full review...
A Pleasure and a Calling by Phil Hogan
Estate agent William Heming has got it right. He owns a successful estate agency and yet isn't too noticeable. He's helpful, but not in a memorable way. A bit on the beige side perhaps but that’s just the way he likes it, living a life that assists society. Take the time he entered the home of the gentleman who refused to clear up his dog's leavings for instance. It's ok – Heming didn't break in. He already has the key as he once sold the house. How many of his former clients' keys has he actually kept, you wonder? The answer's easy: all of them. Full review...
The Riot by Laura Wilson
DI Stratton has moved to a new posting and Notting Hill is fresh territory to him, but he’s going to have to get to know it fast when a rent collector is stabbed. There’s a sense of loss from the people who knew the man - he was inclined to help if he could and with landlords wanting to oust rent-controlled tenants so that they could put ‘coloured’ people or prostitutes in their place (higher rents, you see) any help was welcome. Added to this there are increasing numbers of street fights involving teddy boys. It’s 1958 - and there’s a heatwave. Full review...
The Atheist's Prayer by Amy R Biddle
I don’t shy away from a book with a little edge, in fact Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favourite authors and his books can be so sharp you can shave with them. On the surface The Atheist’s Prayer would seem to be courting controversy; why else have such a provocative title? But, is it really that shocking? Nope. This is a story about how people deal with the modern world and what happens when dangerous ideals infect a vulnerable group. Full review...
Original Skin by David Mark
DS Aector McAvoy was rather hoping that he might be getting a reputation for his investigative skills but when we first meet him in Original Skin it's his ability with animals which is to the fore. If you want a runaway horse stopping then he's your man. He's distracted about something else too: whilst other detectives are working on a case which involves travellers and violent drug-related crime he's unable to get the case of Simon Appleyard out of his mind. Simon was deeply into the swinging scene and liked to live life to the full, so why did this slender young man with the peacock feathers tattooed on his back commit suicide one morning? Full review...
Stone Bruises by Simon Beckett
When we meet Sean it's obvious that he's on the run, but it will be a long time before we find out what from. He's driving, in France and he knows that he has to get rid of the car, but when he does so he finds himself in far worse difficulty. Cutting across farmland he puts his foot in a metal mantrap and can't free himself. The damage to his foot is considerable and he soon loses consciousness - but when he comes to he's in the hayloft at the farm, being looked after by the farmer's elder daughter. The farmer is definitely not pleased when he finds out, the younger daughter in a mantrap in her own right and there's a lot of animosity against the family in the local village. Full review...
