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 […]
He said / she said: many rape cases are fought over belief; who will the jury trust? When Laura witnesses a brutal attack on a traumatised young woman, she calls the police and so begins a process of events that will leave her panic stricken, in hiding and fearing for her life. Now-husband, then-boyfriend, Kit, […]
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. […]
How far would you go to protect your family? Could you forgive those who have wronged you? And even if you could, can you ever truly go home? Billed as a novel for those who enjoy books by Raymond Chandler and John Grisham, John Hart’s second book, ‘Down River’, is a dark and atmospheric trip […]
I love unreliable narrators. So when I saw this story in which the main character openly announces, ‘Sometimes I lie’, well, I was hooked even before I read the rest of the blurb. This is journalist Alice Feeney’s debut novel and, yes, for fans of psychological thrillers, it is absolutely as good as it promises. What’s it about? […]
It’s not often that a book leaves me so uncertain. This was my Mother’s Day gift from my little readers, which was received with pleasure and promoted to the very top of my TBR pile. As the title and blurb suggests, it’s a book about motherhood (very definitely so: the fathers are mostly absent), and […]
I can’t resist the lure of a good secret. A plot that promises to reveal one will always intrigue me; a narrative that develops this promise effectively will always keep me hooked, reading on into the small hours, keenly anticipating the resolution. Having read ‘The Silent Fountain’, I feel certain Lucy Whittaker is a girl […]
”It is a war,’ Emilio said quietly, as he always did. As though, somehow, that made everything right. As though, in war, people were allowed to become someone else entirely.’ In Sarah Day’s debut novel, ‘Mussolini’s Island’, it is 1939/1940 and war with other nations looms, but there are more immediate concerns for Emilio and […]
In 1989, someone murdered 20 year-old Lucie Martin and put her body in a lake. Fourteen years later, her bones were discovered during a heatwave, but her murderer remained unknown and a source of intense speculation in Western France. Cue forensic expert Enzo MacLeod, who wants to conclusively solve the cold case so Lucie’s parents can […]
Today I’m welcoming TM Logan to BuriedUnderBooks as part of the blog tour for his debut novel ‘Lies’. ‘Lies’ is a psychological thriller which explores a life suddenly upturned, a family torn apart by, well, lies and the darker side of social media. Want to know more? Here’s the blurb: ————————————————— When Joe Lynch stumbles across […]