A murdered woman. A missing husband. An impossible crime scene. The strapline sounded a bit like a locked room mystery, but this is a police procedural with a purpose. When a wealthy woman is found dead in her locked London mansion by her cleaner, the key questions that arise are: what is the meaning of […]
Imagine that you have ended up in prison, as a result of poverty and constrained life choices. Now imagine being told that you will serve out the rest of your prison sentence on the other side of the world – and you are unlikely to ever find your way home. Such is the fate facing […]
Sometimes it’s nice to try reading something a little different. ‘Where the Water Flows’, a story about a dramatic event rather than a crime, certainly fits that description for me. The Blurb: It had been a long, hot summer followed by a very wet autumn. The River Hawk, lying to the north of a former […]
Imagine that a novel virus caused chaos and led to significant restrictions on public movement and… Oh. Hello Covid-19! No need to imagine the government crackdown or the population’s reactions. But actually, that just makes ‘Songs by Dead Girls’, first published in 2018, EVEN BETTER because it’s so perfectly pitched. Now I don’t mean that […]
Loved the premise; loved the outcome; loved the atmosphere. ‘The Silence of the Sea’ is apparently Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s sixth novel featuring lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir, but it worked perfectly well as a standalone. I like a story where the main focus is on the current investigation, rather than on the protagonist’s current life issues, and this […]
Local drug dealer found dead – very dead. Death is surely an occupational hazard for drug dealers, especially those who are actively engaged in turf warfare, but when Tadeusz Filipowski’s body is examined, it becomes clear that more than one person really wanted him dead. It’s up to Heart of England police detective sergeant Sunita Roy […]
No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead. I loved this premise. Even better? I thoroughly enjoyed the execution too and devoured this book over the course of just a few days. What’s it about? When Covid-19 reaches Ireland and lockdown looms, a tentative couple who’ve only been on two […]
‘The reading public enjoys murders.’ So reflects a detective assigned to investigate a particular murder. Harriet Hall’s murder is certainly one the local press enjoy when the inquest reveals a rather sensational fact about the victim. But who is Harriet? And why should we care that she’s been murdered? What’s it about? Miss Amy Steer […]
‘I think I might have killed her…’ These are not the words Frank Philips expect to hear when he attends his local AA meeting, but they are the words that will haunt him when he learns that a woman was murdered that night – and that the killer may now be targeting other members of […]
Obviously, it was the title that intrigued me. For her debut novel starring a serial killer who decides to murder her entire biological family, Mackie chooses Lady MacBeth’s demands to the witches as an epigraph: ‘Unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.’ […]