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.’ […]
‘Resnick had despised estate agents ever since one of them ran off with his wife.’ So begins chapter two of ‘Rough Treatment’, a tale of dreadful TV executives, mismatched burglars, a menacing drug dealer and a reclusive detective. What’s it about? ‘Rough Treatment’ is the second Charlie Resnick novel, in which a house burglary somehow […]
Jim had lured the Watcher out on the seas. Jim had shaken the shadows. If the sentences above intrigue you, this book may be for you. If they leave you shrugging and wondering where the plot is, then you may be best advised to read something else. What’s it about? Sam is seven when she […]
‘Kneeling in the fragrant moist grass of the village green Clara Morrow carefully hid the Easter egg and thought about raising the dead, which she planned to do right after supper.’ Welcome back to Three Pines, a village in Quebec only discovered by those who need it. In this, the third book in the series, […]