Difference between revisions of "Newest Thrillers Reviews"

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{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178089922X
+
|isbn=0008379300
|title=Invisible Girl
+
|title=The Shadow Man
|author=Lisa Jewell
+
|author=Helen Fields
|rating=5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=''When you wear a hood, you're invisible.''
+
|summary=Fergus Ariss is in his late thirties and he knows that he's dyingHis 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 preparationsThe flat where the family will live is prepared and even windows with curtains, and pictures in frames have been painted onto the wallsAngela Fernycroft was to be his wifeHer 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.
 
 
Saffyre Maddox is seventeen-years-old and beautifulBy her own admission, she's a bit of a boffin, doing and enjoying maths, physics and biology at A levelLife hasn't been easy for her: most people who have been close to her have died and she's now living with her Uncle Aaron in an eighth-floor flatSomething ''really, really bad happened'' to her when she was ten and she self-harmed for a long timeAaron organised psychological help and for three years Roan Fours was her therapistHe gently unpeeled the layers of her psyche, but somehow managed to miss that 'something really, really bad'When the therapy ended Saffyre felt cast adrift, but she retained an interest in Roan.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Sharon Doering
+
|author=Dean Koontz
|title=She Lies Close
+
|title=The Other Emily
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Ava Boone was five years old when she went missing, around 6 months ago. There has been no sign of her since, and no arrests have been made. And yet, this book is not about Ava. Not really. This book is about Grace, who has just discovered her neighbour in her new house is a suspect in Ava's disappearance. As a single mother to two young children, she's really wishing this sort of information had come to light before they moved in.
+
|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 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?
|isbn=1789094194
+
|isbn=1542019958
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1409187438
+
|isbn=1529124417
|title=The First Lie
+
|title=Before She Disappeared
|author=A J Park
+
|author=Lisa Gardner
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=On the second of October 37-year-old barrister, Paul Reeve, returned home at 9 pm to find his house in darkness and the front door openHis wife was in the bedroom in a state of shock and in the bathroom there was a dead man who had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck with Paul's paper-knifeIn that moment Paul takes a decision that will be irrevocable: he decides that he and Alice are not going to ring the police and tell the truth.  They're going to bury the body in woodland and go on as though nothing has happened.
+
|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 awayLani 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 agoFrankie, 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=1787301435
+
|isbn=B08CR3WNFT
|title=Dark Waters
+
|title=The Therapist
|author=G R Halliday
+
|author=B A Paris
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Twenty-two-year-old Annabelle Whittaker made her second mistake when she opted to drive down the private road in Glen TurritIt was a long road through some breath-taking scenery and she could push the car to its limits without fear of being caught speedingWhen the blond child stepped out in front of her she instinctively jerked the steering wheel and hit a treeWhen she came round after the accident she couldn't work out where she was, but it obviously wasn't a conventional hospital.  She'd made her first mistake some time ago, although the realisation wouldn't be obvious to her for a long time.  She'd made it when she chose to have her father buy her a pale blue BMW M4.
+
|summary=When Leo Curtis found the house in The Circle, a gated community, Alice Dawson was in VeniceLeo 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=1780899858
+
|author=Saima Mir
|title=To Tell You the Truth
+
|title=The Khan
|author=Gilly Macmillan
+
|rating=5
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Crime
 
|genre=Crime
|summary=When Lucy Bewley was nine-years-old she crept out of the house on the night of the summer solstice to watch the pagan celebrations in Stoke Woods.  Her four-year-old brother, Teddy, would have woken the house if she hadn't taken him with her. But in the early hours of the morning, Lucy returned home without Teddy, hoping that he would have got home before her.  He hadn't and no one has seen him since.  Lucy's story was crucial to the police investigation, but it keeps subtly changing.  Lucy is being advised by her imaginary friend, Eliza Grey and Eliza says that there are certain things which Lucy must not tell the police.
+
|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=1787477681
+
|isbn=0008214468
|title=A Shooting at Chateau Rock (A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel)
+
|title=A Time to Lie
|author=Martin Walker
+
|author=Simon Berthon
|rating=4
+
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=It was a couple of days after old Driant's funeral that Bruno Courrèges got an angry phone call from his sonGaston's father had sold the family farm in order to buy an insurance policy which he had used to secure a life of luxury at an expensive retirement home near Sarlat, owned by a Russian oligarchBefore he even got to go there he died, apparently of a heart attack, and the retirement home collected the proceeds of the policy and Gaston and Claudette Driant were left with just the contents of the farmhouseThe family hadn't exactly fallen out, but Gaston lived some way away and Claudette had fallen out of favour when she announced that she was gay, but they weren't expecting to be almost completely disinherited.
+
|summary=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 wristIt'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 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 regimesHenry 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
|isbn=0241984653
+
|author= Gunnar Staalesen
|title=I Made a Mistake
+
|title= Fallen Angels
|author=Jane Corry
+
|rating= 2
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=We know from the very beginning that there's a tragedy about to happen.  On a January evening on a very crowded platform 3 of Waterloo Underground station a man falls under an oncoming train. That man is Matthew Gordon.  Much later we see Poppy Page in the witness box of a crown court, getting a very rough ride from the prosecuting barrister.
+
|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=1913193063
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008386137
+
|author= Deborah O'Connor
|title=Just My Luck
+
|title= The Captive
|author=Adele Parks
+
|rating= 4
|rating=4.5
+
|genre= Thrillers
|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?
|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.
+
|isbn=1838772650
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0867X8NW7
+
|isbn=B087JXQ3JQ
|title=Access Point
+
|title=The Long Dark Road
|author=T R Gabbay
+
|author=P R Black
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|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=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 vehicleWe'll see - but no one else will know - that another car stops and Stephanie is bundled into the car and driven offThere 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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1471166023
+
|author= Susi Holliday
|title=Burnt Island (Ben Kitto)
+
|title= The Last Resort
|author=Kate Rhodes
+
|rating= 3.5  
|rating=4.5
+
|genre= Thrillers
|genre=Crime
+
|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.  
|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.
+
|isbn=1542020018
}}
+
}}  
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178730101X
+
|isbn=0008330131
|title=Keep Him Close
+
|title=The Stolen Sisters
|author=Emily Koch
+
|author=Louise Jensen
 
|rating=3.5
 
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Alice had two children: Benny (well, Benoît, actually) and Louis.  Lou's seventeen and he's just got his A level results and he and his brother are going out to celebrate.  Someone has to find something to celebrate in the letters, D, D and E.  Alice 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.
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Gregg Hurwitz
 
|title=Into The Fire
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Grant Merriweather is a forensic accountantOr rather, wasHe was brought into an ER room after an alleged car crash, his friend pleading with the medics to keep him aliveHe was needed alive just long enough to give up a nameHis cousin, Max.
+
|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 drinks.  They'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 twinsMuch 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 outsideThe 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.
|isbn=0718185501
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008297169
+
|author=Will Carver
|title=The Guest List
+
|title=Hinton Hollow Death Trip
|author=Lucy Foley
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|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, Freddy. They gave a huge discount to get the couple to the island, but surely it would be worth it for the publicity?
+
|summary= 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, EnglandDetective 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=1913193306
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529009677
+
|isbn=0008378363
|title=A Window Breaks
+
|title=One Perfect Morning
|author=C M Ewan
+
|author=Pamela Crane
 
|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 guilt.  Rachel is broken, but she wants to forgive Michael.  To 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=A husband is about to have his throat cut in his own bedTo 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 friendsWhen they first met they called themselves the Spicier Girls as a nod to the famous girl band of the dayLily would be Adventure Spice, Robin the Homemaker and Mackenzie - well, Mackenzie would be the supporting actress in her own lifeShe married Owen, her college sweetheart and they have a daughter, Aria, who's now fifteen-year-old.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Chris Hauty
+
|isbn=0751567426
|title=Deep State
+
|title=The Wicked Sister
|rating=3
+
|author=Karen Dionne
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Thrillers
 
|genre=Thrillers
|summary= Hayley Chill is a fighter.  She 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 controlled.  This fight is against someone she is not expected to beat.  And she is being watched.
+
|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.
|isbn=1471185605
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241985153
+
|isbn=0008314721
|title=The House on the Lake
+
|title=Truth Be Told
|author=Nuala Ellwood
+
|author=Kia Abdullah
|rating=3.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=Crime
|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=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.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn= 1984890646
+
|author=Agnes Ravatn and Rosie Hedger (translator)
|author=Catherine Steadman
+
|title=The Seven Doors
|title=Mr Nobody
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=Crime
|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=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.
 +
|isbn=1913193381
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1471179273
 +
|title=House of Correction
 +
|author=Nicci French
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Crime
 +
|summary=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.
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 +
Move on to [[Newest Travel Reviews]]

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

1838772650.jpg

Review of

The Captive by Deborah O'Connor

4star.jpg Thrillers

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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