Difference between revisions of "Newest Thrillers Reviews"

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{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Pronko
+
|isbn=0008379300
|title=Tokyo Traffic (Detective Hiroshi)
+
|title=The Shadow Man
|author=Michael Pronko
+
|author=Helen Fields
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=There were three young women, girls really if you wanted to be pedantic about their ages.  Sukayana was Thai and she'd come to Japan in the belief that she'd be able to pick up the documentation to get to the States.  Celeste was just fourteen and when we meet her she's already dead of a heart attack caused by an overdose of amphetaminesThen there's Ratana, who's the de facto leader of the group, but she's disappeared too with the group's passports, leaving Sukayana in the midst of a scene of carnage at the Jack and Jill StudiosThe dead bodies are definitely not props though.
+
|summary=Fergus Ariss is in his late thirties and he knows that he's dying.  His body is giving up on him, his internal organs beginning to putrify but before he dies he wants a wife, a child and a brotherHe's been on the lookout for the perfect people and he's made certain preparations.  The flat where the family will live is prepared and even windows with curtains, and pictures in frames have been painted onto the walls.  Angela Fernycroft was to be his wife.  Her husband, Cal, had taken the children - a boy of seven and a girl of five, away for the weekendUnfortunately, it doesn't go according to plan and Angela dies.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241984653
+
|author=Dean Koontz
|title=I Made a Mistake
+
|title=The Other Emily
|author=Jane Corry
+
|rating=4
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=We know from the very beginning that there's a tragedy about to happenOn a January evening on a very crowded platform 3 of Waterloo Underground station a man falls under an oncoming trainThat man is Matthew GordonMuch later we see Poppy Page in the witness box of a crown court, getting a very rough ride from the prosecuting barrister.
+
|summary=Our hero David Thorne is an author, who shares his life between the two US coasts.  It's the western coast we're concerned with, a place he has to return to, and a place he has to be able to leaveDavid lost contact with his partner there ten years ago, when she vanished from a remote road late at night.  He's paying for contact with the man he thinks the only suspect, a lifer now, who went a bit Hannibal Lecter, and has a dozen and more unfound Jane Does on his recordDavid is trying to pry the connection between the murderer and his girl from the man's mind, but to no availHe's also having a recharge ready for his next hit novel when into the restaurant walks the sheer spitting image, the very embodiment, the virtual resurrection, of his love. What is a man to do?
 +
|isbn=1542019958
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008386137
+
|isbn=1529124417
|title=Just My Luck
+
|title=Before She Disappeared
|author=Adele Parks
+
|author=Lisa Gardner
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Elaine Winterdale took the fall for the landlord. Aged 37, she got a suspended sentence because a faulty gas boiler had caused the deaths of 29-year-old Reveka Albu and her 2-year-old son Benke. Toma Albu, husband and father, had found them when he returned home.
+
|summary=Frankie Elkin found Lani Whitehorse's body in her car at the bottom of the lake. She knew that the twenty-two-year-old waitress wouldn't have left her three-year-old daughter and run away.  Lani was the fourteenth missing person to be located by Frankie and now she's moving on again, this time to Boston where there's a strong Haitian community which was home to Angelique Lovelie Badeau until her disappearance eleven months ago. Frankie, middle-aged and white, gets a job and accommodation at Stoney's bar and sets out to investigate the community which is just about exclusively black.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0867X8NW7
+
|isbn=B08CR3WNFT
|title=Access Point
+
|title=The Therapist
|author=T R Gabbay
+
|author=B A Paris
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=When we first meet Ula Mishkin she's having something of a professional success: using a device of her own invention she's helped a man who has been blind for decades to see an image of a hummingbirdShe's thirty-six years old and her life is about to change radically as, cycling home, she's involved in an accident with a busIt's two years before we meet her again and in the meantime, she's spent 392 days in a coma and now walks with a stick.  A professional colleague persuades Ula that she should let out a spare bedroom to bring in some income.
+
|summary=When Leo Curtis found the house in The Circle, a gated community, Alice Dawson was in Venice.  Leo wanted to move quickly on the property as it was on the market at such a reasonable price that Alice wouldn't have to sell her cottage in Harlestone for them to be able to afford it.  Alice agreed - she was tired of their long-distance relationshipNow they would be able to spend most of the week together instead of just the weekendsLeo had some work done on the house: he made two bedrooms into one and although Alice knew that the house was stunning she just didn't feel comfortable there.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1471166023
+
|author=Saima Mir
|title=Burnt Island (Ben Kitto)
+
|title=The Khan
|author=Kate Rhodes
+
|rating=5
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=The 5th of November was D I Ben Kitto's thirty-fifth birthday and the occasion for the usual bonfire celebrations, but it would be marred this year by the discovery of Professor Alex Rogan's body on a bonfire.  He'd obviously been alive when he was put on the fire and can only have died a terrible death.  The body was first discovered by Jimmy Curwen, better known on St Agnes as the Bird Man because he speaks little or nothing and his only concern is the welfare of the birds he looks after.  His instinct is to cover Rogan's body and he uses his sheepskin coat to do this, with the result that he's the prime suspect.
+
|summary=Jia Khan has alway lived by the motto be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men. This has served her well in her rise through the criminal justice system and by the time she is called home for her sister's wedding after fifteen years in self-imposed exile, she is at the top of her game. Returning to the city of her birth, to old scars and fresh wounds, Jia must confront her past and reconcile her visions for the future with her sense of honour and duty.
 +
|isbn=1786079097
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178730101X
+
|isbn=0008214468
|title=Keep Him Close
+
|title=A Time to Lie
|author=Emily Koch
+
|author=Simon Berthon
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Alice had two children: Benny (well, Benoît, actually) and LouisLou's seventeen and he's just got his A level results and he and his brother are going out to celebrateSomeone has to find something to celebrate in the letters, D, D and EAlice has always had a good relationship with nineteen-year-old Benny but it's a touch problematic with Lou and being honest, he's not terribly likeable.  The letters which kept coming to my mind were ADHD.
+
|summary=A workman has a nasty surprise when he pulls a package out of an excavation on a building siteIt's wrapped in part of an old shower curtain and is a hand, severed above the wrist.  It's been there for about twenty-five to thirty-five years.
 +
 
 +
Robin Sandford - generally known as Robbie - is Prime MinisterHe's married to heiress Carol van Koon and they have two daughters, Becca and BellaSandford's determined to be a better type of politician: he wants ''a government that is not just practically good, but morally good.''  One of the ways he's planning on going about this is to ban arms sales to dubious regimes. Henry Morland-Cross, the Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, wishes that he'd been warned about this: it's easy to see that he wouldn't have been in agreement.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Gregg Hurwitz
+
|author= Gunnar Staalesen
|title=Into The Fire
+
|title= Fallen Angels
|rating=5
+
|rating= 2
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Grant Merriweather is a forensic accountant.  Or rather, was. He was brought into an ER room after an alleged car crash, his friend pleading with the medics to keep him alive. He was needed alive just long enough to give up a name. His cousin, Max.
+
|summary=Varg Veum, lone wolf detective, is back. After attending a former friend's funeral, Veum catches up with old friends but soon historic grievances and wounds are opened and the sins of the past are exposed to the light of the present. A horrific murder threatens these tenuous bonds and Veum is thrust into an investigation to root out the clues hidden in his own history and to catch a killer.
|isbn=0718185501
+
|isbn=1913193063
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author= Deborah O'Connor
 +
|title= The Captive
 +
|rating= 4
 +
|genre= Thrillers
 +
|summary=Hannah knows the cage, intimately. It lurks in the corner of her eye. Soon, it will be occupied. Then what? What if he speaks to her? What if he escapes? What if he hurts her? What if she hurts him?
 +
|isbn=1838772650
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008297169
+
|isbn=B087JXQ3JQ
|title=The Guest List
+
|title=The Long Dark Road
|author=Lucy Foley
+
|author=P R Black
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=The boat trip out to Inis Amploir, off the Irish coast, might have been enough to put some guests off, but it was the wedding of the yearWill Slater (television personality, if not yet a celebrity) was to marry Jules Keegan, online magazine publisher, in the ruined chapel on the islandThe bride's sister, Olivia, would be her only bridesmaid and the wedding planner and chef are Aoife and her husband, FreddyThey gave a huge discount to get the couple to the island, but surely it would be worth it for the publicity?
+
|summary=Two years ago Dr Georgia's Healey's nineteen-year-old university-student daughter went missing as she walked along the lonely A928 at Ferngate BridgeThere was a furious storm going on and she'd already refused the offer of help from one man in a big vehicleWe'll see - but no one else will know - that another car stops and Stephanie is bundled into the car and driven off.  There has been no sign of her - or her body - in the two years sinceGeorgia is back is Ferngate, determined to find out what happened and she's not going to be stopped.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529009677
+
|author= Susi Holliday
|title=A Window Breaks
+
|title= The Last Resort
|author=C M Ewan
+
|rating= 3.5
 +
|genre= Thrillers
 +
|summary=A group of strangers gather on a private island. They have been invited to an all-expenses paid retreat to test a brand-new product from the mysterious Timeo Technology company. The group includes a games designer, social media influencer, gossip columnist and hedge fund manager. Everyone seems to have an area of expertise that makes their attendance necessary. All except Amelia whose presence is a mystery. We follow the group as they explore the island, and each other's histories and it becomes clear that they all have a dark secret they would rather keep hidden. As the clock ticks down, these well-kept secrets are revealed, and it soon becomes clear that this luxury retreat is really a gilded cage. In a race against time, Amelia must struggle to uncover the reason for her attendance and protect the rest of the guests from the increasingly sinister accidents that befall them. 
 +
|isbn=1542020018
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=0008330131
 +
|title=The Stolen Sisters
 +
|author=Louise Jensen
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Tom Sullivan and his wife Rachel are having problemsIt's not just the usual growing apart after more than a decade of marriageTheir son, Michael, was killed in a car crash some months before: he was driving his father's Audi and at sixteen wasn't legally entitled to driveNot only did he kill himself when the car rammed into a tree, but he also killed his girlfriend, fifteen-year-old Fiona ConnorTom can't think about Michael without a sense of shame and guiltRachel is broken, but she wants to forgive MichaelTo give some space, Tom's moved out of the family home, but stresses to his thirteen-year-old daughter, Holly, that it is only a trial separation.
+
|summary=When we start ''The Stolen Sisters'' we know that twenty-years on from a dreadful event they are all healthy adultsWell, they're healthy in the physical sense, but Carly has trust issues, Leah has OCD and Marie drinksThey're the Sinclair sisters and one day they were all stolenCarly was thirteen-years-old and she was in charge of her sisters, the eight-year-old twins.  Much as she loved them Carly was desperate to get a text from Dean Malden and her mobile phone held her attentionLeah and Marie were nattering about a lost ball and a fleece which had been left outsideThe gate wasn't shut properly and Bruno, their boxer dog, escapedAs the three girls went to chase after him they were snatched by two men.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Chris Hauty
+
|author=Will Carver
|title=Deep State
+
|title=Hinton Hollow Death Trip
|rating=3
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Hayley Chill is a fighterShe is every kind of fighter and well-trained in most of them. She's army infantry and she boxes for fun – and she wins. Always. She wins because she is focussed. She works hard, mentally and physically, and she knows how to deal with the pain. She is not so much cold as controlledThis fight is against someone she is not expected to beat.  And she is being watched.
+
|summary= Hinton Hollow, population 5,120It sounds like one of those signs you see on improbably wide highways in America's mid-west, but this particular Hinton Hollow is a small town in Berkshire, England. Detective Sergeant Pace grew up here, until something happened and he ran away to the cityHe's running away again…only this time evil is following him and is going to touch just about everyone in town.
|isbn=1471185605
+
|isbn=1913193306
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241985153
+
|isbn=0008378363
|title=The House on the Lake
+
|title=One Perfect Morning
|author=Nuala Ellwood
+
|author=Pamela Crane
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=We know that something has gone wrong - badly wrong - when the woman who was alone in the house is taken away by the police, but it's going to be a while before we learn exactly what has happened.
+
|summary=A husband is about to have his throat cut in his own bed.  To find out who - and why - we need to go back nine days and twenty years.
 +
 
 +
Mackenzie, Robin and Lily met when they all went to the same college in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and twenty years later they're still the best of friends.  When they first met they called themselves the Spicier Girls as a nod to the famous girl band of the day.  Lily would be Adventure Spice, Robin the Homemaker and Mackenzie - well, Mackenzie would be the supporting actress in her own life.  She married Owen, her college sweetheart and they have a daughter, Aria, who's now fifteen-year-old.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn= 1984890646
+
|isbn=0751567426
|author=Catherine Steadman
+
|title=The Wicked Sister
|title=Mr Nobody
+
|author=Karen Dionne
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Don't you just hate it when people are multi-talented? Author Catherine Steadman is both a successful actress and writer, with this her second novel. I think in a way her acting background shows in her writing as to my mind the 'fight scene' at the end was somewhat unrealistic – you know the kind where the hero has been hurt so many times that it's virtually impossible they'd still be alive let alone able to fight off an attacker. The story also unfolded at a steady pace throughout until the ending which felt overstuffed in a frenetic bid to wrap everything up in the last few chapters. It was almost as if the author wanted to keep the suspense until the last possible moment (which I liked) but then was somewhat left with too much to do in the closing stages.
+
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Cunningham she's an inpatient at the Newberry Regional Mental Health Center in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  She's twenty-six and has been there for fifteen years, convinced that she accidentally killed her mother when she was eleven-years-old and that her father then took the gun and killed himself. Her sister, Diana, just twenty-years-old, was left at the family home, a lodge in the Upper Peninsula wilderness.  Rachel's very bright and although she's a voluntary patient at the Mental Health Center she remains there, feeling that this is what she deserves. Perhaps, though, the circumstances are not as she remembers.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Will Dean
+
|isbn=0008314721
|title=Black River
+
|title=Truth Be Told
 +
|author=Kia Abdullah
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=Tuva Moodyson returns - and this third book in the Tuva Moodyson mystery series delves deep into her personal life, returning her to the isolated town of Gavrik and into a desperate search for her missing best friend. With the Midsommar sun blocked out by the dark pines of the forest, Tuva fights to save her friend. But who’ll be there to save Tuva?
+
|summary=The Hadids are an ''effortful'' family.  Flowers are sent for the slightest problem or achievement: letters are sent to thank and this prompts a phone call in return.  There are two sons of the family, seventeen-year-old Kamran and sixteen-year-old Adam. Their mother, Sofia, regrets that she didn't name them the other way round: 'Adam and Kamran' trips off the tongue so much more easily than 'Kamran and Adam'.  Sofia worries about that sort of thing.  Both boys go to the prestigious Hampton school, where they board, despite the school being less than ten miles from their Belsize Park home.  Kamran has a place at Oxford next year and all seemed to be going well until the night when he was raped.
|isbn=1786077116
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1780894511
+
|author=Agnes Ravatn and Rosie Hedger (translator)
|title=Die Alone
+
|title=The Seven Doors
|author=Simon Kernick
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=Crime
|summary=Ray Mason is in prison awaiting trial for murder and he's in the vulnerable prisoner unit: as a cop, he's something of a target, but the unit is not as secure as the inmates would have hoped and Mason is injured in a riotOn his way to hospital he's broken free by armed men and an offer is made to himHe's to assassinate the man who is likely to become the country's next prime minister and he'll then be given a new identity so that he can start afresh abroadHis captors say that they're MI6, but Mason has his doubtsHis choices are limited though and he has personal reasons to believe that it would be better if Alastair Sheridan was dead.
+
|summary=Come here for a thriller that interestingly doesn't even try to suggest a genre of any kind until we're a full fifth of the way through.  We start with our couple, she a literature lecturer, he big in medical provision and decisions at the council, being forced to move out of their home, a building that had existed throughout her life since childhood and which they'd occupied for over thirty yearsThe building he's inherited, meanwhile, and which they let out to a single mother, is needed by their adult daughter, who quite blatantly says to its occupant 'take a hike, I'm moving in and you're moving out'Now, at this stage you may well, if you know this is a genre read, think it's going to be a throwback to those 'home invasion' thrillers Hollywood gave us in the 1980s, but noWe avoid genre completely, as I say – instead learning about Greek tragedy, in case that has any bearing on what happens here, and seeing how an older-middle aged couple live their livesUntil at that twenty per cent stage we find something that raises an eyebrow as any crime book should – until the point where the evicted tenant is found to have completely vanished.
 +
|isbn=1913193381
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Rory Clements
+
|isbn=1471179273
|title=Hitler's Secret
+
|title=House of Correction
|rating=3.5
+
|author=Nicci French
|genre=Thrillers
+
|rating=5
|summary=So, Hitler had a secret?  Two, if you include the reproductive detail mentioned in a certain sing-song aspersionBut this is a secret that is counter to that, and in fact, is a secret that Hitler himself doesn't even know aboutHis niece, Geli Raubal, the attractive young woman he seemed to be very close to in the early 1930s, had had his daughter behind his backProtected under a false identity ever since, the girl is completely ignorant of her past, and the truth is a very rare thing.  Martin Bormann, the 'gatekeeper' to Hitler and his right-hand man, knows – and is desperately intent on wiping the slate clean and removing all connected with her existence from the Reich.  So it's down to Tom Wilde, an American history professor at Oxbridge, to go in and extract her, in this most shadowy race against time.
+
|genre=Crime
|isbn=1838770275
+
|summary=When we first meet Tabitha Hardy, she's in prison, on remandShe's sharing a cell with Michaela, who's more caring than she first appearsShe delivers tough love and gets Tabitha eating and drinking - and encourages her to have a shower, unpleasant as the whole processes might be.  And how did Tabitha get here?  Well, on 21 December the body of Stuart Robert Rees was discovered in her garden shed by Andrew Kane, who was helping with the renovations to Tabitha's houseSo far as the police are concerned, Tabitha is the only person who could have killed Rees - and when they arrived at her house she was covered in his blood.
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Michael J Malone
 
|title=In The Absence of Miracles
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=John Docherty's mother has been taken into a nursing home following a massive stroke. It is thought unlikely that she will ever be able to live independently againFaced with having to sell the family home in order to pay for her nursing care, Docherty starts the clear out.  In the attic he finds a childhood picture of himself, holding a toddler – a toddler he knows nothing about.  He also finds a blood-stained shoe.
 
|isbn=191237479X
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=0692853545
 
|title=The Things We Do
 
|author=Kay Pfaltz
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=It's 2015 and Dr Eleanor Hartley is a prison psychologist at the state penitentiary and she knows that her next patient is not going to be easy.  'Jane Doe' has been convicted of the murder of two men - one a police officer.  She pleaded guilty and since then has been silent: even her identity is in doubt.  She was carrying identification as Jane Dunlap when she was arrested, but it's been proved to be false.  There seem to be no family or friends who are missing her.  Eleanor's task is to get Jane talking, to find out why a seemingly normal young woman would murder two men.
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{Frontpage
+
Move on to [[Newest Travel Reviews]]
|isbn=147117316X
 
|title=Guilty Not Guilty
 
|author=Felix Francis
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|summary=The Honourable William Herbert Millgate Gordon-Russell (Bill Russell to those who knew him well) was acting as a volunteer steward at Warwick Racecourse when he was told of the violent death of his much-loved wife.  It would get worse though: the successful insurance actuary would be accused of killing her and hounded by the media.  Then he would lose his job and his home.  His best friends would turn against him, as they came to believe him guilty of the murder.  Yet there was no really compelling evidence that he was guilty.
 
}}
 

Revision as of 12:09, 3 January 2021

0008379300.jpg

Review of

The Shadow Man by Helen Fields

4star.jpg Thrillers

Fergus Ariss is in his late thirties and he knows that he's dying. His body is giving up on him, his internal organs beginning to putrify but before he dies he wants a wife, a child and a brother. He's been on the lookout for the perfect people and he's made certain preparations. The flat where the family will live is prepared and even windows with curtains, and pictures in frames have been painted onto the walls. Angela Fernycroft was to be his wife. Her husband, Cal, had taken the children - a boy of seven and a girl of five, away for the weekend. Unfortunately, it doesn't go according to plan and Angela dies. Full Review

1542019958.jpg

Review of

The Other Emily by Dean Koontz

4star.jpg Thrillers

Our hero David Thorne is an author, who shares his life between the two US coasts. It's the western coast we're concerned with, a place he has to return to, and a place he has to be able to leave. David lost contact with his partner there ten years ago, when she vanished from a remote road late at night. He's paying for contact with the man he thinks the only suspect, a lifer now, who went a bit Hannibal Lecter, and has a dozen and more unfound Jane Does on his record. David is trying to pry the connection between the murderer and his girl from the man's mind, but to no avail. He's also having a recharge ready for his next hit novel when into the restaurant walks the sheer spitting image, the very embodiment, the virtual resurrection, of his love. What is a man to do? Full Review

1529124417.jpg

Review of

Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

Frankie Elkin found Lani Whitehorse's body in her car at the bottom of the lake. She knew that the twenty-two-year-old waitress wouldn't have left her three-year-old daughter and run away. Lani was the fourteenth missing person to be located by Frankie and now she's moving on again, this time to Boston where there's a strong Haitian community which was home to Angelique Lovelie Badeau until her disappearance eleven months ago. Frankie, middle-aged and white, gets a job and accommodation at Stoney's bar and sets out to investigate the community which is just about exclusively black. Full Review

B08CR3WNFT.jpg

Review of

The Therapist by B A Paris

5star.jpg Thrillers

When Leo Curtis found the house in The Circle, a gated community, Alice Dawson was in Venice. Leo wanted to move quickly on the property as it was on the market at such a reasonable price that Alice wouldn't have to sell her cottage in Harlestone for them to be able to afford it. Alice agreed - she was tired of their long-distance relationship. Now they would be able to spend most of the week together instead of just the weekends. Leo had some work done on the house: he made two bedrooms into one and although Alice knew that the house was stunning she just didn't feel comfortable there. Full Review

1786079097.jpg

Review of

The Khan by Saima Mir

5star.jpg Crime

Jia Khan has alway lived by the motto be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men. This has served her well in her rise through the criminal justice system and by the time she is called home for her sister's wedding after fifteen years in self-imposed exile, she is at the top of her game. Returning to the city of her birth, to old scars and fresh wounds, Jia must confront her past and reconcile her visions for the future with her sense of honour and duty. Full Review

0008214468.jpg

Review of

A Time to Lie by Simon Berthon

5star.jpg Thrillers

A workman has a nasty surprise when he pulls a package out of an excavation on a building site. It's wrapped in part of an old shower curtain and is a hand, severed above the wrist. It's been there for about twenty-five to thirty-five years.

Robin Sandford - generally known as Robbie - is Prime Minister. He's married to heiress Carol van Koon and they have two daughters, Becca and Bella. Sandford's determined to be a better type of politician: he wants a government that is not just practically good, but morally good. One of the ways he's planning on going about this is to ban arms sales to dubious regimes. Henry Morland-Cross, the Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, wishes that he'd been warned about this: it's easy to see that he wouldn't have been in agreement. Full Review

1913193063.jpg

Review of

Fallen Angels by Gunnar Staalesen

2star.jpg Thrillers

Varg Veum, lone wolf detective, is back. After attending a former friend's funeral, Veum catches up with old friends but soon historic grievances and wounds are opened and the sins of the past are exposed to the light of the present. A horrific murder threatens these tenuous bonds and Veum is thrust into an investigation to root out the clues hidden in his own history and to catch a killer. Full Review

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Review of

The Captive by Deborah O'Connor

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Hannah knows the cage, intimately. It lurks in the corner of her eye. Soon, it will be occupied. Then what? What if he speaks to her? What if he escapes? What if he hurts her? What if she hurts him? Full Review

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Review of

The Long Dark Road by P R Black

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Two years ago Dr Georgia's Healey's nineteen-year-old university-student daughter went missing as she walked along the lonely A928 at Ferngate Bridge. There was a furious storm going on and she'd already refused the offer of help from one man in a big vehicle. We'll see - but no one else will know - that another car stops and Stephanie is bundled into the car and driven off. There has been no sign of her - or her body - in the two years since. Georgia is back is Ferngate, determined to find out what happened and she's not going to be stopped. Full Review

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Review of

The Last Resort by Susi Holliday

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A group of strangers gather on a private island. They have been invited to an all-expenses paid retreat to test a brand-new product from the mysterious Timeo Technology company. The group includes a games designer, social media influencer, gossip columnist and hedge fund manager. Everyone seems to have an area of expertise that makes their attendance necessary. All except Amelia whose presence is a mystery. We follow the group as they explore the island, and each other's histories and it becomes clear that they all have a dark secret they would rather keep hidden. As the clock ticks down, these well-kept secrets are revealed, and it soon becomes clear that this luxury retreat is really a gilded cage. In a race against time, Amelia must struggle to uncover the reason for her attendance and protect the rest of the guests from the increasingly sinister accidents that befall them. Full Review

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Review of

The Stolen Sisters by Louise Jensen

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When we start The Stolen Sisters we know that twenty-years on from a dreadful event they are all healthy adults. Well, they're healthy in the physical sense, but Carly has trust issues, Leah has OCD and Marie drinks. They're the Sinclair sisters and one day they were all stolen. Carly was thirteen-years-old and she was in charge of her sisters, the eight-year-old twins. Much as she loved them Carly was desperate to get a text from Dean Malden and her mobile phone held her attention. Leah and Marie were nattering about a lost ball and a fleece which had been left outside. The gate wasn't shut properly and Bruno, their boxer dog, escaped. As the three girls went to chase after him they were snatched by two men. Full Review

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Review of

Hinton Hollow Death Trip by Will Carver

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Hinton Hollow, population 5,120. It sounds like one of those signs you see on improbably wide highways in America's mid-west, but this particular Hinton Hollow is a small town in Berkshire, England. Detective Sergeant Pace grew up here, until something happened and he ran away to the city. He's running away again…only this time evil is following him and is going to touch just about everyone in town. Full Review

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Review of

One Perfect Morning by Pamela Crane

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A husband is about to have his throat cut in his own bed. To find out who - and why - we need to go back nine days and twenty years.

Mackenzie, Robin and Lily met when they all went to the same college in Monroeville, Pennsylvania and twenty years later they're still the best of friends. When they first met they called themselves the Spicier Girls as a nod to the famous girl band of the day. Lily would be Adventure Spice, Robin the Homemaker and Mackenzie - well, Mackenzie would be the supporting actress in her own life. She married Owen, her college sweetheart and they have a daughter, Aria, who's now fifteen-year-old. Full Review

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Review of

The Wicked Sister by Karen Dionne

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When we first meet Rachel Cunningham she's an inpatient at the Newberry Regional Mental Health Center in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. She's twenty-six and has been there for fifteen years, convinced that she accidentally killed her mother when she was eleven-years-old and that her father then took the gun and killed himself. Her sister, Diana, just twenty-years-old, was left at the family home, a lodge in the Upper Peninsula wilderness. Rachel's very bright and although she's a voluntary patient at the Mental Health Center she remains there, feeling that this is what she deserves. Perhaps, though, the circumstances are not as she remembers. Full Review

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Review of

Truth Be Told by Kia Abdullah

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The Hadids are an effortful family. Flowers are sent for the slightest problem or achievement: letters are sent to thank and this prompts a phone call in return. There are two sons of the family, seventeen-year-old Kamran and sixteen-year-old Adam. Their mother, Sofia, regrets that she didn't name them the other way round: 'Adam and Kamran' trips off the tongue so much more easily than 'Kamran and Adam'. Sofia worries about that sort of thing. Both boys go to the prestigious Hampton school, where they board, despite the school being less than ten miles from their Belsize Park home. Kamran has a place at Oxford next year and all seemed to be going well until the night when he was raped. Full Review

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Review of

The Seven Doors by Agnes Ravatn and Rosie Hedger (translator)

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Come here for a thriller that interestingly doesn't even try to suggest a genre of any kind until we're a full fifth of the way through. We start with our couple, she a literature lecturer, he big in medical provision and decisions at the council, being forced to move out of their home, a building that had existed throughout her life since childhood and which they'd occupied for over thirty years. The building he's inherited, meanwhile, and which they let out to a single mother, is needed by their adult daughter, who quite blatantly says to its occupant 'take a hike, I'm moving in and you're moving out'. Now, at this stage you may well, if you know this is a genre read, think it's going to be a throwback to those 'home invasion' thrillers Hollywood gave us in the 1980s, but no. We avoid genre completely, as I say – instead learning about Greek tragedy, in case that has any bearing on what happens here, and seeing how an older-middle aged couple live their lives. Until at that twenty per cent stage we find something that raises an eyebrow as any crime book should – until the point where the evicted tenant is found to have completely vanished. Full Review

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Review of

House of Correction by Nicci French

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When we first meet Tabitha Hardy, she's in prison, on remand. She's sharing a cell with Michaela, who's more caring than she first appears. She delivers tough love and gets Tabitha eating and drinking - and encourages her to have a shower, unpleasant as the whole processes might be. And how did Tabitha get here? Well, on 21 December the body of Stuart Robert Rees was discovered in her garden shed by Andrew Kane, who was helping with the renovations to Tabitha's house. So far as the police are concerned, Tabitha is the only person who could have killed Rees - and when they arrived at her house she was covered in his blood. Full Review

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