When Bartholomew Fynch is murdered, finding out whodunit proves challenging. Not only was he a secretive chap, rumoured to have worked for MI5, but he was deeply unpleasant and it gradually emerges that almost everyone in the village hated him enough to do him in. Oh, okay, EVERYONE in the village hated him enough to […]
What if…the worst thing that ever happened to you wasn’t what happened, but not being believed? What if…that lack of belief in you left a killer free to kill again? This is Alex Taylor’s life. Will it also be her death? What’s it about? Usually, I like to give my own take on what a […]
Book groups and book blogging: two great ways to discover authors you might not otherwise have been aware of. My crime reading book group recently introduced me to the joys of Dana Stabenow’s ‘Kate Shugak investigates’ series. Set in Alaska it follows the adventures of a retired (but young) District Attorney investigator with four Aleut […]
I love Liane Moriarty’s books. I think my favourite is ‘Big Little Lies’, but I also loved ‘What Alice Forgot’ and enjoyed ‘The Husband’s Secret’ despite a truly divisive ending. The moment I spotted this in the bookshop I knew I would be setting all other books aside to devour this, and so I did. […]
Facebook: the platform where many of us embrace contact with “friends” we would never embrace in Real Life. Maybe we knew them, once. Maybe they attended our school. Maybe they’re a friend of a friend you keep meeting. These “friends” could become Real Friends, they could become the main source of irritating cat memes in […]
‘She saw the portrait quite by chance, or so she thought.’ Openings can be crucial in capturing a reader’s attention, especially if the reader in question is choosing what to read next from a wobbling stack of ARCs! The sly mystery, the sense of fate, lurking in this ambiguous opening statement intrigued me and I […]
A mother knows her daughter. Doesn’t she? Obviously, Hanna knows her youngest daughter, Dawn, isn’t perfect, but who is? Hanna is determined to give her the benefit of the doubt, even when no-one else will – even when everyone else believes Dawn was involved in a plot to murder Hanna and her husband, Joe. Let’s […]
Ah, small towns. Everyone knows everything about everybody. Except when they don’t. Murder in Dulwich means secrets in Dulwich and secrets mean that someone needs to investigate. In Alice Castle’s new London Murder Mystery series, that someone is Beth, mother, journalist, odd-jobber and, suddenly, amateur investigator. What’s it about? Meet Beth Haldane, thirty-something single mum. […]
Expectations are everything. This book looks like a psychological thriller. There’s something about the title and strapline, even the cover art, that leads you to expect dark twists involving significant emotional trauma and, ultimately, some kind of investigable crime. But that’s not what it is. Read this expecting to uncover a killer or a demented […]
I enjoy books about books so I was delighted to receive this for my birthday. A book about libraries had to be about books, right? There are lots of books on the front cover and the author’s a novelist. Well, not quite. This book is more about people, hence the subtitle, ‘true stories and curious […]