One abandoned baby. Two sisters with a secret. The ‘Munro Baby Mystery’ has been a wonderful money spinner for the Doughty sisters for over 70 years, but when family matriarch Connie Doughty dies, her younger sister Rose begins to wonder whether it’s time to tell the truth… What’s it about? Once upon a time, two […]
‘All of them? Even the children?’ The fireplace sputtered and crackled and swallowed his gasp. ‘Slaughtered?’ ‘Worse.’ There was silence then. And in that hush lived all the things that could be worse than slaughter. By now, readers of Louise Penny’s Three Pines series may think they know these characters well, but Penny is determined […]
When I was in sixth form, there were a handful of books I would always recommend. ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood was top of that list (which was how I came to lend it to a friend who never returned it). I remember being chilled by the harshness of Offred’s world and stunned by […]
With so many potentially brilliant books I want to read, sometimes choosing the next one feels like a challenge. So, as this year’s Crimefest approaches, I’ve set myself an actual challenge: to read some of the books by the panellists which are already gracing my shelves (some of which I doubtless picked up at the […]
This is one of those ‘it caught my eye, but’ books. It clearly caught my eye enough for me to buy it, and, in fact, I recently added a second Louise Penny title to my collection, still without having ever read the first. There was obviously something about the plots I found appealing – or […]
A missing man. A careless wife. An ailing business. Is Harry Bowers dead or deliberately missing? Heart of England police are determined to find out. What’s it about? I’m pinching the blurb for this one: The peace of a Midlands village is upset when local businessman Harry Bowers doesn’t return from choir practice. More concerned […]
“I confess freely that I cut his throat with a carving knife.. “…in the morning I shall make the short walk from this condemned cell to the gallows here at Newgate. I understand the scaffold has been erected in the yard, inside the prison walls, not outside in the street. Is that so?” Chatty convict […]
This story brings together two of my favourite kinds of book: crime fiction and anything Jane Austen related. Now that doesn’t mean you need to be an Austen fan to enjoy this 23rd outing in the Dalziel and Pascoe series, but it means there’s a treat threaded throughout the story if you are. What’s it […]
Imagine spotting your own photo in a newspaper advert. Is it really you? It looks like you. How did the your photo end up in the classified section? Is it an error? Or is it something much, much worse? What’s it about? Zoe Walker is deeply unsettled when she spots her photo buried next to […]
After five years in prison, devoted mother Patty Watts is free – and still proclaiming her innocence. Waiting to pick her up is her daughter, Rose Gold – the daughter Patty was arrested for spending 18 years harming. Triumphant, Patty crows: ‘Riddle me this: if I spent almost two decades abusing my daughter, why did […]