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 […]
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 […]
The detective and the celebrity blogger. Together, can they catch a serial killer? ‘Death Deserved’, the first collaboration between two well established authors of Nordic Noir, Jorn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger, is a brilliantly engaging tale of a police man hunt that seeks to apprehend a flamboyant serial killer who’s determined to manipulate the […]
‘Two years of internet dating. It’s fair to say they haven’t flown by.’ Meet DS Manon Bradshaw: single, lonely, funny and clever. Steiner introduces us to Manon while she’s on her first, and last, date with Brian – or was it Keith? Either way, the sex was as dull as the conversation, leaving our lonely […]
Are you the person you want to be? While Steve Mosby’s ‘The Nightmare Place’ is primarily a crime thriller focused on the hunt to catch a violent serial offender, it has quite a strong tilt towards self judgement and self assessment, which I found interesting. DI Zoe Dolan could have turned into a criminal herself, […]
It must be quite frustrating at times for a police officer reading crime fiction and thinking, ‘but that would never happen that way!’ Debut novelist Desmond P. Ryan is here to address this problem: a former Canadian detective with 30 years experience on the force behind him, he’s penned the first in a planned series […]
I had the pleasure of meeting Lisa Cutts at Crimefest in 2016. Listening to her talk, she was so friendly, knowledgeable and good humoured that I had to buy one of her books, which somehow over time got buried under a heap of other books. Having recently read and LOVED her fourth book, ‘Buried Secrets‘, […]
Hands up: who loves a novel with more twists than a slinky? Me! Me! Me! As long as they make sense in the wider context of the plot and characterisation, of course, which these do. Oh they do so beautifully. ‘Buried Secrets’ is the first of DC Lisa Cutts’ crime novels I have read, but […]
Stag nights have changed significantly over the years. No longer just an opportunity for a drink or three down the local boozer with your best mates, nowadays stag dos – and their not-to-be-outdone female companion, hen dos – and more likely to see the potential groom flying off to Prague or Amsterdam with every male […]
A lamb is dead. It isn’t what you might think. Although this is the fourth installment in Aline Templeton’s police procedural series set in Scotland, this is the first book in the series I’ve read. I’ll certainly be trying another. What’s it about? An old man is shot on his doorstep, inspiring fear in the […]