Last Testament in Bologna #TomBenjamin #LastTestamentInBologna

By Tom Benjamin https://www.tombenjamin.com/ @Tombenjaminsays

Published by Constable https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/imprint/constable/page/lbbg-imprint-constable/ (an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/ @LittleBrownUK)

294 pages ISBN 9781408715574

Publication date 2 May 2024

Last Testament in Bologna is the fifth book in the Daniel Leicester series.

I was sent a paperback copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and Publisher.

The cover

A very simple but straightforward cover that shouts out Renaissance Italy. It’s the Fountain of Neptune in Piazza del Nettuno that dates from 1566 and shows the bronze statue of Neptune himself. When you can use picture like this to capture the setting of your novel why choose anything else? It’s simply fabulous.

My review

A strange request in a last will and testament of Giorgio Chiesa leads to a most unusual request of Faidate Investigations. The deceased was an engineer specialising in automotives, whose brilliant invention was stolen and patented by his nemesis and arch-rival. His bequest is a third of his estate to investigate the circumstances of the death of his son Niki in a car crash. People die every day in road traffic accidents, but Niki was an expert driver, destined to be one of the greats of Formula 1, whose car simply left the road. Giorgio never believed it was an accident or suicide. He took his conviction, that it was murder, to his deathbed and his dying wish was for this to be proved posthumously, as a tribute to Niki. This conviction was strengthened by the fact that at his death Niki was employed as a racing driver by Giorgio’s great rival, Massimiliano (Max) Molinari.

‘Comandante’ Giovanni Faidate agrees to fulfil the terms of this legacy to the best of their ability, but as he is heading off to hospital for a hip replacement it will fall to his son in law Daniel Leicester to do the bulk of the investigative work. An assignment that will see him rubbing shoulders with the super wealthy and the criminal classes.

Mention Italy and thoughts that come to mind are fine food and wine, fabulous art and architecture, and very fast cars (though in the 70s and 80s they made plenty of rust buckets). If you do think like this, you are not going to be disappointed, as they all figure to some degree.

Anyone who has experienced the Italy that found away from the coastal sun traps of Sorrento and Rimini, will be captivated by the setting and appreciate the author’s fondness for the city. To counterpoint the glamour of the motor racing world we see the ordinary and mundane of urban life in a city rich in history. The cafes are not those of ‘café society’ but normal places where workers stop for a coffee or breakfast before work, something slightly alien to the British, but just a way of life in Southern Europe. This is captured so well that it had be thinking to my working visits to Livorno. Daniel’s daughter Rose is learning to drive, adding to the driving theme and the descriptions of life on Italy’s road rang so true. On one visit to our surprise, we were driven through a red light to which our driver remarked in the UK it is a command to stop, in Italy it is more of a suggestion!

The plot centres on discovering if Niki was murdered but ends up unearthing much more. Car lovers will love the descriptions of the supercars and the racing at Imola, with the ghosts of the past still there. The spirit of the days when Niki Lauda took on James Hunt are evoked, when Grand Prix were more like a chivalric joust, a contest of man more than machine, which at the time were seen as more fun but were reckless and infinitely more dangerous. Naturally a with such a setting the novel needs to work through the gears until it reaches top speed which it does with aplomb on the track and in the case.

The crimes uncovered are dark but certainly believable. Great wealth is rarely accumulated quickly by entirely fair means entirely. The love of money stimulates greed, the desire for more that leaves the rest of us wondering just how much is enough. There is also as sense that when you can afford anything you want it all becomes a little bit boring and you want the things you can’t buy or acquire.

Organised crime rears its ugly head, and the criminals are suitably nasty. There is jeopardy and danger with a side order of violence, which doesn’t always come from where one might expect it, as we build up to a satisfying conclusion.

Another key aspect of Italian life is the family and at Faidate Investigations they are one big family that live together. If they are not directly related, they are cousins or quickly subsumed as a ‘cousin’. This brings some lovely interactions and the human touch, such as Rose’s little secret that everyone knows apart from her father. There is care and concern as family members sort out their problems together which are touchingly portrayed as Giovanni’s hospital stay throws up complications and Dolores’ drops a bombshell from her past.

In Last Testament in Bologna the glamour and opulence of the super-rich collide with crime and skulduggery on a Formula 1 race track.      

Last Testament in Bologna can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

Tom Benjamin grew up in the suburbs of north London and began his working life as a journalist before becoming a spokesman for Scotland Yard. He later moved into public health, where he led drugs awareness programme FRANK. He now lives in Bologna.

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this blog tour:

Liquid, Fragile, Perishable #CarolynKuebler #LiquidFragilePerishable

By Carolyn Kuebler https://www.carolynkuebler.com/

Published by Melville House https://mhpbooks.com/ @melvillehouse

343 pages ISBN 9781685891091

Publication date 9 May 2024

I was sent a paperback Advance Reader Copy in exchange for a fair review. I would like to thank Tom at the publisher for arranging this.

The Cover

Quite an unusual, stand out cover, with a picture of a honeycomb. Bee keeping is central to the story so rather apt.

My review

A debut novel, albeit from a woman steeped in the literary world, and a rather bold one at that. There is no real central plot that drives the novel, instead it is more structured like a collage of individual character-based stories. These stories manage to intersect, overlap or run parallel and represent just over a year in the lives of the inhabitants of a small rural, New England community. These stories reflect the joy, pain, pleasures and hardships faced by people and include most of what life has to offer. There are aspects of ‘the circle of life’ story but by covering only a year it concentrates on a series of personal journeys travelled by the townsfolk.   

The central picture of the collage is a simple teenage love story, where boy meets girl and they are instantly besotted. The boy is Willoughby (Will) Culper a city boy whose parents have just moved to the country and he is having a summer at home, before college. The girl is Dorothy (Honey) Mitchell the over protected daughter of evangelical Christian beekeepers. A story of star-crossed lovers that is captivating, with measures of joy and tragedy, and in keeping with classic literature.

Will’s parents have moved from New York; his mother Sarah wants to get back into weaving after a long break, whereas environmentalist father has the wanderlust and wants to travel and write more about global warming and conservation.

Honey’s parents David and Ruth (fine biblical names) run an apiary and during the winter months David does missionary work in the form of volunteering in Haiti and badly effected places. Their biggest fear revolves around the health of their hives under the threat of Colony Collapse Disorder.

There are conflicts and opposites everywhere. There are monied city types moving to the quiet of the countryside whilst the impoverished local economy drives country folk in the opposite direction in search of a better standard of life. Parents wanting a safe, relaxed rural upbringing for their children, who long for excitement. A situation to be found throughout small town American and indeed much of the developed world.  

This is a close-knit community where people have few other options than to try to get along with each other. Friendships form, develop and mature, including a story of love coming later in life. Problems are shared, conflict and tragedy bring people unexpectedly together as they learn to live with each other. Teenagers mature and blossom, even those from the local ne’er-do-wells reflect and consider their futures.

An unconventional but beautifully written novel that captures modern life in a rural environment with all the hardships entailed. It is surprisingly positive and upbeat with a message that there usually is a way forward if we trust in ourselves and those around us.  

All the time in the background there are the bees to show us our short comings, teaching us to find our role and how to live in harmony with each other. Existence is fragile, our story flows like a liquid and we are all perishable, destined to return to the earth; nature is a wonderful thing and must be treasured.

Liquid, Fragile, Perishable is a haunting and deeply touching look at the lives and hopes of the heart of America.

Liquid, Fragile, Perishable can be purchased via the Bookshop org here

The author

Carolyn Kuebler’s debut novel, Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, is forthcoming from Melville House in 2024. Carolyn was a co-founder of the literary magazine Rain Taxi and for the past ten years she has been the editor of the New England Review. Her stories and essays have been published in The Common and Colorado Review, among others, and “Wildflower Season,” published in The Massachusetts Review, won the 2022 John Burroughs Award for Nature Essay. She has published dozens of book reviews, small-press profiles, and author interviews in Publishers Weekly, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi, City Pages, and others. 

Originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania, Carolyn has an MFA from Bard College and a BA from Middlebury College. She worked for years as a bookseller at Borders Book Shop in Minneapolis and the Hungry Mind in St. Paul, before heading to New York, where she was an editor at Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. In addition to editing NER, she is currently a justice of the peace, a volunteer with 350 Vermont, a bad bird-watcher, and an even worse gardener. She lives in Middlebury with her husband, Christopher, and daughter, Vivian Ross.

Source: Author’s website

Escape: The Hunter Cut #LADavenport #EscapeTheHunterCut

By L.A. Davenport https://pushingthewave.co.uk/

Published by P-Wave Press https://p-wavepress.co.uk/ @p_wave_press

482 pages ISBN 9781916937055 (EB)

Publication date 6 May 2024

I was allowed access to an electronic review copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank the Blog Tour organiser Heather Fitt @HeatherJFitt, and of course Author and Publisher for arranging this.

From the blurb

In this all-new edition, Escape: The Hunter Cut takes the classic tale of L.A. Davenport’s debut novel Escape and retells it through John’s eyes, as he battles with himself and the events that threaten to overwhelm him.

The cover

A reworking of the original cover of Escape, dropping the female face and concentrating on the central main character. The crumpled paper/card effect to signify it is a reworking perhaps?

My thoughts

I know it has been done before, particularly with ‘fan fiction’, but I’m not sure there are two many books that I would re-read with it written from a different perspective. I can see the attraction for the author, they often go to great lengths to create scenarios and plots, so they might wish to develop the story from different viewpoint. I have not read the original version of Escape so this review will solely concentrate on the novel I have just read, with no comparisons.

The novel starts with a man on holiday, who we eventually discover is Dr John Hunter a surgeon. He is staying in a grand hotel in a glamourous unnamed town in Italy and we immediately discover he is a troubled man. He is constantly reminded of a woman, and questions why it is him who is still alive. His wife has recently died in a freak accident that left him unscathed, physically untouched but completely distraught and wracked with misplaced guilt. He has taken the trip to try to escape his familiar surroundings, to properly mourn his wife and start the healing and recovery process. Solo holidays are not the easiest and he finds himself lost and confused, using alcohol as a crutch.

The hotel guests include the great and the good, all wealthy, and some more odd characters including a slightly sinister Russian man, who John seems to come across wherever he goes. The hotel staff are as we might expect, slick and unobtrusive apart from a rather odd, over attentive manager. A man who initially irritates John, but later become a trusted friend.

One evening when he is out on the town, the demon drink takes over, so when everywhere else closes he ends up in a ‘gentlemen’s’ club. Here he is captivated by one of the hostesses, Jasna, but he’s convinced it’s not alcohol fuelled lust. They quickly develop a friendship away from the club, but this becomes the source of pain, angst and grave danger.

For an action thriller it is something of a slow burn, with the first third of the novel setting up the scenario, demonstrating the depth of John’s sorrow, how drink brings out his inner demons and the ubiquitous presence of Charles the manager. Like a true master of his calling, Charles has a habit of suddenly appearing, like the shopkeeper in the Mr Benn children’s cartoon, just when John needs him. Initially a bit creepy I thought, he turns out to be a rather engaging character.

If you ignore the blurb it takes a little while for the plot to become apparent, though there are markers along the way. Dr John is thrust into the world of the high-end criminal gang, dodgy nightclubs, drugs, prostitution, extortion and violence, a world he has no real knowledge or experience of.

John is an unconvincing action hero and proves to be so as he tries to sort out the mess of his own making. He doesn’t get angry and turn into the Hulk or Rambo, he is a surgeon and not a particularly worldly wise one, so his efforts are somewhat lacking so more realistic. He is a prodigious drinker though, putting so much away that it would have the spirits of Oliver Reed and Jeffrey Bernard nodding in admiration. He is put through the whole gamut of emotions from being distraught, through love to the desire for vengeance. Not the most likeable hero at times but he is a good man who starts questioning himself and his purpose, before he embarks on something of a modern chivalric quest for justice (or is it vengeance). Instead of slaying a dragon he is after a murderous crime boss and like all quests this is not straightforward, his actions result in people around him being killed. This produces more self-doubt that he casts aside.

There is plenty of action for the thriller lover, and the brutal violence that comes with the subject matter. The criminals are thoroughly unpleasant without becoming parody and dish out a severe beating for John.

Jasna is nicely judged, whichever version of her ‘truth’ is correct, or whether it is somewhere in between. The interaction between John and Jasna is low-key and quite touching which is nicely judged considering ‘surgeon falls for hostess on holiday whilst grieving his wife’ is edging into fiction cliché territory. The reader is unsure of their motives or indeed who is exploiting who, so it never ends up as Pretty Woman, more a reminder that there is good in us all.

In Escape: The Hunter Cut Dr John Hunter must conquer his own inner demons whilst he battles for justice.

Escape: The Hunter Cut can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

L.A. Davenport is an Anglo-Irish author and journalist, and has been writing stories and more since he was a wee bairn, as his grandpa used to say. Among other things, he likes long walks, typewriters and big cups of tea

Don’t forget to check out the other stops on this blog tour:

The Midnight Man #JulieAnderson #TheMidnightMan

By Julie Anderson https://julieandersonwriter.com/ @jjulieanderson

Published by Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

336 pages ISBN 9781915817365

Publication date 30 April 2024

The Midnight Man is the first novel in the Clapham Trilogy.

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Zoe at Zooloos Book Tours https://taplink.cc/zooloosbooktours @ZooloosBT for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and Publisher.

The cover

What a fabulous cover! My first impression was that it captured the Film Noir movie posters of the period, but with the wording there are elements of the Pop Art movement. Then there’s the tunnel and hints of a rolling mist, if that doesn’t grab you then what will?

My review

It’s winter 1946 in Clapham and the paths of two young women are about to fatefully cross. Faye Smith is the canteen manager at the South London Hospital for Women and Children, the only hospital of its kind, for women and staffed by almost entirely women. Faye is diligent and hardworking so is likely to do well and get further promotion, which will be useful for her cash strapped family. She is also street smart and misses nothing.

Eleanor Peveril has just returned from Germany, where, as a legal secretary she was assisting at the Nuremberg trials. Now no longer needed, she faces an uncertain future which has already turned bleaker, as she has been conned by a landlady and seen her fiancé Patrick with another woman. With nowhere to go and no cash, she follows some nurses into the hospital canteen to warm up and scrounge any leftovers. She stands out to Faye, who gets people to rally round in support, and there begins an unlikely friendship.

A young nurse goes missing and eventually her body is found in one of the deep tunnels, which were used to shelter in during bombings, behind a locked door. Ellie heard an altercation on the night the nurse disappeared and so feels personally involved and is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. In her new friend Faye, she finds a willing confederate as they face danger and demons in the pursuit of the truth.

The cover suggests period noir, but don’t expect a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler homage, this is much more with two female central characters and takes a female perspective. The start is a little low key, at least by modern standards, but is constructed to create the meeting and friendship of Ellie and Faye. After this it quickly gets into its stride and moves along briskly like a consultant on his morning rounds before golf.

The setting is an absolute gem, a real place with a fascinating history, but one probably unknown even just a few miles away. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a novel where such a magnificent setting is utilised so well, from the canteen to the staffrooms, from the wards to the boiler room all exploited for atmosphere just like the best film directors would. The author has managed to incorporate snippets of its inspiring creation, history and ethos within the story arc as mere incidentals, but together they show how much the place was loved without derailing the action. The action itself is nicely judged and has the period noir feel about such that one can almost imagine it written at that time.

The use of the deep shelters and underground tunnels are another master stroke, bringing the prospects of mystery, danger, darkness and fear. Again, a real feature incorporated within the storyline that helps to enhance the feeling of time and place. It also brought a sense the film version of The Third Man when Harry Lime tries to escape through the Vienna sewers, and naturally the earworm of Anton Karas’ zither playing.

The period is set in is another excellent choice by the author and one that experienced great change. Its 1946, the war is over soldiers and auxiliaries are returning to a country bombed and battered and still facing rationing and hardship. The country has relied upon women to keep running during the war, working on farms and in armament factories, yet they are expected to make way for the returning men. Ellie and Faye are two women who want to remain in the world of work and not become the wife or ‘property’ of a man. The timing is critical for another reason, the formation of the welfare state and at its core the NHS. With hindsight we see it as one of the country’s greatest achievements, but here the uncertainty around it introduces a degree of angst in some characters, they want it to be better but will it be, but at the same time great optimism in others. The stark cost of illness pre-NHS is laid bare, as suffered within Faye’s family and is something few alive will now remember.

The friendship between Faye and Ellie is the glue that holds the story together. Its one of those odd relationships of opposites in background. Faye is working class and wily whereas Ellie is a vicar’s daughter and naïve, but their core beliefs align; two different women who stand for the same thing and neither want to be constrained by the old social norms. I suspect that men and women will have differing perspectives on their friendship, how quickly they become friends, and the ups and downs may feel unlikely to a male reader, but there are distinct social differences between the sexes.

The character cameos are brilliant, the stern (Paddington) stare of Matron sent a shiver down my spine, and I was just reading about it, the crooks had a menacing edge without being too obvious and Beryl is perfect as the no-nonsense Glaswegian nurse. The dialogue is nicely judged with enough to place it in London without getting all ‘geezer’ or indeed hardboiled. It also eschewed the modernisms we so easily fall into, again giving the right period feel.

I guess with the first book of a prospective trilogy the acid test is, are you ready for book two; I can’t wait!

The Midnight Man is a fabulous piece of historical fiction that melds crime noir with social history and feminist interests.

The Midnight Man can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Julie Anderson is the CWA Dagger listed author of three Whitehall thrillers and a short series of historical adventure stories for young adults. Before becoming a crime fiction writer, she was a senior civil servant, working across a variety of departments and agencies, including the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Unlike her protagonists, however, she doesn’t know where (all) the bodies are buried.

She writes crime fiction reviews for Time and Leisure Magazine and is a co-founder and Trustee of the Clapham Book Festival.

She lives in south London where her latest crime fiction series is set, returning to her first love of writing historical fiction with The Midnight Man, to be published by Hobeck.

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this blog tour:

The Human Kind #AlexanderBaron #TheHumanKind

By Alexander Baron

Published by IWM Wartime Classic https://www.iwm.org.uk/ @I_W_M

176 pages ISBN 9781912423798

Publication date 18 April 2024

The Human Kind is the third book in the author’s wartime trilogy.

I was sent a paperback copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to than Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Publisher.

The cover

A very stirring cover, with artwork by Bill Bragg, showing soldiers departing a landing craft and heading for a beach. There have been some amazing recreations of these scenes in recent movies and this certainly captures some of the fear and trepidation the soldiers must have experienced when they were most vulnerable.

The blurb

Spanning the Sicilian countryside to the brothels of Ostend, and the final book in Alexander Baron’s War Trilogy, The Human Kind is a series of pithy vignettes reflective of the author’s own wartime experiences. From the interminable days of training in Britain to brutal combat across Northwest Europe, the book depicts many of the men, women – and, in some cases, children – affected by the widespread reach of the Second World War. In his trademark spare prose, Baron’s work provides an emotive and incisive snapshot into the lives of myriad characters during this tumultuous period in history. Based on Alexander Baron’s own wartime experiences, this new edition of a 1953 classic includes an introduction from IWM which puts the work in historical context, and concludes the author’s War Trilogy.

My review

I suppose the first question would be why reprint a book written in 1953? Well, it is regarded as a classic and after reading it is easy to see why. There are a great number of historians, professional and gifted amateurs who are producing well written and researched books on the Second World War. Many go back to primary sources and some even have interviewed those who lived through it, but what they lack is first hand experience and which makes a book of this nature compelling. It may have been written 70 years ago, but the prose style compares well with modern writing, is accessible and even quite fresh. So much so that it could easily have been written in the last 20 years.

The novel is set out as a series of anecdotes and observations, created from the author’s time in service, so well crafted I was unable to split fact from fiction. Spanning the full period of the war, from the author’s call up, service in the Sicily and Normandy landings, to the end of hostilities. They run chronologically, though the emphasis if more towards the latter period and vary in length. The reader is given a sense of the waste and futility of war, without it becoming fervently anti-war, more it was something that had to be done at that time.

It begins with the period of the ‘phoney war’ period when the authors regiment could experience almost an idyllic summer in the English countryside; by the end there are men chastened or broken by their experiences. In between through his acutely observed stories we see how these young men are changed through a succession of events. These are young men of varying backgrounds who were forced together and somehow must get along. There is a broadening of cultural horizons for some, through David Copperfield and the music of Beethoven. There is the development of mutual respect for those whose working life is different, most evident in the mining story where they had to work alongside tough, flinty miners. Reflecting on the stories it is easy to see how being exposed to these experiences formed a determined, well balanced and fair-minded generation instrumental to the postwar creation of the NHS, welfare state and determination to clear slums. First-hand experience sharpens the mind and many of us are now insulated from much of what this generation witnessed.

The experience may have had a positive character forming effect on some soldiers, but it also damaged many mentally. There is a disturbing tale of a man breaking down in the heat of action but most of all it is the sense of men being used up. Men fighting themselves to a standstill, using up all their reserves of mental strength to the extension of becoming little more than a physical shell. This is sympathetically described, will some insight and certainly the treatment of sufferers appears to be much better than those suffering from shellshock in the previous war.

There is no appetite to gloss over the bad and shameful though. We like to believe that our armies were more humane than the German and Russian soldiers, and whilst we never fell to the level of depravity that some of their troops did, they were no angels. One attack on a pillbox shocked and surprised me, bad things happen in the heat of war, but this was too much. There are stories that touch on the abuse, both physical and sexual, of women and children as well as a callous disregard for animals, property and life. We see those who are desperate to cling onto their sense of humanity even when others descend into brutality. Thinking objectively, I wonder whether there is a correlation between the length of true active service at the front lines and the dehumanising effects of war. Many of the Allied forces came into the theatre of war late, compared to say the Russians, and never experienced the atrocities of the Eastern Front, so perhaps this is why they didn’t succumb the madness of war to the same extent.

The Human Kind is an incredible testament to one man’s experiences as he clings onto his humanity during a savage war and is rightly being brought a new audience.

The Human Kind can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Alexander Baron (1917 – 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. Widely acclaimed in his lifetime, he rose to prominence with his first novel, From the City, From the Plough, published in 1948 and based on his experiences of D-Day and the advance into Normandy. It quickly became a bestseller, achieving both popular success and critical acclaim, and reportedly went on to sell in excess of one million copies. The novel cemented Baron’s reputation as a skilled, powerful, authentic writer, and he went on to write many more books, including the second and third in the sequence, both best-sellers, alongside scripts for Hollywood and screenplays for the BBC.

Don’t forget to check out the other reviews on this blog tour:

Palamedes PR #PalamedesPR

Palamedes PR is a long-established and award-winning name in the book marketing field and the recognised UK market-leader.

Their specialist services include national and international press, TV and radio, and PR stunts. For more information, visit www.palamedes.co.uk @palamedespr

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Book bloggers are no longer considered ‘fringe media’ but important vehicles to promote new titles, authors and publishers. Unlike mainstream news and feature outlets, which reach a wide but less targeted audience, blogs like this one (Peter Turns The Page) are the go-to destination of choice for engaged consumers who return time and time again for expert reviews and advice.

According to Palamedes PR, the UK’s market-leading book marketing agency, bloggers can be instrumental in shaping the overall success of a new release and are an indispensable force in the public relations industry.

There follows a short question and answer session with Anthony Harvison, one of its publicists, exploring why book blogs are reshaping the literary marketing and sales landscape, and how they are an increasingly important advocate for underrepresented voices and genres.

Q: How has the landscape of book marketing evolved with the rise of book blogging, and what role does it play in promoting books?

Book blogging has become a powerful force in book marketing, offering a dynamic platform for readers to share their thoughts and recommendations. It plays a crucial role in creating buzz around books, reaching niche audiences, and influencing purchasing decisions.

Q: In what ways do book bloggers contribute to building a book’s online presence and visibility?

Book bloggers contribute significantly to a book’s online presence by writing reviews, hosting blog tours, and participating in social media discussions. Their authentic and personal recommendations can enhance a book’s visibility and attract a diverse readership.

Q: How do book publicists identify and collaborate with book bloggers to promote specific titles?

Book publicists often research and reach out to book bloggers whose content aligns with the target audience and genre of a particular book. Collaboration may involve sending review copies, organizing blog tours, or facilitating author interviews to generate interest among the blogger’s followers.

Q: Can you share examples of successful book marketing campaigns that heavily leveraged book blogging?

Successful campaigns often involve strategic partnerships with influential book bloggers. For instance, organizing blog tours with well-established bloggers, hosting giveaways, or encouraging book discussions on popular platforms can generate substantial online buzz and drive book sales.

Q: How do book bloggers contribute to the diversity and inclusivity of book promotion, particularly in highlighting underrepresented voices or genres?

Book bloggers have a unique ability to champion diverse voices and genres that might be overlooked in mainstream media. They can bring attention to underrepresented authors and stories, fostering a more inclusive literary landscape and broadening the range of books available to readers.

Q: With the prevalence of social media, how do book bloggers use platforms like Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube to enhance their book reviews and recommendations?

Many book bloggers utilize social media platforms to share visually appealing book recommendations, snippets of reviews, and engage in real-time conversations with their followers. Platforms like Instagram and YouTube, in particular, provide a multimedia approach to book promotion, enhancing the overall impact of their reviews.

Q: How can book publicists and authors effectively engage with book bloggers to ensure a mutually beneficial collaboration?

Building genuine relationships is key. Publicists and authors can engage with book bloggers by offering personalized pitches, providing relevant content, respecting their schedules, and acknowledging their contributions. It’s essential to approach collaborations as a partnership that benefits both parties and their audiences.

Q: Looking forward, do you see any emerging trends or changes in the relationship between book blogging and book marketing?

As technology evolves, immersive experiences like virtual book clubs, interactive content, and multimedia reviews may gain prominence in book blogging. The relationship between book bloggers and marketing may deepen as influencers continue to shape literary conversations and bridge the gap between authors, publishers, and readers.

For more information about Palamedes PR and its book marketing services, go to www.palamedes.co.uk or call 0208 1036883

Imran Mahmood at Hull Noir #ImranMahmood #FindingSophie #HullNoir

On Wednesday 17 April Imran Mahmood @imranmahmood777 was the guest of Hull Noir https://www.hullnoir.com/ @HullNoir to talk about his latest crime novel Finding Sophie and how he manages to juggle a writing career with being a criminal barrister. Host for the evening and the man asking the questions was local crime author Nick Quantrill https://www.nickquantrill.co.uk/ @NickQuantrill a co-director of Hull Noir.

Imran Mahmood in conversation with Nick Quantrill

As a rule, I attend Hull Noir events in person, but this time I was in La Palma enjoying a pleasant spring break in the Canary Islands sunshine. Fortunately, as well as these events being free to attend in person, they also provide a free livestream so there was no reason to miss out. As you will see from the photograph of my laptop screen the picture quality was excellent, as was the sound. Thanks to the wonders of X/Twitter I was even able to reserve a signed and dedicated copy of Finding Sophie from Julie of J.E. Books https://jebookshull.wordpress.com/ @JEBooksHull, our local independent bookseller who can be found at all of these events.

The event, including a Q&A session ran for an hour but there follows a flavour of what was discussed.

Background

In writing Finding Sophie IM wanted to explore the very worst thing that can happen to parents, a child going missing, what their reactions are and how they deal with a sense of grief it causes. Here the reactions of the parents are very different, but he is trying to find the real voice of the characters.

NQ added that he was impressed with the social realism that runs through Finding Sophie, the threats of violence (but don’t kill the dog!), the help of a clairvoyant and how the sex worker was ignored.

Teachers

NQ pointed out that both the parents in the novel are teachers and asks why. IM said that he wanted to acknowledge the role that teachers has played in forming his life, those that have helped and inspired him to achieve what he has. He jokingly remarked that teenagers were terrifying and that teachers have to deal with them everyday at school. It is easy for adults to dismiss teenagers for having it easy, but they must deal with a world that is constantly changing, ever faster, and also come with the physical and mental changes as they go through puberty and into adulthood.

Why crime?

NQ wanted to know why write crime fiction and not some brilliant legal courtroom drama, of which he observed there were so few are set in the UK. Since the days of Rumpole of the Bailey there has been so little which IM puts down, at least in some degree, to all the paraphernalia of wigs and gowns which hide actors on the screen. The main difference he points out is that the UK courts are much slower and less dramatic. A forensically realistic UK legal drama would be a rather boring read IM suggests. When he wrote his first novel, he asked his wife for her opinion on his draft, and she told him to the cut the boring legal bits.

So, he naturally decided to write crime, coming into daily contact with a wide variety of miscreants and creepy characters.  Of course he has some great stories to tell which I won’t elaborate here, as that would be akin to spoiling a stand-up comedian’s act.

Screenwriting

IM’s 2017 novel You Don’t Know Me was adapted for television, he was fortunate to have some input into the production, but it was Tom Edge who wrote the screenplay. IM has since been asked to work on screenwriting, which he is at pains to stress is a whole different skill set to being a novelist. The main difference is that you cannot get into the characters mind and express their thoughts, so as there is a difference between showing and telling, here the screenplay is much more direct and tells you what happens. The actual writing process is different too, particularly when it comes to the editing stage. A novel will have an editor, possibly two and go through perhaps three or four drafts; a screenplay could have the input of as many as fifty people at the editing stage before it is filmed.

Work-life balance

NQ wanted to know how he could manage to juggle two demanding careers. IM said that he has always enjoyed writing, he has done it in some form most of his life and writing late into the night is ingrained. His success has meant that he has become more selective in the legal work he accepts, which allows him a little more time to write and now he is able to produce a book a year.

Finding Sophie can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The blurb

Sophie King is missing.

Her parents, Harry and Zara, are distraught; for the last seventeen years, they’ve done everything for their beloved only daughter and now she’s gone.

The police have no leads, and Harry and Zara are growing increasingly frantic, although they are both dealing with it in very different ways. Increasingly obsessed with their highly suspicious neighbour who won’t open the door or answer any questions, they are both coming to the same conclusion. If they want answers, they’re going to have to take the matter into their own hands.

But just how far are they both prepared to go for the love of their daughter?

The author

Imran Mahmood is a practicing barrister with thirty years’ experience fighting cases in courtrooms across the country. His previous novels have been highly critically acclaimed: You Don’t Know Me was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club choice, Goldsboro Book of the Month and was shortlisted for the Glass Bell Award; both this and I Know What I Saw were longlisted for Theakston Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA Gold Dagger. You Don’t Know Me was also made into a hugely successful BBC1 adaptation in association with Netflix. When not in court or writing novels or screenplays he can sometimes be found on the Red Hot Chilli Writers’ podcast as one of their regular contributors. He hails from Liverpool but now lives in London with his wife and daughters. 

Coming up in May at Hull Noir:

Back From the Dead #HeidiAmsinck #BackFromTheDead

By Heidi Amsinck https://heidiamsinck.co.uk/ @HeidiAmsinck1

Published by Muswell Press https://muswell-press.co.uk/ @MuswellPress

375 pages ISBN 9781739123857

Publication date 18 April 2024

Back From the Dead is the third book in the Jensen series. Click on the links to read my reviews of My Name is Jensen and The Girl in the Photo the first two books in the series.

I was sent a paperback copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and Publisher.

The cover

What at first appears a bit of a low-key cover, not one that immediately grabs the attention, is a rather good one. There’s the ever-popular silhouette, of Jensen with her bicycle, looking across the Copenhagen waterfront, again another winner, but it also manages to convey a sense of being an outsider and looking in. For me it captures the spirit of the novel.

My review

Its June and Copenhagen is experiencing a heatwave as record temperatures are being recorded, and all crime fiction readers know this leads to frayed tempers. DI Henrik Jungersen is preparing to go on holiday with the family to Italy, something he is not looking forward to with relish. When a headless corpse surfaces in the harbour Henrik just has to get involved. The reader knows what he is doing; his wife is certainly knows what he is up to, but her ire is more dampened to more of a resigned disappointment. Of course, he promises to join them once progress has been made on the case, but she understands the reality of the situation, he’s using it as an excuse to opt out of the holiday.

Investigative reporter Jensen is feeling the heat too in the offices of Dagbladet. They are going through yet another round of redundancies now the newspaper has been bought by a Swedish investment fund. The newspaper industry is in a state of flux as the effects of technology and the internet are felt, but these cuts are deep including the senior crime reporter. Jensen is now placed in charge of crime, something she is reluctant to take on, but the alternative is redundancy for herself.

Jensen’s friend the MP Esben Nørregaard approaches her with a little problem, something he wants dealing with on the quiet, without involving the police. Whilst he has been out of the country his driver Aziz, a Syrian refugee, has disappeared. Esben has been receiving threats by email and hints at some shady past dealings, but fears involving the police will attract undue attention to Aziz and his family. Aziz is a friend of Jensen as is the resourceful coffee vendor Liron (who makes the best coffee in Copenhagen) and she will do anything she can for them regardless of their backgrounds.

A Cracking follow up to The Girl in the Picture and this is one novel where the reader would benefit by reading the earlier stories. Back from the Dead can be enjoyed as a stand alone but as the reader will discover some earlier threads are tied up along the way.

Jensen is a journalist of the old-school rather than the modern, online, clickbait variety. After 14 years in England, she has recently returned to Copenhagen unsure of what the future holds and looking for something solid to anchor her life to. Initially working freelance she is now full time at Dagbladet where her boss Margrethe recognises her value as a real journalist and sees a bit of herself in Jensen. Jensen also provides her with a ready-made ‘babysitter’ for nephew Gustav, who has had to leave school at least temporarily. After a period of irritation Jensen starts to like the foolish, reckless and very keen Gustav and they form the sort of unlikely alliance that give a novel a bit of zing. Gustav provides the humour and the light-hearted moments that a story involving headless corpses needs.

Central to the story is the relationship between Jensen and Henrik. Once lovers they are trying to be ‘friends’ though a rekindling of the past can never be ruled out. Henrik is in a can’t live with, can’t live without position, needing Jensen in his life but at the same time unwilling to abandon his home life and children. Jensen is trying to move on, now being in a relationship with her landlord the billionaire businessman Kristoffer Bro. Henrik doesn’t approve and makes his feelings clear, suggesting that Jensen knows little of him and certainly not of his dark past. She feels that Henrik is being the archetypal spurned lover who is reluctant to give up, harbouring the if I can have you then nobody can attitude. After thinking that she could find happiness with Kristoffer, Henrik has now sown the seeds of doubt. The dynamic of this relationship is critical to the series. It is perfectly judged to produce the right balance between interest in the characters and in the plot.

The story moves along at a brisk enough pace, never so quick that the characters cannot express themselves but when it reaches the conclusion it progresses with appropriate urgency. It is a story where there is always something going on, sometimes in the background away from the action, so the reader is encouraged to keep reading a bit more. Don’t be surprised if that ‘just one more chapter’ means you end up reading much later than intended.

The plot is intricate rather than complex, twisting around so the reader is never quite sure what to expect. The killers are wonderfully dumb, managing to leave a key piece of evidence behind. In crime fiction there is the desire for a criminal mastermind, but most, certainly those that are caught are usually done so due to their stupidity or incompetence. In this case it certainly got a chuckle out of me. The violence is low key and not graphic but there are headless bodies, bloodshed and beatings. The motivation throughout is control over people and how it is achieved, be it emotional, coercive, financial or debt of honour.  

Back from the Dead is another compelling slice of Scandi-Noir with a determined heroine seeking the truth and uncovering much more than she bargained for.

Back from the Dead can be purchased direct from the publisher here.

The author

Heidi Amsinck won the Danish Criminal Academy’s Debut Award for My Name is Jensen (2021), the first book in a new series featuring Copenhagen reporter sleuth Jensen and her motley crew of helpers. She published her second Jensen novel, The Girl in Photo, in July 2022, with the third due out in February 2024. A journalist by background, Heidi spent many years covering Britain for the Danish press, including a spell as London Correspondent for the broadsheet daily Jyllands-Posten. She has written numerous short stories for BBC Radio 4, such as the three-story sets Danish Noir, Copenhagen Confidential and Copenhagen Curios, all produced by Sweet Talk and featuring in her collection Last Train to Helsingør (2018). Heidi’s work has been translated from the original English into Danish, German and Czech.

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this blog tour:

Indie Press Network Spring Showcase – Genre Fiction #IndiePressNetwork

On 10 April the Indie Press Network held its Spring Showcase via a Zoom meeting, which I was fortunate to be invited to join. The presentation was hosted by Marina Sofia of Corylus Books and featured six small independent published talking about their books that are about to be published this spring, or recently published.

To receive more information about the Indie Press Network sign up for their regular newsletter.

Arachne Press

Arachne Press is a small publisher of fiction and poetry by writers who are LGBTQ+, disabled, Global Majority, older women, and/or geographically isolated.

Getting by in Tligolian

The City-State of Tligol is ruled by dictators, holds monthly public executions and is haunted by a benign, fishing, giant, but by and large the inhabitants are content, and the food is amazing. The perfect place for a city break, just as long as you don’t want to leave. Ever.

Language has its own relationship to time.

When Jennifer falls for Sam at his execution, she doesn’t immediately realise that she can still find and live with him; but the city of Tligol has trains that will take her anywhere, including her own past, and future, and multiple possible variations, just as long as she doesn’t leave the city. Jennifer rides the trains, loops around in time and sets an unplanned series of events in motion. For lovers of The City and The City… and Hotel California!

Corylus Books

Corylus Books is a place to discover new voices, translated crime fiction with a social edge.

Corylus had two books to promote, one of which I have already reviewed and blogged (Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case), the other (Murder under the Midnight Sun) I will be blogging on 10 May.

Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case

A key figure in the politics and literature of Argentina, Rodolfo Walsh wrote his iconic Letter to my Friends in December 1976, recounting the murder of his daughter Victoria by the military dictatorship. Just a few months later, he was killed in a shoot-out – just one of the Junta’s many thousands of victims.

What if this complex figure – a father, militant, and writer who delved the regime’s political crimes – had also sought to reveal the truth of his own daughter’s death?

Elsa Drucaroff’s imagining of Rodolfo Walsh undertaking the most personal investigation of his life is an electrifying, suspense-filled drama in which love and life decisions are inseparable from political convictions as he investigates the mystery of what happened to his own daughter.
The head of intelligence for Montoneros, a clandestine Peronist organisation co-ordinating armed resistance against the dictatorship, Rodolfo Walsh was also a prolific writer and journalist, seen as the forerunner of the true crime genre with his 1957 book Operation Massacre.

What if beneath the surface of his Letter to my Friends lay a gripping story lost to history?

Murder under the Midnight Sun

What does a woman do when her husband’s charged with the frenzied murder of her father and her best friend? She calls in Stella Blómkvist to investigate – however unwelcome the truth could turn out to be.

Smart, ruthless and with a flexible moral code all of her own, razor-tongued lawyer Stella Blómkvist is also dealing with a desperate
deathbed request to track down a young woman who vanished a decade ago.

It looks like a dead end, but she agrees to pick up the stone-cold trail – and she never gives up, even if the police did a long time ago.
Then there’s the mystery behind the arm that emerges from an ice cap, with a mysterious ruby ring on one frozen finger? How does this connect to another unexplained disappearance, and why were the police at the time so keen to write it off as a tragic accident?
Brutal present-day crimes have their roots in the past that some people would prefer to stay forgotten.
As Stella pieces together the fragments, is she getting too close to the truth and making herself a target for ruthless men determined to conceal secret sins?

Hobeck Books

Hobeck Books, based in Staffordshire, is a family-run independent publisher of award-winning crime, thriller, mystery and suspense books. They publish approximately twelve titles per year.

Hobeck Books also had two books to showcase, one of which I have already reviewed and blogged (Edge of the Land), the other (The Midnight Man) I will be blogging on 1 May.

Edge of the Land

The waterways of the Liverpool docks contain many ghosts and shadows. It’s a place to disappear… or die.

Detective Inspector April Decent and Detective Sergeant Skeeter Warlock fear for the welfare of a vulnerable young man injured in an attack ordered by drug dealers. Originally questioned at the scene, Danny Maynard denies the attack and refuses to co-operate with the police. He soon disappears. Clues to his whereabouts are seeded, a cry for help maybe, but he continues to be elusive.

The team are also dealing with a spate of deaths in the city, with one thing in common: the victims are all homeless and seemingly ravaged by addiction. Once that connection is realised – the hunt for a potential serial killer is on.

Is there a link between the missing man and the other deaths? Could he be the missing piece of the puzzle which will solve the mystery behind the brutal murders?

The Midnight Man

Winter 1946

One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.

Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate the case. Determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue – The Midnight Man.

BEWARE THE DARKNESS BENEATH

Jantar Publishing

Jantar Publishing is an independent publisher of Central European Contemporary Literary Fiction, Classic Fiction, Science Fiction and Poetry based in London.

Newton’s Brain

A genius and trickster, apparently dies at the Battle of Königgrätz in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. However, he has not died and instead is able to procure the brain of Isaac Newton to replace his own. Subsequently, he uses Newton’s knowledge of the laws of nature to overcome them, using a strange device to travel faster than the speed of light, and also to photograph the past. Newton’s Brain was published 18 years before H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, and has been considered a strong influence on Wells.

The author. Jakub Arbes (12 June 1840, Prague (Smíchov) – 8 April 1914) was a Czech writer and intellectual. He is best known as the creator of the literary genre called romanetto and spent much of his professional life in France.In 1867, he began his career in journalism as editor of Vesna Kutnohorská, and from 1868 to 1877, as the chief editor of the National Press. Arbes was also an editor of political magazines Hlas (The Voice) and Politiky (Politics), and a sympathizer of the Májovci literary group. During this time, Arbes was persecuted and spent 15 months in the Czech Lipa prison, for leading opposition to the ruling Austro-Hungarian Empire.[1] He left Prague soon after, spending time in Paris and the South of France as part of the intellectual community there. In France, he was an associate of other “Bohemian Parisiens” such as Paul Alexis, Luděk Marold, Guy de Maupassant, Viktor Oliva, and Karel Vítězslav Mašek, as well as the French writer Émile François Zola.

Sans. Press

Sans. PRESS is a Limerick-based indie press with a love for short stories. Under the motto fresh & weird, we celebrate new voices and narratives.

Stranger

This will be an anthology of short stories and if the cover is anything to go by they are likely to be very strange indeed.

Wild Hunt Books

Wild Hunt Books’s mission is to foster strong and distinct literary voices and those experimenting with narrative, plot, structure, and authors dabbling in darker genres and liminal spaces.

Bear Season

When Jade Hunter goes missing in the Alaskan wilderness, everyone is shocked. She was scheduled to speak at an academic symposium but never turned up. What was Jade really doing in Alaska?  

Blood is found in the woods and suspicion immediately falls on the reclusive survivalist Ursula Smith. She is swiftly arrested and convicted of Jade’s murder – even though a body has not been found.   

Several years later, Jade’s doctoral thesis leaks online, fuelling rumour and conspiracy over the true nature of her disappearance, leading investigative journalist Carla Young to dig through Jade’s life and discover what did happen to Jade Hunter. 

Whitechapel Autumn of Error #IanPorter #WhitechapelAutumnofError

By Ian Porter https://londontownwalks.com/

Published by Matador @matadorbooks

384 pages ISBN 9781805143987

Publication date 24 February 2024

I was sent an electronic copy and selected extract to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

An extract from Whitechapel Autumn of Error

Nash was quickly on the corner looking on, with just his head peeking out from the side of a warehouse in the square, well hidden in the gloom. After what appeared to be a short negotiation, the man guided the woman out of sight into a dark spot. They had no doubt moved to avoid standing beneath the square’s solitary streetlamp, a little more privacy being required. This was awkward. If Nash moved towards them, they would see him under the streetlight before he saw them. And the square was overlooked by warehouses and a two-storey house. Somebody gawping out of an upstairs window would see him commit the robbery. 

He decided on a different tactic. He would wait for the man to finish his business, after which he would be in a hurry to get away and would leave the woman to attend to herself. She might need to take out her sponge in the privacy of the square as soon as the client had gone. Or if it had been just a kneetrembler, she would want to wash her hands and apron. Either way, she would be looking for a puddle. There would be time for Nash to cosh and rob his prey just after the man had passed by the gas lamp. By the time the woman appeared he would be gone. If she was of a mind to, there would be time for her to give the man a kick in the ribs as she stepped over him. Nash liked to think she would. 

The time dragged frustratingly. 

Blimey, thought Nash, he’s taking his bleeding time. I’m standing here like two of eels!

Nash’s mind wandered, thinking of the most recent occasion he had himself been attacked. It was an occupational hazard for anyone in his line of business. There were always others out there looking to wreak violence for the same reason as him. The hunter became the hunted. There had been two of them. He had left them both lying in pain on the cobbles. It would have been worse for them, but he saw how young and poverty-stricken they looked; just lads with their arses hanging out their trousers, trying to earn a crust.

There was movement. The man had re-entered the lit part of the square and was coming towards him. Nash’s fingers curled around the cosh inside his right pocket. While his mind had been wandering, he had not been his usual alert self, but instinct now told him to have a quick look about him before making his move. 

It was just as well he did. A uniformed policeman was walking towards him. He was not taking any particular interest in Nash and would soon pass by and be gone, so the attack was only postponed for a moment or two. Turning towards the officer, Nash felt in his left pocket for a dog-end and a Lucifer match, both of which he kept there for precisely moments like this, struck the match on the brickwork of the wall at his side, curled both hands around it and lit the cigarette now in his mouth. He then walked towards the policeman, looked straight ahead till almost in front of him before glancing his way casually, momentarily as he passed. It was exactly what an innocent man just going about his business would do. The uniformed man returned the glance but no more than that and continued making his way down the street. Nash feigned the cigarette going out, clicking his tongue with irritation as he stopped to relight it, turning his body slightly as he cupped his hands again, and glanced back. 

The constable stopped suddenly. Nash cursed to himself, but then let out his breath in relief when he saw why the uniformed man had stopped. He was unfurling his raincoat. Another shower had started. Suitably attired against the elements, the policeman turned the next corner and disappeared out of sight. Nash saw no sign of his quarry. He surmised the man had obviously spotted the policeman too and retreated into the darkest part of the square waiting for the coast to clear. 

Nash knew he would have to move quickly now to catch his man in the square. He started to retrace his steps but within a second his prey appeared, looking about him in all directions, eyes wide open, staring wildly. Taken by surprise, Nash averted his gaze, put his head down and carried on walking past. He felt the man’s stare boring in to the back of his neck, before hearing footsteps moving off in the opposite direction. 

Nash crossed the street at once, so he had an angle to look in the direction of the footsteps without turning around. The man was scuttling away, head down just as Nash would have expected. But suddenly he slowed to a stroll and straightened, stretching his neck out like a clerk in a collar a size too small. He was making a conscious effort to appear at ease with the world and his place in. Nash looked on with a grim expression. He thought it amazing what a quick bit of ‘how’s your father’ could do. 

The immediate moment to strike had gone, but Nash would follow him till the moment was again right to pounce. He ducked into the dark part of the square where the man had just had his pleasure, to wait a few seconds before following him again. There was no sign of the woman. She should have been out by now. 

Nash wondered if her client had hurt the poor old cow. 

He stepped quickly along to check on her. He would still have time to return to his slow-moving prey. It was pitch-dark but he could just about make out the dim outline of what appeared to be a pile of scattered old clothes. He took another few steps closer and saw it was the body of a woman. She was dead. 

Nash struck a match. The woman’s sexual area had been attacked with a knife, her throat cut and face slashed. A replacement match enabled Nash to note that whilst there was blood, given the horrendous damage done to the body, remarkably little of it.

He had seen many terrible things, instigated some of them, but this was not right. This was pure evil. He lurched back into the alley, then back to the street and stopped to look along it in both directions. No coppers. Nobody else either, except at the far end of the street, a man in a deerstalker was folding away a large slaughterman’s knife in on itself before slipping it into a coat pocket. 

Nash started to run after the figure, but he could not get his breath. It was like he normally felt at the end of a run round the marshes. He could not make any sense of it. Then his lungs began to fill. But accompanying the oxygen coursing through him was anger and unease in equal measure. 

People notice runners, he thought, especially at night. If you’re running, you’ve been up to something. Dogs bark; chase after you. Coppers get interested. Seen running away from a murder, his neck would be stretched for sure and not like a clerks’ in a tight collar. 

Nash slowed to a walk. The killer, little more than twenty yards away, set off again. Nash took a deep lungful of putrid air through his nostrils and followed. Fearful of losing his target in the darkness, he closed the gap. He was now within the man’s earshot so needed to sprint forward and overpower him before he had time to reach for his knife. Nash was about to strike when he hesitated and stopped in his tracks. A thought had struck him like a lightning bolt. He allowed the man to go on his way, unmolested. 

Nash had made a profound decision. He had chosen not to attack the man the moment it dawned on him that he was following the Whitechapel Murderer. 

The Blurb

Whitechapel 1888; a killer is on the loose and the newspapers are ensuring the nation knows all about not just the crimes but the terrible living conditions in which they are being perpetrated.

Nashey, a tough, scary yet charismatic man of the night, whose mother had to prostitute herself when he was a boy, knows the identity of the killer but keeps it a secret. He believes the publicity generated by the murders is forcing the authorities to address the poverty and degradation in the area. He allows the killer to remain free (whilst ensuring no more women are attacked) so the unsolved murders continue to dominate the headlines. He meets Sookey, an eccentric middle-class slummer and civilising influence. The two of them share a mutual friend, Mary Kelly, a fiery young prostitute whose back-story tells of how she was reduced to such a life.

To fund his surveillance of the killer, Nashey agrees, against his better judgement, to assist an old adversary to commit a daring night robbery under the noses of the huge police presence in the area.

Is it too late for Nashey and Mary to correct their mistakes?

My review

My review will appear later in April.

Whitechapel Autumn of Error can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Ian Porter is a historian, lecturer, public speaker and walks guide. He has a particular interest in women’s history and social history. His novels are renowned for being extremely well researched and historically accurate. Whitechapel Autumn of Error is a typically feminist, social history novel that brings the dark streets of the East End 1888 to life. He has written several other novels including the highly acclaimed Suffragette Autumn Women’s Spring, set during the fight for the vote for women, and a Plague On Both Your Houses, set in both London & Berlin in 1918/19 during the final months of the Great War and the Spanish Flu. Ian is getting on a bit (well, aged 69). His grandparents were young adults living in East London at the time of the Whitechapel Murders.  

Don’t forget to check out the other stops on this blog tour:

Edge of the Land #MalcolmHollingdrake #EdgeOfTheLand

By Malcolm Hollingdrake https://malcolmhollingdrakeauthor.co.uk @MHollingdrake

Published by Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

262 pages ISBN 9781915817419

Publication date 16 April 2024

Edge of the Land is the third book in the Merseyside Crime Series. Click on the link to read my review of Catch as Catch Can the first book in the series.

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Rebecca at Hobeck Books and of course the author for the invitation to participate.

The cover

A distinctive local landmark is always a great bet for a cover and this one is magnificent. It’s a clocktower from Liverpool Docks which ends up playing a part in the story. If you visit Liverpool it’s something to look out for.

• 

My review

The waterways of the Liverpool docks contain many ghosts and shadows. It’s a place to disappear… a place to die. (from the blurb)

Well, that should grab the attention of the potential reader and it’s a great summary of the novel.

The death of one homeless alcoholic on the streets sadly is no shock; just another tragic statistic, someone with bad luck, let down by the system or by family and friends. A second death in similar circumstances a couple of days later, registers as unusual with the police, but there seems to be no connection or suspicious circumstances for now. However, it will soon become clear that they have a serial killer on their hands…

Danny Maynard is a young man who is no stranger to trouble and has already served time for drugs offences. When attacked and savagely beaten on the orders of a drugs gang, he denies it to the police and goes on the run. Slipping into the shadows, he is off their radar but DI April Decent and DS Skeeter Warlock are fearful for his safety. Danny does appear to be a survivor though and a resourceful one, as he leaves a series of clues behind like a trail of virtual breadcrumbs.

A two-strand storyline with one baffling and motiveless; the other with a puzzle at its core. The plotting is very clever to make this story come together and maintain the intrigue throughout.

The murder of the homeless people is quite shocking in its callousness, such that the reader will think who would do such a thing and why? This feeling is accentuated by the humanity which the author gives these victims, their circumstances may tragic, but these are people with feelings trying to keep hold of some semblance of dignity. There are sadly many such people on our streets and they all have a story to tell, sometimes it is just bad luck or a need to escape abuse that sees them there.

The puzzle is a cracker, it takes the form of photographs left behind on a mobile phone. These are subtle clues though, the pictures are not easy to decipher as they’re taken odd angles, are close ups or part details. A real rebus for the squad to solve, as they embark on a Magical Mystery Tour of the City requiring a team effort to solve. Different officers latch onto things they recognise, which is more realistic than a Sherlock like supersleuth figuring it all out. It’s all very cleverly assembled and I’m sure that people familiar with Liverpool will enjoy identifying the locations as they read along. It’s a little bit harder for those of us with little knowledge of the city, it’s a shame that these photographs are not reproduced even if just on his website.

One thing is clear though is the affection the author has for Liverpool, which brings a vibrancy to the prose. He doesn’t avoid the grubby, seedy, run down parts of the city, they are used to pronounced effect, as are the waterways of canals and working dock areas. Overall, though, the portrayal is that of a modern, vibrant city, one that is changing but steadfastly proud of its heritage and welcoming to the visitor. Buy the book, organise your city break now and check out the landmarks, statues and musical past.

Another fine aspect is that not all the characters are polarised, but rather shown is shades of light and dark. Danny can hardly be regarded as good, but as the reader discovers more of his background he will be seen in a more sympathetic light, and I found myself rooting for him. A common theme throughout is whether characters possess the capacity to change, to escape their past and even break the cycle of brutality. It has been established that the victims of abuse can go on to be an abuser themselves, but it doesn’t have to be so if other opportunities are presented. It can also fester as a desire for revenge.

April and Skeeter are great central characters, determined but also well balanced and they provide counterpoint to the angst of the storyline. It’s not all about them tough as DC Kasum Kapoor DC Tony Price do much of the leg work, as you would expect their rank to. They also inject banter and light-hearted moments. Overall, the chemistry between the team members becomes believable.

The clues are a fantastic way of controlling the pace of the narrative; no matter what resources and urgency the police introduce there is always a feeling that they are a couple of steps behind. Then the tipping point is reached, and everything unwinds a race against time. Nothing about the story is given away cheaply, so the jigsaw pieces only start to fit together in the final chapters, leaving a satisfying finale that demonstrates we all need a plan in life.

Edge of the Land is an thrilling police procedural packed with contrasts and mystery.

Edge of the Land can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Photograph (c) Tony Bithell

You could say that the writing was clearly on the wall for someone born in a library that they might aspire to be an author, but to get to that point Malcolm Hollingdrake has travelled a circuitous route. Malcolm worked in education for many years, including teaching in Cairo for a while. Malcolm has been happily married to Debbie for over forty years. They met in their first weekend at Ripon college through strange and unusual circumstances. Serendipity was certainly cupid on that occasion. Malcolm has written a number of successful short stories, has twelve books now published in the Harrogate Crime Series. He is also working on the third book of the Merseyside Crime Series which Hobeck will be publishing. The books introduce us to DI April Decent and DS Skeeter Warlock. Malcolm has enjoyed many diverse hobbies including flying light aircraft, gliders and paragliders, learning to fly at Liverpool Airport, designing and making leaded windows and collecting works by Northern artists.

Don’t forget to check out all the other great reviews on this blog tour:

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The Kitchen #SimoneBuchholz #TheKitchen

By Simone Buchholz @ohneKlippo

Translated by Rachel Ward http://www.forwardtranslations.co.uk/ @FwdTranslations

Published by Orenda Books https://orendabooks.co.uk/ @OrendaBooks

276 pages ISBN 9781916788077

Publication date 11 April 2024

The Kitchen is the seventh Chastity Riley novel published by Orenda Books and the second of the Chastity Reloaded series. Click on the link to read my earlier reviews of Blue Night, Hotel Cartegena, River Clyde and The Acapulco.

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and Publisher.

The cover

Once again, the neon sign style, this time against the backdrop of Hamburg and a lovely variant of the skull and crossbones motif. A great cover.

My review

Chastity Riley is busy preparing for a case against a gang of human traffickers, men recruiting young Romanian women and girls with promises of legitimate work, but which of course ends up as prostitution. After their spirit is broken by rape, they are effectively prisoners expected to service ten men a day. The evidence is strong, but Chastity is determined that the case must be watertight; these men must pay for what they have done.

Hamburg is suffering from a heat wave, with no respite on the dusty streets, conjuring up images of spaghetti westerns to Chastity. Here she imagines she strides like Clint Eastwood, cigarette in mouth rather than a cigar as she brings law and order…

When neatly packaged male body parts are washed up on the river Elbe the police are stumped, they have head, hands and feet but no torso. A policewoman remarks to Chastity that the parcels are too well wrapped to have been done by a man. Then parts of a second body wash up. A pattern developed; both victims were men who treated women abominably.

Klatsche finds Chastity’s best friend Carla in a terrible state, she’s been brutally attacked by two men. Chastity persuades Carla to report the attack to the police, but she discovers that to them it’s just another case number added to a log jammed system. Progress is slow, almost to a state of callous disregard.

Another scorching addition to a fabulous series, one that slices to the heart of the matter, the ill treatment of women by some men. I’m sure it’s happened throughout human history, but in our modern civilised world it is still far too common. A timely novel as women’s hard-fought rights are under threat.   

The author has a very individual style, with pared back prose where all superfluous words and actions are excised, leaving a story with laser like focus. What the reader is left with is a series of remarkable character vignettes, some weird, some funny, whilst others are touching, interspaced with events ranging from bizarre to the mundane. This slightly staccato form may not be to every reader’s taste but it’s never dull or boring. The prose is sharp, concise and at times very witty; the chapters are short and punchy, one being merely a single sentence, but somehow they seem just right. A perfect example where less is actually more, the reader focusing on every single word. Once again Rachel Ward does a wonderful job of translating from German but keeping all these characteristics within a text that flows almost rhythmically at times.

There are elements of the hard-boiled, but there are no detailed descriptions of how characters are dress or a cigarette is rolled, instead there is more of a delve into the character and motivation of the key players. The events of this story having a profound effect upon Chastity who is very much a woman of justice, one who believes in the sanctity of the law. Instead, she is first ambivalent and then seriously conflicted, as can be expected when events affect a loved one or someone close. It’s almost as if we can see her moral compass wilding spinning as events unfold and we are presented with a very different Chastity. A bit of moral ambiguity to be faced up to, the obviously question being what we would do in just such a situation.

It is left to Chastity’s former boss Faller to provide the wisdom of the ages. Every day he sits by the old lighthouse with a fishing rod, though he appears to have little interest in catching anything. Like The Buddha masquerading as a garden gnome as he contemplates long-term retirement, it is Faller who provides the equilibrium Chastity so desperately needs.

The story arc may well become apparent, I certainly had more than an inkling, but dare I say may be more enjoyable because of this. In the way that Oliver Hardy comes crashing through a roof or chimney and is hit by a cascade of bricks, we know there will be one final one a couple of seconds later and still we wait and that’s the biggest laugh. Here we have a serious, painful subject suffused with a some very dark and macabre humour that enhances the message rather than diluting it. The balance is perfection.

The dialogue is a joy, succinct and punchy, buzzing along with a sense of energy. Chastity is a whip smart wit with a knack for the well timed put down or withering rebuke, even when they are not vocalised.

The imagery of life in kitchens and butchery figure throughout, amongst the short diversions are how to eviscerate and prepare a pig along with a recipe for black pudding, actions necessary for the diner to experience sumptuous meals. It also proves to be something of a metaphor for aspects of humanity we try to ignore.    

In The Kitchen violence against women is spatchcocked for all to see and served with a piquant sauce of macabre humour. As they say if you can’t stand the heat…

The Kitchen can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Simone Buchholz was born in Hanau in 1972. At university, she studied Philosophy and Literature, worked as a waitress and a columnist, and trained to be a journalist at the prestigious Henri-Nannen-School in Hamburg. In 2016, Simone Buchholz was awarded the Crime Cologne Award as well as runner-up in the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. The critically acclaimed Beton Rouge, Mexico Street, Hotel Cartagena and River Clyde all followed in the Chastity Riley series, with The Acapulco out in 2023. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

The translator

Rachel Ward is a freelance translator of literary and creative texts from German and French to English. Having always been an avid reader and enjoyed word games and puzzles, she discovered a flair for languages at school and went on to study modern languages at the University of East Anglia. She spent the third year working as a language assistant at two grammar schools in Saaebrücken, Germany. During her final year, she realised that she wanted to put these skills and passions to use professionally and applied for UEA’s MA in Literary Translation, which she completed in 2002. Her published translations include Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang and Red Rage by Brigitte Blobel, and she is a member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting.

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this blog tour:

Reading across the world – April: Germany – The Kitchen by Simone Buchholz; Denmark – Back From The Dead by Heidi Amsinck; Sark – The Stranger’s Companion by Mary Horlock #Germany #Denmark #Sark

After last month’s two visits to South America, my April reviews will be much nearer to home, all three being in Europe. Two are novels in series that I already am familiar with and the other is an unusual novel set in the Channel Islands.

The first stop is Hamburg in Germany for The Kitchen by Simone Buchholz, which I will be reviewing as part of the Random Things blog tour (on 15 April). This is book seven in the Chasity Riley series. If you are not familiar with the series then you are in for a treat. Chastity is a State Prosecutor but is more like a hard-boiled PI at times, with a tough kick-ass streak, whilst remaining some vulnerabilities and poor taste in men. The prose is fantastic, almost lyrical at times but totally stripped back as if every single word has been carefully considered.

Previous reviews in this series Blue Night, Hotel Cartegena, River Clyde and The Acapulco.

The Kitchen by Simone Buccholz

Published by Orenda Books on 11 April 2024

When neatly packed male body parts wash up by the River Elbe, Hamburg State Prosecutor Chastity Riley and her colleagues begin a perplexing investigation.

As the murdered men are identified, it becomes clear that they all had a history of abuse towards women, leading Riley to wonder if it would actually be in society’s best interests to catch the killers.

But when her best friend Carla is attacked, and the police show little interest in tracking down the offender, Chastity takes matters into her own hands and as a link between the two cases emerges, horrifying revelations threaten Chastity’s own moral compass … and put everything at risk.

The award-winning, critically acclaimed Chastity Riley series returns with a slick, hard-boiled, darkly funny thriller that tackles issues of violence and the
difference between law and justice with devastating insight, and an ending you
will never see coming…

Then on 25 April 2024 it is on to Copenhagen in Denmark for Back From The Dead by Heidi Amsinck which again is for the Random Things blog tour. This is book three in the Jensen series, which is another one of my personal favourites. Jensen is a freelance journalist who has returned to Copenhagen after a period in London. Can she find enough of a reason to make her stay? Her former lover DI Henrik Jungersen has split from his wife to add further complexity to Jensen’s life.

Previous reviews in this series The Call me Jensen and The Girl in the Photo.

Back from the Dead by Heidi Amsinck

Published by Muswell Press 18 April 2024

A Missing person … a headless corpse … Jensen is on the case.

June, and as Copenhagen swelters under record temperatures, a headless corpse surfaces in the murky harbour, landing a new case on the desk of DI Henrik Jungersen, just as his holiday is about to start.

Elsewhere in the city, Syrian refugee Aziz Almasi, driver to Esben Nørregaard MP has vanished. Fearing a link to shady contacts from his past, Nørregaard appeals to crime reporter Jensen to investigate.

Could the body in the harbour be Aziz? Jensen turns to former lover Henrik for help. As events spiral dangerously out of control, they are thrown together once more in the pursuit of evil, in a case more twisted and, more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.

Inbetween these two blog tours I will be posting my review of a novel set on the island of Sark in the Channel Islands which is set in 1933.

The Stranger’s Companion by Mary Horlock

Published by Baskerville on 20 June 2024

October 1933

With a population of five hundred souls, isolated Sark has a reputation for being ‘the island where nothing ever happens’. Until, one day, the neatly folded clothes of an unknown man and woman are discovered abandoned at a coastal beauty spot. As the search for the missing couple catches the attention of first the local and then national newspapers, Sark finds itself front-page news.

When young islander Phyllis Carey returns to Sark from England she throws herself into solving the mystery. As Phyll digs through swirls of gossip, ghost stories and dark rumours in search of the truth, she crosses paths with Everard Hyde, a surprise visitor from her past. As press coverage builds to fever pitch, long-suppressed secrets from Phyll’s and Everard’s shared, shadowy history begin to surface.

The Stranger’s Companion is a beguiling historical mystery inspired by a real-life crime, which remains unsolved to this day.

The Red Hollow #NatalieMarlow #TheRedHollow

By Natalie Marlow @NatalieMarlow2

Published by Baskerville (an imprint of John Murray Press) https://www.johnmurraypress.co.uk/landing-page/baskerville-imprint/ @BaskervilleJMP

320 pages ISBN 9781399801843

Publication date 28 March 2024

I was allowed access to a pdf review copy on Net Galley https://www.netgalley.com/ @NetGalley.  Thanks to the Author and Publisher for organising this.

The cover

What a fabulous cover, the closer you look the more you notice, even down to the wallpaper pattern. It captures the period, the location and protagonists whilst giving a noirish feel with the clever use of the colour scheme.

My review

Its now 1934 and Phyll Hall has joined William Garrett’s private enquiry agency. Business is somewhat slow and will continue to be so until they get back on the right side of ‘Shifty Shirley’. Phyll’s brother Freddy, is another victim of the war and resides in a residential home, whilst being treated for his nerves. When the home’s psychiatrist, Dr Moon, calls saying that he has a problem he wishes them to investigate, William reluctantly agrees, reminding Phyll that it is his son’s christening that weekend.

The residential home is Red Hollow a former grand house set in a hamlet in the Warwickshire countryside. Recently there have been a series of incidents that at first appeared to be nothing more than pranks, but they have escalated into something more disturbing including a death. Now both patients and staff are leaving, and the charismatic Dr Moon is struggling to keep the sanitorium open.

Are William and Phyll looking for a flesh and blood prankster or something more malevolent? Local folklore has it that a young girl was murdered and her ghost returns in the guise of The Mermaid of Red Hollow when the hamlet floods. Then she can take her revenge on the misogynist men who mistreat women.

It’s great to have William back along with Phyll who I feel is a captivating character. The insulting jibe, calling her Burlington Bertie was brilliantly on point for the time and had me chuckling more than once. This time Queenie the boss of the waterways criminal gang and old friend (and more) to William grabs much more of the limelight.

The setting is wonderfully evoked; the grand hall starting to fade. It’s the 1930’s so the servant class has all but vanished with The First World War, and more owners realise that they cannot hope to afford the upkeep of these grand old Halls. Here the owner has moved into a tower in the gardens, leaving the main building to Dr Moon to use. There is also a church containing creepy symbolism and a crypt in the grounds. Almost all the plot is located within these buildings and the estate, allowing for a tight claustrophobic feel to story that is only enhanced by the periodic failure on the electricity generator. At times the tension is palpable.

The style is certainly unusual marrying elements of the noir genre with the supernatural. The setting might have suggested the traditional gothic, but it was the occult references that took over my imagination. Aleister Crowley that man of many guises, artist, novelist, philosopher, magician, adventurer and creator of the Thelema religion is referenced and has some malign influences on the characters. He’s certainly a man who has divided opinion, some regarding him as the most dangerous man in Britain (well he might have been in Leamington Spa where he was born) whereas others, like William just guffawed at the so called ‘Sex Magick’ man. The references are sparing and are used to give flavour to the plot. After all these are the days of the wealthy decadents dabbling in the dark arts for amusement rather than genuine attempts at satanic rites.

The men in the sanitorium are troubled souls with damaged minds, so the evocation of the folklore mermaid to their suggestive state could easily terrify them. The work of Dr Moon also leaves them more susceptible to the idea that the supernatural can manifest into physical form.  

William is still a man trying to recover from his wartime experiences and here he is dealing with men who have suffered just as he has. The reader gets to see more of the man beneath the carapace he has created to protect his feelings, the empathetic man as well as the deeply troubled one. He quickly finds an ally in Dr Moon, though as he comes to find out his methods are somewhat unusual. These techniques lead to some distinctly odd but wonderfully entertaining scenes that marry perfectly with the overall feel of the storyline. William also has flashbacks to his past that come to explain how he ended up with Queenie and Ronnie working on the narrowboats. These are cleverly segued into the story and just a few short paragraphs end up explaining so much about him.

Queenie ends up gatecrashing the investigation, bringing her marvellous combination no nonsense, ball breaking and tough love matriarch to the storyline. As well she might do as we discover that she knows more than initially thought and ends up spilling secrets. Queenie is not a woman to be crossed, but at times appears to have met her match. William sees a different side to Queenie that may change their relationship later in the series.

Tension and anxiety are cleverly built up throughout the story only to be released as a sudden crack of violence or relief of a false alarm. The violence is bloody and will have some readers wincing as the mermaid appears to wreak her revenge on men. The action scenes are thrilling, the villains are menacing and there is a real sense of danger.      

The author

Natalie Marlow is an historical novelist with a fascination for the people and landscapes of the Midlands. Much of her writing takes inspiration from the stories her grandparents told. She holds an MA in Creative Writing (Crime Writing) from the University of East Anglia and is part-way through a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. She lives in Warwickshire with her family. (Source: Publisher’s website)

Leo Moon: The Aries Billionaire #RachelWells #JessicaAdams #LeoMoonTheAriesBillionaire

By Rachel Wells @RachelWellsuk and Jessica Adams https://www.jessicaadams.com/ @jessicacadams

Narrated by Oliver Chris

Published by Audible Original https://www.audible.co.uk/ @audibleuk

5 hours 25 minutes

Publication date 23 November 2023

I was sent an audiobook to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Authors and the Publisher.

The cover

There’s a lot of text on the cover but there’s also enough to hint at what the listener can expect.

The narrator

Not so much a narration as a full theatrical performance and an excellent one at that. A vast array of male and female voices across the adult age range and some good accent work. I found a couple of the voices quite irritating (intentionally so I think) making me wish they were to be killed off. The sort of performance that the listener is immediately drawn into the story.

My review

Meet Mike Kirby, star sign Aries, who is about to celebrate his fiftieth birthday in some style with a rocket display. These are not your run of the mill pyrotechnics though, because Mike is a billionaire. He is going to celebrate his birthday by blasting off into space in his own rocket, before safely returning to earth in time for the party he is holding. Truly a sight to behold because its also the weekend of an eclipse.

Leo Moon is a young man who gave up his university studies to be the manager (and general dogsbody) of his mother, the renowned astrologer to the stars, Eleanor Moon. Eleanor is a woman Mike Kirby places great faith in, and he values her opinion on the influences of the stars and planets on his business decisions and personal choices. Both she and Leo are invited to the weekend bash, which is being held on Mike’s private island, off the coat of Ireland. Leo’s friend the freelance journalist Karen Penn is also tagging along in the search of a story. It promises to be a weekend to remember…

On the island things don’t go to plan, an accident leaves Mike in a coma and then there is a murder. Can Leo along with Karen, as Watson to his Holmes, playing amateur detectives, uncover the truth?

The plot is wonderfully ludicrous, fittingly so because the lives of billionaires have no terms of reference to the average listener. There are so many billionaires entering the space travel business that is ‘old hat’. Indeed, it’s almost at the prerequisite stage of needing to have a rocket to be a proper billionaire; private jets are so common and for little people. They are also the kind of people open to more unusual suggestions, so why not be guided by the stars, after all he is shooting for them.

The situation that unfolds is a variation of the classic country house mystery updated for the 2020’s. Even the motive for murder falls within the theme, so if you love the golden age you are going to enjoy this story. This type of story calls out for a varied cast of interesting characters, with the occasional outrageous one as a bonus, and we are indulged here.  

Leo wants life to be straightforward, he even takes Steve Job’s lead when it comes to dressing, reducing the number of decisions to be made each day. He lives on a houseboat at Brighton and loves surfing as well as astrology. He’s great at reading signs but less so people, finding women very confusing. Perhaps this is throwback to his boarding school days, either way it leads to frustration in the fairer sex.

Eleanor is forthright and certain in her abilities even though she dresses like a minor character from Dallas or Dynasty, favouring 1980s power suits and shoulder pads. Her true colours are displayed by the appearance of Mystic Marjory, ‘that fraud’. Marjory claims to commune with the spirits, though they mainly seem to be the ones in a bottle and consumed with very little mixer. Still, she says her spirit guides Freddie and Will (Mercury and Shakespeare) will guide her, though she did think Rod Stewart was trying to contact her until it was pointed out he wasn’t dead yet. The interaction between the two bring out some great humour, that had me chuckling along whilst walking the dog.

With this type of story we must look to the staff, in the true ‘the butler did it’ spirit. Here we have useless but friendly Brummie housekeeper Alice and the slightly peculiar island manager Julian to divert the reader’s attention.

The story is short in length but is fully formed and much more than a novella, and as such moves along at a fair clip. Admittedly its not an incident packed story, but one of personalities and interactions within a classic situation superimposed on a modern setting. It’s a gentle satire on wealth, the super-rich with their way of life and attitudes. Most of all though, it is entertaining and amusing listen and a great way to pass a few hours.

Leo Moon: The Aries Billionaire can be purchased from Amazon here

The authors

RACHEL WELLS is the author of eight books in the Sunday Times bestselling Alfie series (HarperCollins) and has been in the Top Ten a number of times. Alfie has been translated into Japanese, Italian, Chinese, French and German, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Finnish, Dutch and Russian. Rachel’s latest collaboration with Jessica Adams is The Leo Moon Mysteries for Audible UK. They also worked together on the #9 travel bestseller in Australia, The Holiday Goddess Guide to Paris, London, New York and Rome (HarperCollins) and the global Top Ten fiction hit series Girls’ Night In and Kids’ Night In (Penguin, HarperCollins). 

JESSICA ADAMS is the author of the #1 US and Australia Amazon horoscope bestseller, 2020 Astrology: Your Five-Year Horoscope Guide. She began her career at ELLE and her work can be found in VOGUE and on ITV with 1+ million YouTube views. She hosts The Astrology Show Podcast, the #1 Apple spirituality chart show in the UK, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand. Her books include Essential Astrology for Women (HarperCollins) and Handbag Horoscopes (Penguin).

Don’t forget to check out all the previous reviews on this Blog Tour:

Dark Rooms #LyndaLaPlante #DarkRooms

By Lynda Le Plante https://lyndalaplante.com/ @LaPlanteLynda

Narrated by Rachel Atkins

Published by Bonnier Audio, Zaffre (an imprint of Bonnier Books UK) https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/imprints/zaffre/ @ZaffreBooks

336 pages (9 hours 52 minutes) ISBN 9781804180334 (PB)

Publication date 18 August 2022

Dark Rooms is the eighth novel the Jane Tennison Thriller Series.

I reviewed an audiobook using the BorrowBox library app https://www.borrowbox.com/ @BorrowBox. I would like to thank Tracy Fenton @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMTENNISON review project.

Clink on the links to read my reviews of Tennison, Hidden Killers, Good Friday, Murder Mile, The Dirty Dozen, Blunt Force and Unholy Murder. My review of Taste of Blood the nineth novel in the series will be posted on this blog in the first week in May.

The Cover

A nice atmospheric cover, consistent with the series, featuring (presumably) Jane approaching an imposing property, which is a key setting for the story.

The narration

Another excellent job by Rachel Atkins, who demonstrates a good range of voices, including a fabulous portrayal of family matriarch Beatrice. She is an English woman who has lived in Australia for some years and so has an accent that takes part of both, but also needs to cover a breadth of emotions.

My review

Jane has finally been promoted to Detective Inspector. It was a tough, obstacle strewn, route for her, including the obligatory return to uniform for a year, but now she has made it, her career is set to take off.

As with the previous novel in the series, Unholy Murder, it is the 1980s building boom that throws up a desperate case for Jane to investigate. Builders are busy working on a prestigious property development at a large house that had previously been converted into flats. The property has a substantial but neglected garden and a full-length cellar with a tunnel leading off to an old bomb shelter, all of which the residents were denied access to. When the builders finally make their way into to shelter, they are faced with a grisly sight, a partly decomposed body of a young woman chained to a bed. After her success investigating the convent case and noting the similarities with this one, DCI Wayne Carter passes the job on to Jane. A decision he will come to regret.

When visiting the scene after the CSI officers have left, eagle-eyed Jane spots two concrete blocks strapped together in a dark corner. Her interest duly piqued, she has them removed and when the strap, which is in fact a monogrammed belt, is cut the remains of a baby are found. Forensics determine that the body of the baby was wrapped up whilst it was still alive, and its corpse has been there at least twenty years. This makes no matter to Jane; in her mind everyone deserves justice and the truth must be discovered.

Police progress is hampered because the property’s owner is a wealthy heiress, who is now living in a care home, suffering from dementia and uncommunicative. Her affairs have passed via a power of attorney to her nephew Jason, a brash young man who immediately raises Jane’s hackles.

Dark Rooms is the perfect title for a novel where there are dank basements, the dark rooms associated with photography and a subject matter that is both morbid and disturbing. Family life is central to both the cases, but it is not a case of happy families as Jane pursues the secrets of a painful past.

The modern case is resolved quickly and is a sad case of the desperate actions of somebody at their wits end. It is the older case that takes up the bulk of the story and what bleak story it turns out to be. Some secrets should not be revealed as Jane is to discover. It also proves to be painful to DCI Carter as his budget is blown to pieces by a request from Jane to go to Australia to conduct interviews.

Jane goes about things in her usual manner, upsetting those around her, acting on instinct and taking risks. She does come to realise that when her superiors say she is not enough of a team player, they may have a point, as she puts herself in real danger. That is when the steady, methodical storyline bursts into action. A tough and painful lesson learned, but will she act upon it in future.

Jane gets to work with a young DC called Timothy Taylor (a Pavlovian response from me here is ‘A pint of Landlord please’) which brings a different vibe to the interactions as she teaches him the way to get himself into trouble. At first, he appears to be a naive and ‘wet behind the ears’ lad living at home (think Private Pike) but as the story develops, we can see him grow, showing tenacity and adaptability. Most of all he is a loyal partner and that is exactly what Jane needs at this time.

It’s not all grim for Jane though as she finds a new love interest, one not connected with the force, and builders make a start on renovating her new house for her.

The trip to Australia is a great interlude, from the accommodation (in Kings Cross), the heat (Tim takes a tweed jacket) to the real ‘bonzer’ Aussies. Just one of those occasional fillips a long-running series needs to refresh it and spark new life. Jane certainly uncovers the story of a kind of life that people flee across the world to escape.

The final resolution comes back in the UK and it is not as Jane envisioned. There is a telling, heart pouring out, scene when she realises the pain and suffering that has resurfaced because of her relentless pursuit of the truth. She has a brilliant track record of crime solving but she also needs to develop empathy and accept that even her actions have consequences.

Jane Tennison finds shocking secrets are held within Dark Rooms.

Dark Rooms can be purchased from the Bookshop.org here.

The author

Lynda La Plante (born Lynda Titchmarsh) is a British author, screenwriter, and erstwhile actress (her performances in Rentaghost and other programmes were under her stage name of Lynda Marchal), best known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series.

Her first TV series as a scriptwriter was the six part robbery series Widows, in 1983, in which the widows of four armed robbers carry out a heist planned by their deceased husbands.

In 1991 ITV released Prime Suspect which has now run to seven series and stars Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. (In the United States Prime Suspect airs on PBS as part of the anthology program Mystery!) In 1993 La Plante won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her work on the series. In 1992 she wrote at TV movie called Seekers, starring Brenda Fricker and Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson.

She formed her own television production company, La Plante Productions, in 1994 and as La Plante Productions she wrote and produced the sequel to Widows, the equally gutsy She’s Out (ITV, 1995). The name “La Plante” comes from her marriage to writer Richard La Plante, author of the book Mantis and Hog Fever. La Plante divorced Lynda in the early 1990s.

Her output continued with The Governor (ITV 1995-96), a series focusing on the female governor of a high security prison, and was followed by a string of ratings pulling miniseries: the psycho killer nightmare events of Trial & Retribution (ITV 1997-), the widows’ revenge of the murders of their husbands & children Bella Mafia (1997) (starring Vanessa Redgrave), the undercover police unit operations of Supply and Demand (ITV 1998), videogame/internet murder mystery Killer Net (Channel 4 1998) and the female criminal profiler cases of Mind Games (ITV 2001).

Two additions to the Trial and Retribution miniseries were broadcast during 2006.

Source: Goodreads profile

Never Forgive You #HillyBarmby #NeverForgiveYou

By Hilly Barmby https://www.hillybarmbyauthor.com/ @Hilly_Barmby

Published by Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

317 pages ISBN 9781915817396

Publication date 26 March 2024

I was sent an electronic copy in exchange for a fair review.  I would like to thank Rebecca at Hobeck Books and the Author for the invitation to participate in the Blog Tour.

The Cover

A very attractive cover with a great strapline.

My review

The briefest of prologues, you killed him and we won’t forgive or forget…

Hetty has been Davey’s girlfriend for a year. They are from very different backgrounds, but they are good together. Now they are heading over to France, with his twin sisters Ailsa and Juliette, for the wedding of their cousin Isabelle to Jean-Jacques (JJ) a right leaning politician. The prospect of a glamorous country wedding at a house as big as a chateau should them buzzing with joy, but Hetty is already feeling out of her depth being a council estate girl whilst the others are wealthy and well educated. The vibes are not good either, she realises there are some unresolved family tensions.

Ailsa for one doesn’t want to return to the house, despite it being a place of many happy childhood memories. Something happened during their last visit eight years ago which almost split the family asunder. Still, they must go through with the wedding celebration and put the past aside for the sake of the family.

The day is running like clockwork until the groom becomes unwell. Initially thought to be down to nerves and then a mild stomach upset is suggested, but as the day goes on, he doesn’t show signs of recovery. No matter, the party must go on…

The setting is fabulous, a big house in the French countryside and the preparations for the wedding. The reader is given a glimpse of another life and the different traditions surrounding a familiar event. There is also the sense of another way of life for Archie and Romilly, Isabel’s parents, who behave like they are lord and lady of the manor, well he is a High Court judge. The locals may go the events and parties that they organise, but they will forever be English outsiders and the local gypsies are especially wary.

The story can be split into two sections the preparation for the big day and the events that follow. The preparation essentially sets the scene in France, fleshes out the relationships between the characters both current day and through the events of the past. The reader is left in no doubt that something serious happened eight years ago, that someone knows the truth and it is going to be told. This section I think will particularly appeal to younger readers as it centres on the young adults.

Whilst the first part might feel a little pedestrian, the big day onwards explodes into incident much like poor JJs digestive tract. Again, there is a thread from eight years ago which is played out along with the current day and there are regular switches between the two. What results is two reveals, as the momentous events are exposed, together with the implications for the current day. Here the plot is wonderfully constructed, with actions mirrored and moral conundrums faced as the truth is ‘bleached in the sunshine’ and revenge sought. Revenge is the driving force but ultimately love is the key. Readers who love the ‘golden age’ style of reveal will appreciate how this is all exposed.

The feeling of change is all pervading throughout the story. The past incidents of 2016 follow straight from the Brexit vote, with the characters realising change was inevitable, but at that time nobody knew just how much or in what way. Then there are the events which hasten the separation and change the relationships for good. Throughout the current scenes there is the sense that there will be some kind of resolution, though what exactly is unknown.

The story is told through multiple perspectives, mainly Hetty and Ailsa, so the flow is not always linear as occasional back steps are taken to see events through the eyes of another.

Hetty is the central character and is quiet and unassuming, mainly due to her background, so she tries to avoid the limelight. She does want to become accepted by the family though, if just for her relationship with Davey. She has something of an inferiority complex, coming from humble beginnings unlike the rest of the characters, but there is an honesty about her. All she needs to do is develop a little self confidence and brazen things out, she’s the equal of any and better than most around her. She’s also a crime fiction reader, which raises her to an elite status in my mind, and this reading preference ends up becoming useful. True crime aficionados will also be nodding in agreement as Hetty demonstrates her knowledge on one aspect of the crime, with actions that echo a notorious UK killer.

Ailsa appears to be the main antagonist, doing little to elicit the approval of the reader; she is a snobbish clotheshorse of a young woman with an acid tongue, referring to Hetty as ‘the ginger mouse’. A perfect character for just such a story and I found myself thinking please don’t change. She is the epitome of the attitudes of the family, where image, prestige and position trump all feelings, where ‘marrying well’ matters more than love.

Never Forgive You skewers the pretentions of wealth, class and status with a searing tale of revenge.

Never Forgive You can be purchased direct from the publisher here.

The author

Hilly attended Rochester College of Art to experience an excellent Foundation Course, which led to a degree course in Graphic Design at Central School of Art and Design in London. Here, she led a colourful life, which she has woven into many of her stories.

After her degree course, she went on a woodworking course to make furniture. Combining her art and woodworking skills, she got a stall at Covent Garden Craft Market to sell hand-made chess and backgammon sets.

She moved to Brighton, a fabulous city and this is where Best Served Cold is set. After teaching Design Technology for fifteen years, she gave it all up to relocate to Órgiva in southern Spain. She has been here for the last seven years, living happily in an old farmhouse on an organic fruit farm in the mountains, with her partner and two rescue dogs.

Hilly is also part of Artists’ Network Alpujarra (ANA), a community of artists who have exhibited extensively in the region of the Alpujarra. She also makes ceramics, jewellery, and up-cycles anything not nailed down.

Source: Publisher’s website

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this Blog Tour:

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City on Fire #GrahamBartlett #CityOnFire

By Graham Bartlett https://policeadvisor.co.uk/ @gbpoliceadvisor

Published by Allison & Busby https://www.allisonandbusby.com/ @AllisonandBusby

350 pages ISBN 9780749030513 (HB)

Publication date 21 March 2024

City on Fire is the third novel in the Chief Superintendent Jo Howe series. Click on the link to read my review of the second book in the series Force of Hate.

I was allowed access to a pdf review copy on Net Galley.  Thanks to Josie at Allison & Busby for the invitation to join the blog tour and of course the Author.

The cover

A curious but quite striking cover. A picture of the Brighton sea-front but the title font picked out in flames, for reasons which will become clear.

• 

My review

Chief Superintendent Jo Howe is determined to tackle the scourge of drugs on the streets of Brighton, a city that is turning into the drugs capital of England. Jo is only too aware that drug habits fuel crime, as addicts need easy cash to feed their addiction, and it destroys lives. This she knows from bitter experience as her sister Caroline succumbed to heroin, a life in dirty squats and on the streets, which led ultimately to her death. This death is still raw to Jo, she feels she let Caroline down, that she could have done more to help her. She now cannot atone for this sense of guilt to Caroline, but she is determined to help as many as she can who are in this predicament. She is the driving force behind Operation Eradicate, a two-pronged attack at the problem. Not only is there a concerted effort to reduce supply but also to get users into rehabilitation programs, and a new pharmaceutical heroin substitute being trialled is having a positive result. A somewhat controversial approach that needs time to mature, but not everyone is so positive.

The new drug is made by Respite Pharmaceuticals a company owned by Sir Ben Parsons, a formidable self-made millionaire with a vast web of useful contacts, people in high places. Respite has obviously invested millions is developing and patenting the drug, money that Sir Ben needs to earn back. However, in his eyes Operation Eradicate is proving to be too successful, curing addicts reduces his customer base which is bad for business. He wants complacent addicts hooked for the long term on the substitute. He needs to stop Howe and her scheme, and he thinks he knows how to do it.

Dark days ahead for Jo in a city about to explode.

One thing guaranteed from the author is authenticity, the policing, their actions and communications feel right, but without being dragged down by an obsession with procedure. The action is given every chance to develop and flow. Its not just the policing though, where he writes about the inter-agency work, the voluntary sector NGOs and prisons it comes over as though from experience rather than research. What a great asset when a writing a novel such as this.

If you have read the earlier novels in the series, you will know Jo is a strong and determined woman who is respected and admired by her peers. In this story she is really put through the wringer, dropped into heaps of jeopardy both personal and reputational, such that it almost brings about her complete mental destruction. A woman who is schemed against but also making poor judgement calls when under extreme pressure, which is both understandable and realistic. Stress effects people in different ways but we can all get to the point that Jo does where every step, every choice makes the situation worse.

It starts with a betrayal, from her loving and understanding journalist husband of all people. It is a professional one, forced to do it by editor, rather than a relationship betrayal with another woman. Once under the media microscope the pressure starts to mount, and Jo’s professionalism comes into doubt. That is merely the start as officers face threats and personal attacks causing support for Jo to dwindle and an increase of sick leave. When the supply of the synthetic drug dries up (thanks to carefully planning by Sir Ben) the streets boil over.

A fabulous description of a cold and calculating plan being executed step by step. Sir Ben has the contacts, the wealth and he also has the dirt on people and is not averse to a spot of blackmail to get his way. There is a suspicion amongst the public that some within the establishment can orchestrate cover ups, but here we can see such power wielded to destroy an individual. Something truly chilling to read.

It is the motivation of Sir Ben that interested me. Here we have a hugely successful businessman, one who enjoys the trappings of success, who is willing to destroy lives just to earn his drug development costs back. Apparently heartless, but then we learn of his poor mother, suffering from early onset dementia, whom he cares dearly for and lives at his house. There are some very touching scenes where he is comforting her which I am sure some carers will recognise. A real dichotomy of a man. I would have liked the relationship with his mother developed more, as we never discover how the dynamics were forged. Was she domineering, was he repressed, there is no mention of a love life for Sir Ben.

His obsession with finding a cure for his mother leads to a magnificently dramatic confrontation, one that has building up from the start. Action fans you are well catered for too, with bursts of aggression, bloodshed and personal jeopardy as momentum and tension are skilfully built up and released throughout, and at times you have to catch your breath.

At the core of the story is the notion that drugs companies just want to treat patients, to alleviate their symptoms rather than cure them. For them it’s a high stakes gamble to develop a drug, but being corporations, they want to earn profits and not just benefit mankind. What begins as an unlikely concept becomes a chilling possibility the more you think about it. There is a huge health and charity sector dedicated to developing and curing a vast array of diseases form cancer to Alzheimer’s, yet any success is a threat to their existence. A moral conundrum which we can only hope is addressed in an ethical way.

City on Fire is a convincing police procedural where a chilling businessman is determined to destroy the lives of those who get in his way.

City on Fire can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

Graham Bartlett rose to become chief superintendent and the divisional commander of Brighton and Hove police. His first non-fiction book Death Comes Knocking was a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller, which he then followed with Babes in the Wood. He co-wrote these books with bestselling author, Peter James, and has since published Bad for Good and Force of Hate starring Chief Superintendent Jo Howe. Bartlett is also a police procedural and crime advisor helping scores of authors and TV writers inject authenticity into their work.

Source: Publisher’s website

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this blog tour:

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Her Last Request #MariHannah #HerLastRequest

By Mari Hannah https://www.marihannah.com/ @mariwriter

Narrated by Colleen Prendergast @CMPrendergast_

Published by Orion Books Group https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/ @orionbooks

416 pages (10 hours 48 minutes) ISBN 9781409192442 (HB)

Publication date 30 September 2021

Her Last Request is the eighth book in the Kate Daniels @DCIKateDaniels Mysteries series. Click on the links to read my reviews of the first seven books in the series, The Murder Wall, Settled Blood, Deadly Deceit, Monument to Murder, Killing for Keeps, Gallows Drop and Without a Trace.

My review is based upon the audiobook version purchased from Audible. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers #CompulsiveReaders for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMDANIELS review project. My review of The Longest Goodbye the nineth novel in the series will be posted on this blog in April.

The Cover

A caravan park by the sea, on a blustery day, a scarf attached to the fence. Perfectly encompasses the novel. Good cover.

The narrator

Another excellent job by Colleen Prendergast.

My review

A woman is found murdered in a caravan at a small coastal holiday park. It is the way that she is murdered that is most disturbing to DCI Kate Daniels. Her throat has been cut, but she has been attacked with great savagery and has suffered defensive wounds, as she attempted to fight off her attacker. Truly a bad, visceral death.

The intensive forensic search of the site throws up an unexpected piece of evidence, a hidden note. This death note is a cry for help, her last request to those who find it, to find her son. Kate is deeply affected; she feels it almost on a personal level. As her partner the profiler Jo Soulsby points out, the scene is as if it were meant for Kate, the note could have been written just for her.

A haunted Kate is about to be consumed by this case. Not only must she find the killer but also find Aaron, the son, before the killer does. This is a vendetta and as the story progresses it become apparent that both the victim and killer are both communicating directly with Kate. One from beyond the grave, they other taunting like the most narcissistic of fictional serial killers.

A great set up for a two-strand storyline, effectively a dual man hunt encompassing a race against time. The pacing is wonderfully judged and is given a great sense of urgency when the search for Aaron is on.

The plotting is cleverly done, initially there is so little to go on, but bits of information and further clues are drip fed into the storyline as it progresses. In one very clever scene, the victim manages to connect with Kate from beyond the grave, thanks to keen observation and some lateral thinking. This is by no means the only clue, but certainly the most memorable. It’s not all Holmes and Watson though as there is plenty of incident, moments of breathtaking suspense and some excellent action with real jeopardy introduced as well.

Being a Daniels and Gormley story it would be amiss if they didn’t fall foul of the brass hats and this time it appears to be serious. Kate managed to use up much of DCS Bright’s goodwill during her search for Jo and this time she feels powerless. In a fabulously simple but effective piece of writing cross pollination, this allows her to introduce the reader to Stone and Oliver, the lead characters in her other Newcastle based detective series. I picked up a couple of their books up when the author came to speak at Hull Noir so once #TeamDaniels is finished I will be moving on to that series! Most authors who write more than one series set them far apart, but as they are in the same proximity it makes perfect sense that they cross over at some point.

Character development adds so much to a long running series and following the dramatic events of Without a Trace there is a sense that time has moved on. Kate and Jo’s reconciliation appears to be working, albeit with the odd factious moment and the sudden reappearance of one of Jo’s sons. The fall out from the death of DI Robson is only now being felt and there was a more subdued feel to the incident room. This provides an opportunity for DS Carmichael to move up and for some a self-confident character she is less sure footed but proves her worth in an interview late in the story. She’s proving to be a bit of a chip off the old block. The reader also gets a nice little look behind the scenes of Hank’s home life.

The killer is particularly nasty, but also demonstrates a teeth gnashing arrogance that is almost as bad, one villain who deserves his comeuppance. The central theme is one of coercive control, of a man trying to control a woman to the point where she must go on the run to escape his clutches. A painful situation that is captured convincingly but also with a sensitive touch. This becomes an extreme example of an only too common situation, where women become trapped through no fault of their own.

Reading Without a Trace I felt that changes were to come; Her Last Request brings fresh impetus to and invigorates this fantastic long running series.

Her Last Request can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

Mari Hannah is a multi-award-winning author, whose authentic voice is no happy accident. A former probation officer, she lives in rural Northumberland with her partner, an ex-murder detective. Mari turned to script-writing when her career was cut short following an assault on duty. Her debut, The Murder Wall, (adapted from a script she developed with the BBC) won her the Polari First Book Prize. Its follow-up, Settled Blood, picked up a Northern Writers’ Award. Mari’s body of work won her the CWA Dagger in the Library 2017, an incredible honour to receive so early in her career. In 2019, she was voted DIVA Wordsmith of the Year. In 2020, she won Capital Crime International Crime Writing Festival’s Crime Book of the Year for Without a Trace. Her Kate Daniels series is in development with Stephen Fry’s production company, Sprout Pictures.

Source: Publisher’s website

Katy Massey at Hull Noir #KatyMassey #AllUsSinners #HullNoir

On Wednesday 20 March Katy Massey https://katymassey.com/ @TangledRoots1 was the guest of Hull Noir https://www.hullnoir.com/ @HullNoir to talk about her debut crime novel All us Sinners and her writing career in general. Host for the evening and the man asking the questions was local crime author Nick Triplow @nicktriplow a co-creator of Hull Noir.

In reviews I generally refer to writers as ‘the author’ but as we have met and even gone to the pub together, I will take the liberty of referring to her as the more intimate Katy.

The event, including a Q&A session ran for an hour but there follows a flavour of what was discussed.

Katy Massey in conversation with Nick Triplow

Background

The novel selects some from aspects of Katy’s life. Her mother worked in the sex industry, running a successful brothel in Leeds during the 1980s. Katy wanted to write about the women who worked there, they are not the stereotypes portrayed in fiction. They are just ordinary people, women working hard for their families under difficult circumstances. Putting forward the case for discrete, safe, well-run brothels which would have been important as the time the novel is set.

The novel is set in 1977 in a Leeds that is living under the shadow cast by The Yorkshire Ripper. He (like Jack the Ripper) when mentioned within stories, tends to drown out everything within the narrative, whereas she wants to reflect the terror felt by women at the time. Wanting to bring something unique to the story, an angle not pursued by other writers, where his existence is felt in the North, but he hasn’t reached the level of national infamy he was to achieve. He is a character in the novel though.

Characters

Maureen believes she is in control and very is street smart, but not as much as she thinks. The intention was to show that the harder the front a people show the outside world, the more vulnerable they are when this façade is taken away. The hard front is the result of what people have done to Maureen, but the vulnerable woman beneath is more likeable. She is a woman of complicated relationships with those around her. Mick is a policeman, around 10 years older, has known Maureen for years and is quite paternal. She sees him as a protector, but he is tempted, seeing her as a woman. A transactional relationship and one ‘across the tracks’.

Katy is deliberately looking to give a voice to characters whose story is not often told, people who are marginalised. She knows the world she is writing about, so can bring that authenticity to the storytelling. Also wanting to acknowledge that since the time the novel in which the novel is set, life has moved on, but all women remain vulnerable and deep down, attitudes have hardly changed.

Too many crime novels open with a naked or near naked prostitute, who has been murdered and never gets an opportunity to speak. In All us Sinners the story begins with the jeopardy, an attacked prostitute but one who gets to speak to the reader and can tell her story.

Setting

Nick commented on how incredibly evocative the novel is of the time and place in which it is set. How important was the relationship of Maureen, her city and specifically her neighbourhood? Katy said it was quite important that she had known nothing else, but Mick has great experience, with him bringing a much broader world view to the story. Mick’s life has been forged by religion, legitimate society and service to the community, yet Maureen had a hard dragged up existence selling what she has left to sell. There’s a sense of being trapped in Leeds, which is all she knows. Nick says this made it wonderfully claustrophobic, with the storyline leaving Leeds only twice.

Katy said for her it was important to create a sense of a community, this being part of race politics. Katy grew up mixed race, in a diverse part of Leeds and yet, she felt that she didn’t read enough books that reflect the mixing pot she experienced. Yes, there are black and Asian voices in literature, but they tend to concentrate on their section of the wider society. Whereas she wanted to give a more soap opera feel to the community, with the epicentre of community life being in Jamaican Linford’s café, he being a man with fingers in many pies.

The technical aspects of writing

As a debut novelist how conscious was she of finding her own unique voice, distinct from her work as a journalist and her memoir? Not a conscious effort at all! She just let the story guide her on tone and style as she learned to write a novel. Not being steeped in a crime writing background or having read much of the genre, she didn’t realise she was writing a crime novel, there was no specific intent from the outset. It was her editor who guided her on the technical aspects of writing within the genre.

Writing as a journalist is very different to writing a novel. Its more focussed with shorter sentences which are easy to comprehend.

Memoir

Are We Home Yet came about because of the feeling that she was burning out. Katy managed to get funding to do a MA at Sunderland and the study brought a sense of reawakening and so refreshed, her thoughts moved on to doing a PhD. The PhD thesis then became the basis for the memoir with little change. It took 11 years between writing and publishing, partly down to timing as the bottom had fallen out of the ‘misery memoir’ market. Then in 2020 she saw an opportunity, a publisher (Jacaranda Books) asking for submissions wanting to publish 20 pieces by writers of colour in that year. It was accepted and with the Windrush Generation fresh in everyone’s minds the timing was perfect.

All us Sinners can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

Are we Home Yet can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Katy Massey was a journalist for many years before studying for an MA and PhD in Creative Writing. Her memoir, Are We Home Yet? was published in 2020 and praised by Bernardine Evaristo as ‘a gem’. It was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and the Portico Prize. In addition, her fiction and nonfiction work has been widely anthologised, including Common People edited by Kit de Waal, The Place for Me, and speculative collection Glimpse. All Us Sinners is her first novel, an unusual take on the crime genre featuring Maureen, a tough but tender-hearted brothel-keeper in 1970s Leeds. She is unexpectedly drawn into investigating the killing of a friend’s son, events which take place against the disturbing backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper’s murder spree.

Source: Publisher’s website

Talking With Psychopaths #ChristopherBerryDee #TalkingWithPsychopaths

By Christopher Berry Dee https://www.christopherberrydee.com/

Published by John Blake Books https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/ @jblakebooks (an imprint of Bonnier Books UK) https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/ @bonnierbooks_uk

TBA pages ISBN 9781789467956

Publication date 29 February 2024

I was sent an electronic copy to enable be to participate in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to take part and of course the author and publisher.

The Cover

Evil eyes, a knife and strange corridor in kind of a green monochrome. I don’t think the reader will be surprised to find some disturbing content.

The blurb

In Talking With Psychopaths, bestselling author and criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee takes readers deep inside the dark minds of some of the most pitiless and dangerous people alive.

With unprecedented access to the world’s most evil killers, Christopher spent years interviewing imprisoned criminals – including notorious serial killers – he discovered that the lack of remorse these people showed was in many ways even more terrifying than the crimes they had committed. Yet in the course of these conversations, the author also had the chance to interview his subjects’ psychiatrists and, in doing so, uncovered a terrible truth: a monster can be hidden behind a friendly face.

Some of these experts, he found, proved to have more in common with their patients than he would ever have expected. This book examines horrific crimes committed by some of the most remorseless and merciless people ever to have lived. If it reveals a mindset wholly alien to most people, it also, shockingly, demonstrates that some of the people who treat these psychopaths have their own demons.

This chilling study of darkest of criminal minds will inevitably shift the reader’s view of psychopaths, and in doing so, reveals that horror can be much closer to us than we think…

My review

Having already read a couple of his works, I was aware that the author has a very distinctive writing style. Thankfully, considering the people who he has corresponded with and interviewed in writing this book, he doesn’t go into too much detail regarding their crimes. He considers most to be the dregs of humanity and he certainly doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to giving his opinion on them, or recounting conversations with law enforcement officers (most of which are from the US). He reports events in a matter-of-fact way in prose which is aimed at the regular reader rather than the academic or professional. He does go into the science and explains it well, but wherever possible he avoids the jargon and buzzwords that go some way to shutting off the world of study for you and I who are his target audience. There is dark sarcasm and the odd comment that may trouble the more sensitive reader, but I believe that it is merely a function of those he deals with. They say if you lie down with dogs, you get fleas, then when consorting with killers it is important not to become desensitised. Many workers doing difficult jobs such as those in the emergency services develop a dark sense of humour as a coping mechanism to deal with the very worst experiences of humanity. So, I think it is quite reasonable for him to laugh at the expense of serial killers, psychopaths and savages.

Style aside, his works are certainly popular, as they manage to capture the essence of the convicted felons, they are amongst the best sellers. It’s not all popular appreciation though, some of his books are included on the required reading list of the FBI Behavioral Sciences unit at Quantico, in Virginia, and they are the world experts.

He doesn’t suffer fools (or rather those he considers to be fools) gladly and has a correspondingly low opinion of most professionals involved in the study of criminal psychiatry. As he says, put half a dozen shrinks in a room and the chance of them reaching agreement on anything, is about the same as we have of winning the National Lottery Jackpot. I can see two principal reasons for this. Firstly, is the divergence of opinion, particularly when cases get to court and they are called as specialist witnesses, with defence experts trying to prove spurious arguments like temporary insanity. Secondly, they must approach the subject with an open enquiring mind, to prove scientific rigor has been exercised. However, as the author is at pains to point out these killers, psychopaths and narcissists are the most skilled manipulators of the human mind there are. Coupling the mind that wants to believe with one determined to manipulate is a recipe for disaster. His approach is to regard the criminals as despicable, murdering scum, and he believes he is invariably proved right.

Don’t expect the author to hide his light under a bushel, as he sets out his successes, and quite right too, as some of the information he has manged to extract is stunning. The pain felt by the loss of a loved one who has been murdered is clearly heartbreaking; when there is no body, or the murder is unconfirmed, it can leave them in a near permanent state of grief, unable to live the rest of their life. That the author has managed to get convicted killers to further confess and reveal deposition sites to him is a testament to his work. True crime can seem voyeuristic at times but here are tangible meaningful results.

How does he do it? Over a period, he corresponds with them and subtly probes them to reveal their weaknesses, for something he can exploit. It may take months or even years to establish a rapport with them and start to gain their confidence, tricking them into believing they have a friendship. Most are narcissistic or egotistical, so he applies a form of reverse psychology on them, they think they are in control and all the while he is manipulating them. As my old father used to say “you can’t kid a kidder”. From the professional psychologist’s point of view this would be entirely unethical behaviour but from the layman’s point of view it gets the required results and so should be applauded.

Talking With Psychopaths gazes into the abyss of darkest of criminal minds and shows how a determined criminologist can turn the tables on them.

Talking With Psychopaths can be purchased from the Bookshop.org here

The author

After Asst Chief Constable Ron Stone QPM, Essex Police, Christopher became ownerand Editor-in-Chief of The Criminologist – the worlds most respected and oldest journal (at 49-years) – on matters concerning: law enforcement; penology; forensic psychiatry/psychology; penal reform; the judiciary, and all matters under the criminology masthead. He was appointed as Director of ‘The Criminology Research Institute’ (CRI) in 2005.

​Writer of some 36 separate book titles listed with Public Lending Right (PLR), published by W.H. Allen, Virgin Books and long time loyal friend and publisher John Blake (London) and now also Blake/Bonnier Christopher’s books are translated into numerous languages around the world.

Christopher frequently appears on numerous TV documentaries as a leading authority on serial homicide. He was co-producer/interviewer for the acclaimed 12-part documentary series ‘The Serial Killers’, still being screened today and has consulted on the cases of: Fred and Rose West; Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and Dr Harold Shipman in the TwoFour produced TV series ‘Born to Kill’, which accompanied another of Christopher’s books.

Source: Author’s website

Don’t forget to check out the other reviews on this blog tour:

Crow Moon #SuzyAspley #CrowMoon

By Suzy Aspley https://www.suzyaspleywriter.com/ @writer_suzy

Published by Orenda Books https://orendabooks.co.uk/ @OrendaBook

272 pages ISBN 9781914585500

Publication date 14 March 2024

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in the Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

The Cover

I love the hourglass sand turning to crows after it passes through the pinch point. To me it says a battle against time and something creepy ahead. This is one book that I didn’t need to read the blurb, I knew from the cover I wanted to read it.

My review

A teenager goes missing from the sleepy village of Strathbran…

Martha Strangeway’s life was turned upside down when her young twin boys were killed in a house fire. Martha is wracked with guilt because she feels she let them down. The night of the fire she was called out to attend a press conference and so was not there to protect them, as she feels a mother should. She ends her career as an investigative journalist and drifts apart from her partner, the father of the twins. All she has left now is her teenage son, Dougie and haunting memories. Her’s is more of an existence, self-tortured by guilt and grief, rather than a life.

Whilst out jogging Martha is struck, falls and ends up tumbling down a slope. When she regains her senses, she can see she has fallen next to the body of the missing boy. Next, she wakes in the hospital, she has been rescued, the body has been recovered but none of it seems to be real to her. It is though and she has something tangible, a small bottle that she picked up shortly before she fell. It appears to contain ink.

Martha’s journalistic instincts kick in and she takes an interest in the case, pestering DI Summers for information, well she did find the body. He reluctantly divulges that the teenager had a stanza from an ancient poem inked upon his back. When a second teenager goes missing there is a sense of panic in the community. For Matha this is heightened because both teenagers were good friends of Dougie, up to a year ago they were inseparable. Martha decides to investigate herself and manages to persuade Summers that the pooling of their knowledge will benefit them both. Realising she is at the epicentre of the crime, which is in a remote location, he gives a tacit agreement. Neither one of them is prepared for what they uncover.

As a reader who appreciates true gothic and not the camp stuff that is passed off as it in these modern times, this book didn’t disappoint. It takes many of the expected elements and skilfully weaves them within a modern crime thriller.

Crows like the rest of the corvids are intertwined in ancient folklore, often portrayed as a harbinger of death, they are a key element with this story. This had me rereading Edger Allan Poe’s most famous poem The Raven.

The plot follows the consequences of the teenagers performing an ancient rite, with the hope to alleviate the mental anguish of Dougie. The timing and location prove to be unfortunate and inopportune, which leads to a strand of ancient mysticism and witchcraft. Here there is some fabulous imagery, noises, sudden drafts and flapping of wings or fabrics, introduced with impeccable timing. Much easier to produce visually but here the timing is spot on such as the reader gets a ripple of fear or surprise. At times its dark and creepy, with an ominous foreboding feeling about the prose, one where tragedy is a wingbeat away.

The build up to the finale is both frantic and surprising, real edge of the seat stuff. It’s cleverly constructed and there’s a perfect natural symmetry to it as well as the ideal location. A bonus comes by way of one small scene which may be a homage to Poe, I won’t spell it out, but the great man did it more than once.

Martha is convincingly drawn, as a woman consumed by grief who the reader will empathise with. Even down to the matchbox she carries, which contains all she has left of the twins, as a slightly macabre memento mori. We feel Jamie’s pain too, literally as a man scarred with burns form trying to save the twins.

A nice complication is added by Martha’s friend Orla becoming involved with one of the prime suspects. She brings a slightly outrageous spark to proceedings much in the way Samantha did in Sex in the City. The police officer DI Summers is surprisingly taciturn but comes up trumps eventually. (By now I was over thinking things, making connections that were probably not intended, in the classic The Wicker Man the evil protagonist was of course Lord Summerisle…)

Grief and its effects are the core of the story. Be it Martha, Jamie and Dougie over the twins, or Father Peter’s apparent rejection by his once loving mother, all the key characters must deal with their loss but not be subsumed by it. In The Raven the writer laments for his lost love Lenore, considers whether he will get over the loss, but finds his soul covered by the shadow of the bird who says ‘nevermore’.  Can their souls escape the shadows, can put their grieving to rest and manage to move on?

Crow Moon is a simply stunning amalgam of gothic imagery and folklore within a crime story.  An amazing debut novel.

Crow Moon can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The For Women Scotland website has some interesting information on the various memorials to the victims of witchcraft trials and The Witchcraft Act 1563.

The Thief of Joy #StaceyMurray #TheThiefOfJoy

By Stacey Murray https://thestacemeister.wordpress.com/ @TheStacemeister

Published by Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

360 pages ISBN 9781915817303

Publication date 19 March 2024

I was sent an electronic copy in exchange for a fair review.  I would like to thank Rebecca at Hobeck Books and the Author for the invitation to participate in the Blog Tour.

The Cover

A large house in the leafy suburbs (Didsbury as the reader will discover) that looks all warm and welcoming. Then we notice the silhouette of a woman observing the activities from the well-lit within, a hint that not all is warm and cosy.

My review

A dramatic start to capture our interest. We’re introduced to Roz, the central character, as she is preparing for a night out, a date with Daniel, a man who she has recently started dating. The have only been on a handful of nights out but Roz is upbeat, thinking Daniel just might be ‘the one’. Then she receives a phone call from one of Daniel’s friends; Daniel is dead, killed that morning by a massive brain aneurysm. Roz is distraught.

Roz is a single mum of 39 who is mindful that time for her is running out. She just wants what everyone else has; a nice home, a settled marriage and perhaps a baby while she still can. Surely this is not too much to want or expect?

Poor Roz gets little support or sympathy from those around her, in particular her mother. They say life can hardly be over for her, after all she hardly knew Daniel. She was just being silly, projecting a future based on nothing more than dreams. She’s 39 and not 19, it’s been a bit of a shock to her but it’s merely a bump on the path of her life and she should simply move on.

Feeling that nobody understands her, Roz signs up with an online grief support group. The reactions to her posts are mixed, some sympathetic whilst others agree with her mother. Moderator Mark offers her support, and they quickly become friends, with the prospect of more developing. Mark is a widower whose wife and daughter (who would be around the age of Roz’s daughter Chloe) were killed in a tragic road accident. Mark is a bit older, lives in a fine house in Didsbury and is an anaesthetist at a local hospital, a bit of a catch for a single mum, but he likes to be in control and is domineering at times…

As the title suggests the reader must discover whom or what is The Thief of Joy. All is revealed towards the end of the story, though not in this review.

This is a slow burn story with great emphasis placed on describing Roz’s life. Her hopes, fears and expectations as well as her friendships, and the relationships with her seemingly cold mother and star quality sister, her mother’s favourite. To Roz her life may appear mundane, but she has a job, a home and a lovely daughter, which would leave most people content. The problem is she is surrounded by and reminded of those who are doing better in life, sister Fiona has a posh new home and now Roz discovers her friend Kate is going to marry girlfriend Sam. Gradually we can see Roz is not jealous but just feels that everyone is getting on with their lives whereas hers is stagnating. There may appear parallels to Bridget Jones, but their predicaments are very different, this is no romantic comedy but is a psychological story with distinctive creepy edge.  

Momentum gathers once Mark establishes himself within Roz’s orbit. At first, he seems like a good fit as a potential long-term partner, a man willing to commit and used to children and a family life. As time passes though he lets Roz and Chloe down regularly, well he does have an important job and is often on call. Then when they do meet up, he is controlling and is reluctant to reveal his life, his friends, his family or even let them visit his home. Gradually almost imperceptibly the seeds of doubt are sown. This is written with great subtlety; I expect there will be a range of reactions from different readers. I’m sure most will have been in the position where those close to them are advising on a partner (or potential partner) but there is a refusal to accept what is said. People delude themselves through love and there are those who will take advantage.

The pace increases in the final quarter leading to a dramatic and unexpected course of action for the finale. It all gets rather frantic at an inopportune time, producing a real ‘heart in the mouth’ moment.

The answers to the reader’s questions then come thick and fast, fit together nicely and make perfect sense. The motivations are not quite what we think they are, and the reader has only been exposed to a single perspective, which is what makes the story work. Roz is simply too self-absorbed, once she realises this her life looks very different, for her it’s like looking behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. She comes to understand there can be a different reality behind the façade. Just because other people’s lives look better doesn’t mean that they don’t have problems of their own.

I don’t subscribe to the notion that there are men’s books and women’s books, that is clearly nonsense, but I think this is the sort of novel that will elicit different responses from different demographics. I’m sure there are many women who will identify with Roz’s predicament and no doubt some older women will take her mother’s non nonsense standpoint. The reaction of men will differ, I’m sure, depending on whether they have children. Me? I’m firmly in Mum’s camp!

The Thief of Joy is a cleverly constructed story that shows what can happen when we become too absorbed with what we want from our lives to actually live it.

The Thief of Joy can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

A native of Glasgow, Stacey Murray was an international finance lawyer in London and Hong Kong, before changing career to become an independent film producer. Her first film, A Boy Called Dad, was acquired by the BBC and nominated for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (which meant she got to chat with Sean Connery). She lives in the dramatic Derbyshire Peak District which is the setting for her tense psychological novel The Thief of Joy. Her first novel was the acclaimed The Curious Case of Maggie Macbeth. 

Source: Publisher’s website

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Without a Trace #MariHannah #WithoutATrace

By Mari Hannah https://www.marihannah.com/ @mariwriter

Narrated by Colleen Prendergast @CMPrendergast_

Published by Orion Books Group https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/ @orionbooks

390 pages (11 hours 4 minutes) ISBN 9781409192367 (HB)

Publication date 19 March 2020

Without a Trace is the seventh book in the Kate Daniels @DCIKateDaniels Mysteries series. Click on the links to read my reviews of the first six books in the series, The Murder Wall, Settled Blood, Deadly Deceit, Monument to Murder, Killing for Keeps and Gallows Drop.

My review is based upon the audiobook version purchased from Audible. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers #CompulsiveReaders for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMDANIELS review project. My review of Her Last Request the eighth novel in the series will be posted on this blog later in March.

The Cover

The audiobook cover differs from the book, though they both show airport scenes. Of the two I prefer the audiobook version; it captures the sense that something is wrong and is quite poignant. Most readers will have seen the lone bag circling on the conveyor belt and thought what happened here (last time for me meant somebody had taken my case my mistake…)

The narrator

The third audiobook of the series I’ve listened to, and Colleen Prendergast is now the voice I expect to hear. She manages to capture a sense of the North-East without becoming excessively Geordie, a great job all round.

My review

Although not essential it is helpful if readers have a little background to the series before tackling this novel. In Gallows Drop Kate and Jo were going to have one last shot at burying their differences and trying to make a go of their on-off relationship, as noted previously in the series they are really rubbish at being lesbians. A much-needed holiday for Kate and some quality time together was just what the doctor ordered. This is Kate Daniels though, a murder case handover is a disaster as she clashes with a bullying officer from her past, who then reveals Kate’s big secret. Then her father has a near fatal heart attack. Jo ends up picking up the pieces, until she finally has had enough and breaks it off with Kate, heading for New York. Then Kate gets the shocking news, the flight is reported missing…

It is here that Without a Trace picks up the story.

Wracked with guilt and self-recrimination Kate becomes suddenly incredibly selfish. Even though the investigation is nothing to do with her and well out of her jurisdiction, she heads off to London, with Hank in tow. Hank has now become her personal Jiminy Cricket, albeit it one who loves his beer and grub, if not exactly her conscience, then at least one trying to save her from herself. They are a team not to be broken up, but Kate’s recklessness puts both their careers in jeopardy. She abuses DCS Bright’s trust but does manage to insert herself into the case, one that also involves US Homeland Security.

Back in Newcastle a criminal boss is murdered in a gangland hit, but Kate has left the team without an SIO. Hank is reluctant to return without Kate, who simply refuses to, knowing she will do something stupid in his absence. DS Robson is eager to show his worth and eventually it is agreed that he will be acting DI and SIO on this case, Kate and Hank are only a phone call away, what could go wrong.

This story is something of an outlier in this cracking series, it has a distinctly different feel and is also probably the most emotionally charged one too. Kate is being torn apart by not knowing if Jo was on the plane. She needs certainty, the faint hope that Jo wasn’t aboard is destroying her, hence embarking on the mission that is potentially career suicide. In a rare look into Kate and Jo’s past, the reader finally discovers how they met and then initially became inseparable. It seems the risk of losing Jo forever finally hits home, Kate realises her life would be empty without her. About time to you might think, but there is a real intensity to how these feelings are written. There is no respite back in Newcastle for the reader either, as nerves are jangled and heart strings tugged in dramatic developments.

Parts of the plot are a little implausible, even though Jo is her profiler, Kate would surely be sent packing when she tries to get involved. That she isn’t allows for some interesting changes to the regular police investigation, such as how the accident bureau work, getting a sense of the terrible task ahead of them. It also gives one of our ‘dynamic duo’ the opportunity to work undercover for US Homeland Security. Some aspects of this are quite fascinating and this moves the story away from being a run of the mill police procedural. As usual it is left to Hank to provide the occasional chortle as he becomes more exasperated than usual. Having to bunk at a Station House is almost the final straw for the North East’s most patient detective.

A character from the past reappears and Kate is put into the position of needing to trust him against all her better judgement. Poor Kate puts herself through the wringer, finally deciding upon new priorities in life. The more cynical reader will wonder how long this will last, which is a great way of ensuring that we look out for Her Last Request the next instalment. Even though two cases are being worked upon the bulk of the story concentrates upon Kate and Hank at Heathrow. It is their relationship which is the key to the success of the series, with each new story exploring a different aspect. Here he is pushed to breaking point but still remains loyal.

For once feelings, surpass action within the story resulting a slower paced read. The pace picks up a little in Newcastle but here I felt the story needed a little more substance to it. It does leave the series refreshed though, with changes made and new impetus in some directions, which is just what the reader wants.

Without a Trace is an excellent police procedural, given a distinctive new twist, that sets up this fine series with a different dynamic for future instalments.

Without a Trace can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

Mari Hannah is a multi-award-winning author, whose authentic voice is no happy accident. A former probation officer, she lives in rural Northumberland with her partner, an ex-murder detective. Mari turned to script-writing when her career was cut short following an assault on duty. Her debut, The Murder Wall, (adapted from a script she developed with the BBC) won her the Polari First Book Prize. Its follow-up, Settled Blood, picked up a Northern Writers’ Award. Mari’s body of work won her the CWA Dagger in the Library 2017, an incredible honour to receive so early in her career. In 2019, she was voted DIVA Wordsmith of the Year. In 2020, she won Capital Crime International Crime Writing Festival’s Crime Book of the Year for Without a Trace. Her Kate Daniels series is in development with Stephen Fry’s production company, Sprout Pictures.

Source: Publisher’s website

Safe Hands #WAKelly #SafeHands

By W.A. Kelly https://www.waynekellywrites.com/ @MrKelly2u

Narrated by W.A. Kelly

Published by Picklock Publishing

382 pages (8 hours 53 minutes) ISBN 9781399965170 (PB)

Publication date 6 October 2023

Safe Hands is the first book in the Mickey Blake thriller series.

I reviewed an audiobook provided by the author, in exchange for an honest review, for which I would like to thank him.

The Cover

Straightforward but at the same time effective.

The narrator

As I have noted several times before on this blog, I am not a big fan of an author narrating his own book. That said here he has made a splendid job of the task, displaying a wide variety of voices and accents. A couple of them drifted into silly voice territory but I think he may be forgiven as he attempts to inject some personality into the reading. This is his ‘baby’ and he brings the enthusiasm that demonstrates he’s proud of it.

My review

Mickey Blake is a retired ‘peterman’, a former safecracker, who should be living a life of luxury on the ‘Costa del Crime’. Instead, he is drawn back to ‘Sunny Skeggy’, the bracing Lincolnshire seaside town of Skegness for ‘one last job’. With his wife back in Spain suffering from terminal cancer and a failed business venture behind him, he is in hock to a gangster and so desperately needs the cash, after all nobody goes to Skegness without a good reason.

Hazel is a single mum with an almost grown-up son, Warren. Her life hasn’t exactly gone to plan but she does her best, at least she is doing better than her friend Maeve, who life and one man in particular has treated her badly. Hazel has her own business providing bookkeeping services, but also works part time in a local pub, so she sees a lot of life pass by. Her biggest fear is that Warren becomes drawn into a life of crime.

Mickey and Hazel’s paths will cross as he tries to crack open the huge vault of a gangland casino using only his skill and his delicate, safe hands…but can he also keep them both safe.

Well, it’s certainly an unusual character to base a new series on, a sixty-year-old former safe cracker who hasn’t worked in eighteen years. If nothing else, it will be fascinating where the follow ups head. Mickey is a complex character who doesn’t so much have a bit of baggage but rather a vintage Louis Vuitton travel trunk full. Bullied by his own father, he has spent the entirety of his adult life trying to avoid turning into the man he despised, without seeing the damage this caused his own family. A promising boxer, he quit early in his career after seriously injuring an opponent, a guilt he has carried with him ever since. Crime came easy to him, the money was most welcome, but he was always drawn into the skill aspect, pitching his wits against the safe. Now he feels trapped in a marriage that should have ended years ago, again feeling the guilt for the poor way he treated his wife. No wonder a trip to Skegness seems like a fillip to him.

The plot is nice and crazy, at first seeming too straightforward, but of course it isn’t, a simple event signals this and like railway points being thrown, we head off on a different track. Being the first in a series there is the expected back story introduced, but these are so cleverly incorporated into the plot that it steams along and even incorporates the occasional toot of pleasure. It’s not all laughs though, there is violence, some jeopardy and a body to be dealt with, enough to add some real thrills to the mix. Runaway trains do have a tendency to crash…

Safecracking puts me in mind of the post war black and white British movies, but this is no Noir and it is thoroughly modern in style. The criminals use the language we would expect, and the setting is real and has the faded, run down neglect, we now associate with British seaside towns. Serious issues are addressed but it never gets too heavy and whilst never quite ending up in saucy postcard territory there is a certain cheekiness to proceedings, in the end this is a crime caper. There is a lot of humour throughout, mostly dry and with a sarcastic observational edge, which I found engaging and not overdone. I loved the comment from Mickey telling how he worried when his son fell in with the wrong crowd, “drugs?” was the response, “no, performing arts” the reply. He also has an ear for an interesting turn of phrase and savage putdowns from the street, like ‘sanctimonious piece of excrement’.

The theme through is the family; our commitments, ties and the love we engender. In some cases this is obvious, whereas elsewhere it is buried deeper, but it is manifest in all the significant characters in the own way. This is typified by the strained relationship between Mickey and son Liam, who summarises the position perfectly in that no matter who much you love someone and want to protect them, you must let them live their lives and make their own mistakes. These interactions help to bring some substance to the story.

The supporting cast of characters are an intriguingly mixed bunch, admittedly a couple come straight from central casting but we do want our villains to be nasty. Single mum Hazel is a gem, battling to do the right thing but always seeming to be swimming against a tide of bad circumstances. Her son Warren doesn’t help and represents a generation of confused teens whose attention is easily distracted.

Safe Hands is an engaging seaside crime caper, where revenge comes with a side order of laughs.

Safe hands can be purchased from Amazon here

The author

Wayne Kelly is a screenwriter and novelist. His debut crime novel, SAFE HANDS, is released in November 2023.

In addition to novels and short stories, he’s written and directed several short films including INKLING, which was an official selection at the International HorrorHound Film Festival in Ohio. He is producer of the award-winning feature-length documentary, NO FARE: The Sian Green Story.

Since 2014 he’s hosted The Joined Up Writing Podcast, where he interviews successful authors about their books, writing and journeys to publication.
With his limited spare time, he’s a singer-songwriter with The Wry Dogs and devoted cat father to Milo. He loves to cycle around the beautiful Leicestershire countryside, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

Source: Goodreads profile

Crow Moon #SuzyAspley #CrowMoon #Extract

By Suzy Aspley https://www.suzyaspleywriter.com/ @writer_suzy

Published by Orenda Books https://orendabooks.co.uk/ @OrendaBooks

272 pages ISBN 9781914585500

Publication date 14 March 2024

I was sent an electronic copy and selected extract to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

An extract from Crow Moon

CHAPTER THREE

The man had to be flexible with the plan. He’d watched Fraser running the trail for a few days and had done all he could to prepare. He knew the forest well, or at least this part of it. He’d been brought here as a child, had become used to the silence. No one to hear you scream but the ghosts. The Queen Elizabeth Forest Park stretched from the Trossachs hills and majestic Loch Lomond, all the way to the village of Crianlarich further to the north-west. Visitors flocked to the area. Studded with clear lochs and towering mountains, it was the Highlands within reach of Scotland’s biggest cities. Friday was the start of the weekend here.

The nearby village of Aberfoyle was steeped in folklore, and the famous Fairy Hill on the other side of the broad glen drew families from far away. Sometimes, if the wind blew in the right direction, he heard bells chiming. Not church bells, but offerings to the pagan forest spirits from folk who should know better. But there were also lonely areas of dense woodland where you could easily lose yourself; and where he knew he would never be disturbed.

People believed there was magic in these woods, and local tourist guides still told tales of witches. They knew nothing, he thought. But the stories meant they didn’t want to be here after dark, which was just as well.

He didn’t think the teenager remembered him. It was a while since they’d crossed paths, but he could take no risks. He wore his heavy coat and dark glasses, just in case. Fraser was a strong young man, almost an adult; easily capable of getting away if he suspected anything, so the man had found a way of putting the teenager on the back foot. A rope slung low across the track had done that; Fraser hadn’t seen it and had rolled to the ground. Then a friendly helping hand to get him onto the trailer. The boy looked relieved. Someone had come to save him. He was too trusting though. No sense of danger. At that time in the morning, no one else was about, but it was important to get him out of the way, off the main path, leaving as little trace as possible. He’d checked the forecast in advance. There’d been a run of dry days, so the quad wouldn’t leave tracks through mud. It had all come nicely together.

The Risperdal was prescribed for him, but he hadn’t been taking it. He’d just kept stocking up the supplies, sure they’d be useful for something. It was a stroke of luck finding the other drug stashed in the old railway buildings. He’d felt as if someone was helping him, knowing he needed to knock Fraser out for a while. But in the end he’d been forced to use a more brutal method – the stick still had the teenager’s blood on it. He’d get rid of that later.

Do it. Hit him. Make sure he stays still.

• 

The Blurb

When the crow moon rises, the darkness is unleashed…

Martha Strangeways is struggling to find purpose in her life, after giving up her career as an investigative reporter when her young twins died in a house fire.

Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, her life changes when she stumbles across the body of a missing teenager – a tragedy that turns even more sinister when a poem about crows is discovered inked onto his back…

When another teenager goes missing in the remote landscape, Martha is drawn into the investigation, teaming up with DI Derek Summers, as malevolent rumours begin to spread and paranoia grows.

As darkness descends on the village of Strathbran, it soon becomes clear that no one is safe, including Martha…

My review

My review will appear later in March.

Crow Moon can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Originally from the north-east of England, former journalist Suzy Aspley has lived in
Scotland for almost thirty years. She writes crime and short stories, often inspired by the
strange things she sees in the landscape around her. She won Bloody Scotland’s Pitch
Perfect in 2019 with the original idea for her debut novel and was shortlisted for the Capital Crime New Voices Award. In 2020, she was mentored by Jo Dickinson as part of
the Hachette future bookshelf initiative. Crow Moon was also longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award. She’s currently working on the second book in the series, and when she’s not writing, she’s either got her nose buried in a book, or is outside with her dogs dreaming up more dark stories. She lives in Stirlingshire with her family.

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Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case #ElsaDrucaroff #RodolfoWalshsLastCase

By Elsa Drucaroff @Elsa_Drucaroff

Translated by Slava Faybysh @slavabob8

Published by Corylus Books https://corylusbooks.com/ @CorylusB

TBA pages ISBN 9781739298937

Publication date 5 March 2024

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Ewa Sherman @sh_ewa for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

The Cover

Very simple but at the same time very effective.

My review

Last month I reviewed Death Flight by Sarah Sultoon whose plot centred on the fate of the ‘disappeared’ some fifteen years after the fall of the military junta, then like buses, along comes another novel that focuses on this dark period in the country’s history. Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case is set in 1976 when the military still had firm control over Argentina and brings a different feel.

Rodolfo Walsh was a famous Argentinian writer of Irish decent, but I would guess little known in the English-speaking world. He was the man who kick started investigative journalism in Argentina, as well as being a pioneer of the true-crime genre with his book Operation Massacre, at a time of civil turmoil and military rule, when to do so would put any writer in grave danger. He also wrote popular crime fiction. If that were not enough, he was active in the political underground not just being a member of the Montoneros but its head of intelligence. He also created ANCLA, (Clandestine News Agency) attempting to disseminate the truth using underground channels under the noses of the junta. So, he was both a talented and courageous man, but did his fame protect him from the repercussions of the military?

Perhaps we are expecting Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case to be a work of non-fiction, but it is not, it is very much fiction, but expertly woven into real life events. Including real people within historical fiction is nothing new, but usually these are cameo roles to bring a sense of reality to proceedings (after all Phillip Kerr had Bernie Gunther meeting just about every major Nazi with that series.) Here though the author goes much further taking a real person (Rodolfo) and imagining a reaction to a real event, the shoot out that his daughter was involved in. A challenging concept in which to write a convincing novel, but one which the author has risen to and produced a work that is as entertaining as it is compelling. How accurate her portrayal of Rodolfo as a complex, caring, moral and driven man can only be judged by those who knew him, but even if this novel just raises awareness of the man then she has triumphed.

The plot centres on a real-life event, a shoot-out on 29 September 1976, subsequently known as the Battle of Corro Street in which Walsh’s daughter María Victoria (nom de guerre “Hilda”, or “Vicki” to family and friends) was involved. It was reported that all five Montoneros where killed, but rumours persisted that one, a woman, was captured alive. It is here that the fiction takes over. Rodolfo does what every caring parent would do, try to establish the truth and if she were alive save his daughter. If she were alive would the military use her for their own ends, as bait or a pawn in negotiations. It is here that Rodolfo does indeed take on his last case.

The story switches between the viewpoints of the venal and corrupt military and the political opposition who were effectively treated as rebels. Here they cling onto the spirit and ideals of the student protests of 1968, a movement for the workers lead by an intelligentsia despised by the military. The spirit of resistance, as well its likely futility against unsurmountable odds, is captured to perfection, the reader is convinced these characters would die for their cause. There is also a deep sense of fear that is ultimately faced by a brazen almost cavalier attitude to life, one where it is better to die an honourable death than to live on your knees in servitude.

Trust and betrayal are the central themes, though there are also explorations into camaraderie, love and family. As both sides via to establish the intent of the opposition they face the dilemma of relying upon the trusting of one’s comrades, but simultaneously on the betrayal of the opposition by those within. If you can infiltrate the opposition, can they not do the same to you. Here we are given a sense of the scheming and paranoia involved, where betrayal could lead to torture and death. I thought initially it took a little getting into the story, probably due to the constantly switching perspectives, but this builds up a nice vein of tension and urgency throughout leading up to a magnificently created set piece as Rodolfo battles to avert disaster. The translator has done a great job in pulling this together and retaining a sense of urgency.

Rodolfo is clearly the central character and wonderfully drawn, at times working in bed whilst his wife lies asleep beside him. For me the big surprise was the characterisation of the military. It would have been easy to portray them as evil, as many clearly were, but there is more nuance here and a reminder that many were conscripted into the forces and one courageous soldier plays an important role within the storyline.

In the end, as the story has its foundations in fact, we know that Rodolfo follows the path of his daughter, dying the day after publishing Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta when he refused to surrender to a group of soldiers. Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case is wonderfully imaginative piece of speculative fiction and a fine testament to a talented and courageous writer.

Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case can be purchased via the publisher’s website here or the Bookshop.org here

The author

Elsa Drucaroff was born and raised in Buenos Aires. She is the author of four novels and two short story collections, in addition to being a prolific essayist. She has published numerous articles on Argentine literature, literary criticism and feminism.
Her work has been widely translated, but Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case is Elsa Drucaroff’s first novel to be translated into English.

The translator

(c) Acie Ferguson

Slava Faybysh is a translator based in Chicago. He translated Leopoldo Bonafulla’s The July Revolution, Barcelona 1909 (AK Press), a first-hand chronicle of a weeklong rebellion and general strike followed by government repression, told from an anarchist perspective. His translations have been published in journals such as New England Review, the Southern Review, and The Common, and his translation of Elsa Drucaroff’s thriller set in 1970s Argentina, Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case, was recently published by Corylus Books.

Source: latinamericanliteraturetoday.org

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The Salt Cutter #CJHowell #TheSaltCutter

By C.J. Howell @CJHowell_yup

Published by Black Spring Crime https://blackspringcrimeseries.com/ @BlackSpringC

320 pages ISBN 9781915406644

Publication date 17 January 2024

I was sent a paperback copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

The Cover

If ever there was a picture to perfectly encapsulate the story, then this is it. The bleak natural beauty of a desert of salt and a solitary man walking across it.

My review

It starts with a solider in a small town, about to catch a long-distance bus. There is clearly something amiss, he is dressed in slacks and a windcheater but incongruently still in army issue military boots. He is fleeing a dark past in the jungle and heading for Uyuni where he plans to catch a train across the border to safety. Throughout he is referred to as ‘The Soldier’ drawing comparisons with the classic spaghetti westerns, as they are in a barren desert environment and brutality is never far away.

After an eventful bus journey, which is atmospherically described by the author, he arrives in Uyuni to discover there is no train. The railway workers are on strike, and nobody seems to know when they will return to work. He’s trapped in a desolate, unfamiliar city that is surrounded by salt flats extending to the horizon. With no road out, he’s in a prison made of salt until the train starts running again. In the meantime, desperately short of cash he must do what he can to scratch an existence.

He walks the streets befriending who he can, in search of food, shelter and work. Here people hang on to survive, they exist rather than live a full life. Some realise he is a soldier and that once he is missed, they will come in search of him. When they do, they will bring terror and destruction to the city, certain death for anyone who harbours him. If caught, the best he can hope for is a swift death.

There is a fair amount of violence, how could there not be, it comes swiftly, almost casually at times. It can be graphic, and one scene is particularly harrowing and visceral, but it is essential to the impact of the story. The army is an undisciplined rabble, as bad as any military junta, made up of conscripts, most of which have been seized as little more than children from their families. A study of the inhumanity that follows desensitisation to violence. The chief of police (the wonderfully named El Gordo) sums up their life in the city, that law is just another word for power, a power that is exercised at the end of a gun. El Gordo wants the soldier to move on and does what he can to ensure he does, as the consequences for the city if he is found there is dire.

We do not just see the perspective of The Soldier though, as the second part concentrates on the life of Hector Anaya. He is a university lecturer who when soldiers take students from his lecture, flees with his wife and children, ending on the same bus as The Soldier. Hector is a man who is unused to the existence he is thrust into but endures for the sake of his family. No more so when he accompanies The Soldier into the salt pans, carrying out back breaking work with the salt cutters (of the title) sawing out large blocks of salt for meagre reward. Theirs is an odd friendship, one born out of experiencing the same privations.

From almost page one there is a pervading sense of doom within the prose that is relentless. Even during the lighter moments there is the sense that it isn’t going to end well, in the end there is almost a charm to the nihilism, the fascination for the reader to predict just how bleak the outcome will be. This is noir about as dark as it comes.

The characters are surprisingly engaging, even The Soldier, as they each cling onto their sense of humanity as best they can. They divide into two camps. Those who are resigned to accepting their fate, whatever the future brings, as they have already lost what they most valued. The others are those who forge on relentlessly, in search of something better, they may die trying but at least they attempted to change their destiny.

The settings throughout are unusual, at times uncomfortably so, but reflect the harsh realities for salt cutters and miners. Uyuni is portrayed as a strange city, one dependent upon salt and a railway for its future survival. The longer the strike runs the more it will suffer. A city in decline, with people deserting for better prospects, but also leaving because of a sense that trouble is coming this way.

This may appear to be an overwhelmingly dark story, but it makes the lighter moments, and there are some, shine more brightly. These are often simple everyday acts of human kindness, such as the sharing of meals, but are what sets us apart from savages. Lose sight of this and we lose some of our humanity. The other positive trait that the reader sees is the indomitable spirit of those determined to press on into an uncertain future.

The Salt Cutter is a searing examination of the survival of human spirit in the face of adversity.

The Salt Cutter can be purchased from the Bookshop.org here

The author

C.J. Howell is the author of two previously published novels. THE LAST OF THE SMOKING BARTENDERS received a starred review and was named a Best Crime Fiction Debut of 2014by Booklist. THE HUNDRED MILE VIEW is a fast-paced thriller set on the Navajo Nation. His new novel, AFTER UYUNI, was a finalist in the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, and was short listed for the Big Moose Prize. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Creative Writing Program, and he currently lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with his wife and two beautiful children.

Don’t forget to check out the other reviews on this blog tour:

Reading across the world March: Bolivia – The Salt Cutter by C.J.Howell; Argentina – Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case by Elsa Drucaroff #Bolivia #Argentina

On this blog I have been open to fiction from afar. Now I am now making a concerted to read novels from (or set in) as many countries across the globe as I am able to. I have started the task of recording all the locations already ‘visited’ on my reviews on a new page and hopefully, in a week or two, that task will be complete.

So onto my future stop offs. First up is Bolivia and a review of The Salt Cutter as part of the Random Things blog tour, when it is my turn tomorrow (11 March). The blurb of the novel is posted below as a taster of what to expect.

The Salt Cutter by C.J. Howell

Published by Black Spring Crime on 17 January 2024

Bolivia. 1990. A soldier arrives in the small town of Uyuni. A place where people endure rather than enjoy. People don’t live there, they survive there.

The soldier knows they’re coming for him. Hunting him down so they can deal their own brand of justice.

He needs to get out. To make it to the border and escape what is waiting for him.

He’s prepared to do anything to survive.

Even kill.

This is noir fiction at its finest. With characters that you will root for, heartbreak and breathtaking writing, this is a story that will linger in reader’s minds long after you’ve turned the final page.

Then with only a sort break of a couple of days it will be across the South American continent to Argentina for Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case. I will be reviewing this novel on Monday (11 March) on a blog tour organised by the publisher. Again the blurb is reproduced below as a taster of what to expect. This will be the second visit in 2024 as in February I reviewed Death Flight by Sarah Sultoon, and both stories centre on those disappeared or murdered by the military Junta.

Rodolfo Walsh’s Last Case by Elsa Drucaroff translated by Slava Faybysh

Published by Corylus Books on 5 March 2024

A key figure in the politics and literature of Argentina, Rodolfo Walsh wrote his iconic Letter to my Friends in December 1976, recounting the murder of his daughter Victoria by the military dictatorship. Just a few months later, he was killed in a shoot-out – just one of the Junta’s many thousands of victims.

What if this complex figure – a father, militant, and writer who delved the regime’s political crimes – had also sought to reveal the truth of his own daughter’s death?

Elsa Drucaroff’s imagining of Rodolfo Walsh undertaking the most personal investigation of his life is an electrifying, suspense-filled drama in which love and life decisions are inseparable from political convictions as he investigates the mystery of what happened to his own daughter.

The head of intelligence for Montoneros, a clandestine Peronist organisation co-ordinating armed resistance against the dictatorship, Rodolfo Walsh was also a prolific writer and journalist, seen as the forerunner of the true crime genre with his 1957 book Operation Massacre. What if beneath the surface of his Letter to my Friends lay a gripping story lost to history?

I already have a number of novels in far flung locations lined up to review, but would welcome input and suggestions from other readers of countries to ‘explore’.

Hangman Island #TEAMSCILLY #KateRhodes #HangmanIsland

By Kate Rhodes @K_RhodesWriter

Narrated by Stephen Perring @StephenPerring

Published by Simon & Schuster UK https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/ @simonschusterUK

384 pages (7 hours 58 minutes) ISBN 9781398510340 (HB)

Publication date 12 October 2023

Hangman Island is the seventh book in The Isles of Scilly Mysteries featuring Ben Kitto. Click on the links to read my reviews of the first six books in the series Hell Bay, Ruin Beach, Burnt Island, Pulpit Rock, Devil’s Table and The Brutal Tide.

I reviewed an audiobook purchased from Audible https://www.audible.co.uk/ @audibleuk. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMSCILLY review project.

The Cover

Incredible sky and a gibbet makes for a striking cover and that’s a killer strapline.

The narrator

The first time I have listened to this series on audiobook, and I enjoyed the narration, though I was expecting it to be a bit deeper for Ben. Glad that he didn’t use a Cornish accent as they can sound a bit comedic if not done well. Overall, a good choice and an excellent performance.

My review

As with the previous books in this series, we have a no-nonsense approach and are quickly into the action. Jez Cardew is an experienced sailor, a decorated and valued member of the lifeboat crew. When his boat is found drifting in the Atlantic Ocean, in placid waters and calm weather, with nobody aboard DI Ben Kitto immediately fears the worst but is doubtful it is just an accident.

Initially there is no indication what has happened, but then a severed left hand is found washed ashore on the beach. A gruesome enough find but sinister too because there is a medal attached to the index finger. A medal that proves to be symbolic and provides a link to Shakespeare’s Tempest. Ben’s fears are confirmed, they have a killer to deal with.

With a series set on the Scilly Isles it seems appropriate that one novel focusses on the lives of the RNLI lifeboat men, and whether by accident or design, with impeccable timing as the 200^th anniversary of its formation was on 4 March 2024. A largely voluntary organisation is the epitome of the island life, with the support of others and self-sacrifice, occassionaily the ultimate sacrifice. Ben has recently joined the crew so naturally is exposed to the danger, but he is not alone because police colleagues Eddie and Isla are members too. Ben often frustrates DCI Madron a man who is uptight and needs to be in control, but for once he right to rebuke Ben when he discovers that the three were on a shout together, irresponsible behaviour that could have meant 60% of the force perishing in one tragic accident. Not that Ben is a man to take heed.

The setting once again is fantastic, it’s easy to see how these islands provide inspiration to a writer, in this case there are links to Oliver Cromwell and a military fort on Tresco overlooking New Grimsby harbour. I frequently find myself Googling the landmarks while reading this series.

The story is set in the week leading up to Ben and Nina’s much anticipated wedding, which provides a welcome diversion to the action. Of the two Ben has been the most determined to wed, but he’s not so keen on the fuss, decision making and preparations required, so is easily distracted even without a murder to solve. Nina is determined that everything should go well on the day and, of course, becomes increasingly frustrated. Once of those classic situations of will they make to the church, never mind on time, to keep the reader guessing. The action itself builds up gradually throughout before suddenly Ben and Shadow are exposed to danger and extreme conditions. The reader is not short changed when it comes to intense, frantic action is this series.

The relationship dynamic between Ben and Nina keeps getting better, the author does love bringing them anguish. It was never going to be easy for two characters with troubled pasts and this time their fears are exposed, promises are asked for which will be explored in the next novel in the series.

One of the real strengths of this series is the supporting characters and this story is no exception. Ben’s oldest friend and soul mate Zoe is back for the wedding but has left husband Dev in India, leaving her in need of Nina and Ben’s support and guidance. Eddie shows a side that we never knew was there and Uncle Ray the man of few words but great deeds, manages to surprise Ben once again. There is a character from earlier in the series who gets a shot at redemption after original disgrace. All of this manages to capture the tight-knit community feel of the place, caring and supporting, rather than overly claustrophobic, but there is always the sinister edge of a killer in their midst.

At the heart of the story is bravery and heroism. It goes without saying that lifeboat crew and brave but there are always those that seem to above and beyond the call of duty. Then there are those who have previously done wrong but are trying to put the past behind them

Hangman Island provides heart stopping thrills within a story of bravery and recognition of the work of lifeboat crew.  I now have something of a wait for book 8 in this wonderful series.

Hangman Island can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod. She visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child which gave her the idea for this series. She is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group.

Source: Publisher’s website

Unholy Murder #TEAMTENNISON #LyndaLaPlante #UnholyMurder

By Lynda Le Plante https://lyndalaplante.com/ @LaPlanteLynda

Narrated by Rachel Atkins

Published by Bonnier Audio, Zaffre (an imprint of Bonnier Books UK) https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/imprints/zaffre/ @ZaffreBooks

416 pages (12 hours 4 minutes) ISBN 9781785765445 (PB)

Publication date 18 August 2021

Unholy Murder is the seventh novel the Jane Tennison Thriller Series.

I reviewed the audiobook purchased from audible https://www.audible.co.uk/ @audibleuk. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n Fenton from Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMTENNISON review project. Click on the links to read my reviews of Tennison, Hidden Killers, Good Friday, Murder Mile, The Dirty Dozen and Blunt Force. My review of Dark Rooms the eighth novel in the series will be posted on this blog in the first week in April.

The Cover

A nice atmospheric cover with all the key constituents of the storyline, whilst in keeping with the style of the series.

The narration

Great that they have stuck with Rachel Atkins, who does a fantastic job considering the range of emotions and large number of different voices, male and female.

My review

A JCB digger operator digging footings for a new development hits an obstruction. On inspection the workers are shocked to discover a coffin, but no ordinary one, this one is metal. The development is at the site of a former convent, so perhaps it is connected, the only problem being the site has been deconsecrated, so it should not be there. The construction workers are wanting to continue but the site is closed down whilst the coffin is investigated.

At the mortuary the coffin is opened, revealing the partially mummified body of a nun, protected by the formation of adipocere (grave wax). What was going to be treated as routine death takes on a sinister edge as the ever-observant Jane notices an anomaly, there are indications of foul play. Also despite the construction workers being instructed to leave the coffin alone, it appears that it has been opened and a crucifix removed from the body. This may prove to be vital evidence.

There is no real indication as to how old the body may be, so the nun needs to be identified before any murder investigation can take place. Jane’s superiors don’t want to waste vital resources on a case that may be fifty or even a hundred years old; the church seem surprisingly uninterested, and they too want to shut down an investigation.

Here we have Jane Tennison at her dogged best, only this time she is not alone with her obsession.

The odd situation of a cold case that has never been investigated, so there are no earlier leads for Jane to follow. Add to this the fact that it is 1982 (as set by the visit of Pope John Paul II to England) and so many of the modern techniques used on cold cases simply do not exist. With no DNA analysis they are going to rely on old fashioned policing skills, but not entirely. The first task is to identify the victim, the crucifix may hold clues, but perhaps the body may be able to ‘talk to them’. A local university professor is doing pioneering work on forensic facial reconstruction and offers to help. We’ve all seen it on the television, but we get an appreciation of how ground-breaking this would have been for detectives in the field, to have a likeness more convincing that any photofit or artist’s sketch.

Jane’s life has naturally moved on and now she is stationed at Bromley, though there is a familiar face around, the now promoted DI Stanley. He continues to give Jane advice that she doesn’t heed, and she finally discovers why he goes by just ‘Stanley’ which is entirely understandable. Her new boss is DCS Barnes, who it appears already has her card marked, but turns out to be an expected ally.

For once Jane’s family play no part in the storyline, which is understandable as there is so much else packed in. There’s a developing friendship with the pathologist Samantha Pullen, new DC Simon Boon to ‘break in’, a house move to Chislehurst and a new love interest. All of these are given space to be developed and I loved the interaction between Boon and Jane, where he is initially regarded as something of a clown but proves himself very able.

As might be expected with a dead nun, the catholic church is central to the plot. In the forty years since the story was set the role of the church in past abuses and their cover ups has been opened like a can of worms. Back then the clergy were respected and considered by many beyond reproach. The church was also part of the ‘establishment’ and other prominent figures colluded with any cover ups. We discover that DCS Barnes has history with the now Archbishop Malone and discover why he is determined that his team succeed. The author does a brilliant job in capturing the frustrations of the investigating officers seeking justice and the mendacity of those standing in their way. It is not all negatively portrayed though, there is a sympathetic Father, and the core of the plot is sad and quite touching.

This being a Tennison novel she makes her usual headstrong blunders, though there is a sense of a new maturity developing and even a bit of wisdom. She mentors Boon and even counsels him, telling him that sometimes you must let things go and step away, knowing that you have done your best and can do no more. Words of wisdom from a woman who has learned the hard way both in her personal and professional life. This is probably the most emotionally charged novel of the series to date and has been handled to perfection throughout.

Unholy Murder is an emotive tale of love and betrayal, buried under a barricade of lies, and an officer’s obsession with uncovering the truth.  

Unholy Murder can be purchased from the Bookshop.org here

The author

Lynda La Plante (born Lynda Titchmarsh) is a British author, screenwriter, and erstwhile actress (her performances in Rentaghost and other programmes were under her stage name of Lynda Marchal), best known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series.

Her first TV series as a scriptwriter was the six part robbery series Widows, in 1983, in which the widows of four armed robbers carry out a heist planned by their deceased husbands.

In 1991 ITV released Prime Suspect which has now run to seven series and stars Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. (In the United States Prime Suspect airs on PBS as part of the anthology program Mystery!) In 1993 La Plante won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her work on the series. In 1992 she wrote at TV movie called Seekers, starring Brenda Fricker and Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson.

She formed her own television production company, La Plante Productions, in 1994 and as La Plante Productions she wrote and produced the sequel to Widows, the equally gutsy She’s Out (ITV, 1995). The name “La Plante” comes from her marriage to writer Richard La Plante, author of the book Mantis and Hog Fever. La Plante divorced Lynda in the early 1990s.

Her output continued with The Governor (ITV 1995-96), a series focusing on the female governor of a high security prison, and was followed by a string of ratings pulling miniseries: the psycho killer nightmare events of Trial & Retribution (ITV 1997-), the widows’ revenge of the murders of their husbands & children Bella Mafia (1997) (starring Vanessa Redgrave), the undercover police unit operations of Supply and Demand (ITV 1998), videogame/internet murder mystery Killer Net (Channel 4 1998) and the female criminal profiler cases of Mind Games (ITV 2001).

Two additions to the Trial and Retribution miniseries were broadcast during 2006.

Source: Goodreads profile

The narrator

RACHEL ATKINS trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She has performed onstage in Romeo and Juliet, Blithe Spirit, and The School for Scandal, among others. Her television and radio credits include Midwinter of the Spirit, Law & Order, and The Archers, and she is also a regular voice for BBC Radio Drama and BBC Radio Comedy.

Source: Goodreads profile

The Futures Series: The Future of War Crimes Justice #ChrisStephen #TheFutureOfWarCrimesJustice

By Chris Stephen @reportingLibya

Published by Melville House https://mhpbooks.com/ @melvillehouse

144 pages ISBN 9781685891190

Publication date 12 March 2024

I was sent a paperback Advance Reader Copy in exchange for a fair review. I would like to thank Nikki at the publisher for arranging this.

The Futures series

The new FUTURES series from Melville House, launching in February 2024, presents imaginative future visions on a wide range of subjects, written by experts, academics, journalists and leading pop-culture figures. Seeking to publish a rich array of opinions, covering as wide-ranging a view as possible on our potential futures, we ask our authors to experiment with the kinds of daring ideas that can help change public conversation.

As a series we hope the FUTURES books will inspire readers to imagine what might lie ahead, to figure out how they might like the future to look, and think about how, collectively, we might get there.

My Review

Sometimes a book comes out at an opportune moment The Future of War Crimes Justice is a fine example. No matter what format you consume your news, the expression ‘war crimes’ hasn’t been far away from some time. War crimes are being perpetrated in several locations across the world, some extensively reported, others not so, but it has also become an expression that is misused. Just like ‘genocide’ and ‘Nazi’ its overuse, often spuriously, dilutes its true meaning. In this short book the author explores what is a war crime, historically how they have been dealt with and what are the prospects for future prosecutions.

War crimes have existed ever since man battled with his fellow man, and even though there were ‘rules’ of warfare and chivalric ideals, pretty much what happened on the battlefield stayed on the battlefield. Then the nineteenth century opened the world with new methods of transport and communications, some of which were harnessed by armies, but they also widened the exposure of war to the masses. The truly astounding fact which the author reports is how just a few individuals had a profound effect on world thinking. How Swiss Humanitarian Henry Dunant set up the Red Cross and then was the main driver behind the Geneva convention. Then Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin came up with the expression genocide and industrialist Andrew Carnegie was a driving force for the International Court of Justice, even funding the building of its premises.

Once setting out the history and the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the author goes on to establish its success or rather lack of success. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg has been criticised as victor’s justice and any such trial likely to be so, however it did demonstrate justice was possible. In a war with many crimes on all sides they concentrated upon arguably the most significant and became a catalyst for the development of the ICC. Where the ICC has struggled is in a lack of universal support most notably from the United States. This section was a real eye opener for me, and the author has done an excellent job in setting out all the flaws, but also the rare successes, in a cogent way. Being a journalist with extensive war zone experience rather than a lawyer means that its intelligently written, clear and concise but also aimed at the ordinary man. Anyone reading this will end up with a much greater understanding of the subject without becoming bogged down with the intricacies of legal technicalities.

So, to the future, as that is what the series is about. The dos and don’ts for the ICC are set out and they seem logical and reasonable. Where the surprise comes is the left-field approach suggested by following the money. As the racketeer Al Capone was eventually jailed for tax evasion, which was an easier task to prove than the gangster activities, then close scrutiny of high finance and mega corporations may be the solution. It has already been established that attacking the sources of finance of terrorist groups is an effective way of tackling the problem, so why not apply the principal to despots.

Much of the savagery within the developing world revolves around the exploitation of natural resources, especially precious metals and gemstones, and increasingly the rare-earth metals which are so essential to modern technology. The suggestion is then to follow back from the money to the exploiters, which was in part done in the attack on ‘blood diamonds.’ An approach which is appealing by its simplicity, prosecutions may remain difficult but its another weapon in the armoury of the prosecutor seeking justice.

As a succinct introduction to the world of war crimes justice then this book certainly achieves what is sets out to. It is both enlightening and thought provoking whilst retaining an easy to read style of the non-academic.

The Future of War Crimes Justice can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Chris Stephen has reported from nine wars for publications including The Guardian and The New York Times magazine. He writes on war crimes developments for journals including the International Institute for Strategic Studies and is author of Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic, published by Atlantic Books. He lives in London.

Don’t forget to check out the other reviews of all the books in this series covered by this blog tour:

The War Widow #TaraMoss #TheWarWidow

By Tara Moss https://www.taramoss.com/ @Tara_Moss

Published by Verve Books https://www.vervebooks.co.uk/index.php @VERVE_Books

317 pages ISBN 9780857308672

Publication date 7 March 2024

I was sent a paperback copy in exchange for a fair review. I would like to thank Lisa at the publisher and of course, the author for making it available.

The Cover

Light and dark, hints of glamour and mystery, it’s a very striking cover that’s perfect for the story.

My review

Its 1946 and war correspondent Billie Walker is back home in Sydney after seeing the horrors of war in Europe. Life has changed though, her father is dead, her journalist husband Jack is missing presumed dead in Europe, and the newspapers are now giving priority for jobs to male soldiers. The new world of opportunity and respect for women is now over. They are expected to go back to what they were doing before the war, to give up new-found independence and leave the work to men.

Billie is reluctant to give up such freedoms lightly and decides to revive her late father’s business, a private investigation agency. She is determined to prove that a woman can flourish in this man’s world.

Initially business is slow, consisting mainly of women asking for proof of their husband’s infidelity, dirty work but necessary at a time when obtaining a divorce was difficult. Barely scratching a living, she needs a proper case to prove her mettle and show she can match the men in the profession. When a woman asks Billie to find her son, what appears to be a simple case leads her to a dark and dangerous underworld hidden just beneath Sydney’s high society life. Billie thought she had left the war behind, but has it left her?

Australian and New Zealand based crime fiction is proving to be very popular, and rightly so there are some fabulous writers out there. So, a chance to review a period piece of Aussie crime was not to be missed for this reviewer, who enjoyed this book immensely. Clearly a great deal of research and effort has gone into giving it the authentic feel that it has, without over embellishments slowing down the flow. The simple things are observed, almost everyone wears a hat and men wear suits, but also the things people would try to forget, the damaged ex-service men who try to cover scars and wear gloves to hid missing fingers. So, prepare to journey back to 1946.

The plot is linear, with two strands that eventually come together with a touch of finesse but then turns after a clever reveal, which makes the story altogether more complex, rather than being too obvious from the start. The pacing is brisk, even frenetic at times but never becomes simplistic or one dimensional, retaining a clarity throughout. Thriller fans are going to love the action which is interspersed throughout the storyline, with Billie and assistant Sam barely having chance to get their breath back before the next incident. There’s real danger and jeopardy introduced at times and some great fight scenes with a female perspective. This is the sort of book you will tell yourself just one more chapter…

Billie Walker is shaping up to be a fabulous character, she is determined and courageous but also impulsive and quite reckless. This reckless streak means she can find herself in danger within the blink of an eye, which promises the reader plenty of entertainment. She may be doing a ‘man’s job’ but she is feminine and glamorous, with her couture lovingly described, even down to the hand sewn garter that holds her mother-of-pearl gripped pistol. She is also a bit of a petrolhead, she has a Willys 77 Roadster that she drives fast, so expect car chases at up to 50mph! The spirit of V. I. Warshawski within Australia’s next top model, a formidable detective.

The supporting characters manage to add some great contrasts; there’s Billie’s mother the Baroness Ella who has fallen on (comparative) hard times, Billie’s young aboriginal friend Shyla and Sam the young, strong assistant who lost fingers thanks to an Italian thermos bomb (Italian grenade). The villains are particularly nasty.   

Billie is ‘The War Widow’ who still longs for Jack and prays that he is still alive, but she is also an attractive woman in the prime of her life, providing a lovely dilemma for the reader. Will flirting and sexual chemistry lead to more, I guess we shall see. Either way the story sets up some great situations for our headstrong PI to go bulldozing through to the consternation to the men around her. Here is a woman who can manage perfectly on her own, one who is determined to hold onto the liberation the war brought, a true feminist.

It is very much an Australian story though, as the reader keeps getting little reminders, be it kangaroos holding up traffic, escaped crocodiles (read the author’s acknowledgements) or the rural police station. There is also an acknowledgement of the suffering of indigenous peoples which is crucial to the plot which is sensitively handled.    

There’s plenty of nods to the golden age of the 1930s US hardboiled PI, but it doesn’t stray into homage territory but does stay faithful to the genre and certainly retains a touch of Noir about it. There are a couple of enjoyable cliches, of the type we would expect, but it retains its sense of individuality throughout.

The War Widow is a gripping private eye adventure, so evocative of the period in which it is set, with a very individual female lead and a hard edge. A fabulous series set up; I for one hope there are more novels to come.

The War Widow can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Tara Moss is an internationally bestselling author, passionate and inspiring chronic pain and disability advocate, human rights activist, documentary and podcast host and former model. Her crime novels have been published in nineteen countries and thirteen languages, and her memoir, The Fictional Woman, was a #1 international bestseller. Moss is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and has received the Edna Ryan Award for significant contributions to feminist debate and for speaking out on behalf of women and children. In 2017, she was recognised as one of the Global Top 50 Diversity Figures in Public Life. The Ghosts of Paris, the second Billie Walker mystery, will be published by VERVE Books in autumn 2024.

Source: Publisher’s website

Death Flight #SarahSultoon #DeathFlight

By Sarah Sultoon @SultoonSarah

Published by Orenda Books https://orendabooks.co.uk/ @OrendaBooks

Publishing date 29 February 2024

300 pages ISBN 9781916788015

Death Flight is the second novel in the Jonny Murphy Files series.

I was sent an electronic copy to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the Author and the Publisher.

The cover

A cracking cover. At first glance a potential reader might think ‘oh there’s going to be a plane crash.’ However, this is much more specific and in fact the title refers to one of many death flights that were carried out in Argentina’s dark military past. Interesting producing the cover in landscape and then turning it on its side rather than being a wrap around.

Pete’s ponderings

To those of us of a certain vintage, mention South America as a continent and three things immediately spring to mind. World Cup victories, financial meltdowns and murderous military Juntas, all occurring at regular intervals from the beginning of the twentieth century. Death Flight centres on two of these and as Meatloaf sang “two out of three ain’t bad.” So strap yourself in because there is a bumpy flight ahead and it’s not due to turbulence.

My review

Its 1998 and novice reporter Jonny Murphy is in Buenos Aires covering the current financial crisis for the International Tribune. He is being supported by freelance photographer Paloma Glenn.

When a human body is washed up on a beach on the outskirts of the city, Jonny gets a tip off from the local police. It’s not much more than a torso, with all identifying features removed, the only distinguishing mark as a clue to the identity is a distinctive tattoo on the chest. Once, during the ‘Dirty War’ such bodies occasionally washed up on the beaches, these victims being thrown out of aeroplanes, sometimes alive, disposed of miles out to sea, but currents can be fickle. This body has recently killed though, and the Dirty War ended fifteen years ago. So why was this method of disposal used, to send a message? That there has been no press reporting of the body grabs Jonny’s attention. He thinks there could be a bigger story here than in the financial crisis. Jonny does what all great journalists do, asks questions and digs for answers. Finding the families of the missing isn’t too taxing; the mothers and grandmothers congregate weekly in a central square demanding answers. Jonny and Paloma are determined to help, but at what personal cost?

A bold story, based on a painful past, written with tact and flair. A past that some would rather bury, whilst others can never forget, is going to be cathartic and one hopes that the twenty-five years that have passed will have allowed for some healing.

To mangle the old football cliché this is a book of two halves, the first being the digging around for clues, the second being when they are on the right track. This makes it a two-speed storyline which starts off brisk before exploding into action.

The first half is one of discovery, for the reader and Jonny, as he navigates life in 1998 Buenos Aires. The financial crisis is starting to bite, people are becoming desperate which is reflected in their everyday life. Even so there are still those who are doing everything they can to help their fellow man, epitomised by the old man who gives Jonny refuge. The painful reality of what his life has become is heart rending but sensitively told, if he doesn’t do it then will anyone. The plight of the disappeared and those who preserved their memory is portrayed with a mixture of stoicism and grief, that hammers home what is means to these unfortunate people. Having a son or daughter disappeared is possibly more damaging to the families than them just being murdered. There remains a faint hope and it’s the hope that kills you, like a painful sore, that allows for no closure or chance of moving on.

The second half by way of contrast is good old fashioned action thriller. There’s danger and jeopardy as our heroes ‘jump out of the frying pan into the fire’ along with a chase and a race against time. The central reveal comes before an exciting finale as the long simmering city erupts with the kind of lawlessness and brutality that rolling news made its name on.  

The standout part of the prose for me was the level of mistrust, which was magnificently kept running throughout. There is the constant nagging feelings of doubt, of suspicion, of ulterior motives at play. We have two central characters who work together but never really trust each other, or anyone else for that matter. Their smallest actions have the reader thinking there may be more to that action than first appears, that betrayal might be around the corner. This must have been what it was like to live under the Junta rule, where the wrong word to, or to trust the wrong person, could lead to denouncement and imprisonment or death. There is a cold pervading fear throughout.

Jonny and Paloma work so well as a central duo because they have that sense of being opposites, such that the reader wonders whether opposites will eventually attract. Deep down though they have something that ties them together, a painful past. With Jonny it is what happened following his parents separating, the grandparents he only now getting to know and the search for the twin sister he never knew he had. For Paloma it’s the battle of herself against her sense of identity, that sends many adopted people in search of their birth parents. At some point they will both have to face off against their demons.

Dead Flight is a fabulous mixture of frantic action and deep intrigue set against a nation’s shameful past.

Death Flight can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The Author

Sarah Sultoon is a journalist and writer, whose work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the
frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. She has extensive experience in conflict zones, winning three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, and a number of Royal Television Society gongs. When not reading
or writing she can usually be found somewhere outside, either running, swimming or throwing a ball for her three children and dog … Her debut thriller The Source is currently in production with Lime Pictures, and was a Capital Crime Book Club pick and a number one bestseller on Kindle. The Shot (2022) and Dirt (2023) followed, with multiple award longlistings, including the CWA Daggers. Sarah currently works for Channel 4 News and lives in London.

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this blog tour:

Sleeping Dogs #WendyTurbin #SleepingDogs

By Wendy Turbin

Narrated by Judi Daykin https://judidaykin.co.uk/ @norfolknovelist

Published by Wendy Turbin/Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

376 pages (9 hours 44 minutes) ISBN 1913793087 (PB)

Publication date 9 December 2020 (audio 6 January 2022)

Sleeping Dogs is the first book in the Penny Wiseman Murder Mystery series.

I reviewed the audiobook version purchased from Audible. https://www.audible.co.uk/ @audibleuk

The cover

A seaside pier, the sea and a ghostly figure, they’re all relevant to the story. A nice cover, I like it.

The narration

The choice of narrator is vital with audiobooks, and here they have made an excellent choice. The performance is light and upbeat which is perfect for the story. A nice variety of voices and accents and a good deadpan comic delivery.

My review

Penny Wiseman is a gumshoe, not through choice but through necessity. The business was that of her late father and she is struggling just to keep it afloat. He was less choosy with who he worked for, and Penny believes some clients were not exactly legitimate. His books seem more fiction than fact, leaving her with debts to settle. With few of his major clients willing to employ her, she has had to sell her beautiful seafront apartment and pawn her most treasured possession.  

Desperate, she takes on a case of looking into the activities of a secretive husband, who it is feared is being blackmailed. This then opens a series of other mysteries for Penny to follow.

There is also a complication; Penny can see the dead. Since a near death experience which lead to the drowning of her babysitter, Gail Monterrey, she has been able to see ghosts. A gift? Maybe, or perhaps a curse for the guilt she feels. Either way she is stuck with it and must do her best to use it to her advantage.

A bright and breezy story, not so much a cosy crime as a feel-good crime. There is plenty of humour, quirkiness, a nice line in cutting sarcasm and all-round silliness. I’m sure most will read with a smile on their face, but it is not without moments that on reflection could be darker were it not for the upbeat prose. There are also moments of danger and jeopardy and even a car chase (of sorts) which provide a nice contrast to the remainder of the story and add a sense of urgency to the gentle pacing.

The plot is a little bit silly, as befits the overall style, but is delivered with the necessary conviction and all the tangled threads end up being woven together nicely. Set at the seaside what better than a talent show, but one with a difference and a hint of entertaining chaos. The British obsession with pets also figures strong, with cats and dogs, both real and ghostly, and an accommodating veterinary practice. This is a very English private investigation story.

Our central heroine is of course Penny, a woman drifting through her life, concentrating on the business surviving just another week. She is trying to put her troubles behind her, but when she sees ghosts, she tries to first understand and then help them. During the investigation Penny must face up to her own personal demons. Her parts are told in the first person and like all good PIs she shoots from the lip, which is just as well as this is the UK and not 1940s San Francisco.

Her assistant is the nephew of her father’s former assistant, and the best thing about Nathan is he comes cheap. Tall and thin with a shock of red hair he is useless at undercover work, well at most things other than answering the phone, as he is part Frank Spencer and part Private Pike. He is obsessed with technology as are many young men of his age are and this coupled to his personality produce some slapstick moments and comic gems. A little cruel at times but all done in good faith, they love him really.

Penny’s sister is Sarah, and they bounce off each other with sparky sibling rivalry. Sarah becomes concerned after hearing of the financial problems of the business and is keen to help Penny out of her predicament. In doing so she crosses the path of glamourous, tall, slender and stylish Alice, with her long legs to die for and decidedly large hands and feet. There follows an interesting a problematic relationship as Penny has Alice down on her list of suspects.

The test of the first book in a series is does the reader want more. A definite yes please from me. This is light-hearted crime fiction of the highest order that deserves a follow up.

Don’t let these Sleeping Dogs lie, grab a copy soon, settle down and enjoy.

Sleeping Dogs can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Wendy Turbin lives near the sea, walks a dog or two for the Cinnamon Trust, and is owned by Little Ernie, a cat who spooks at invisible things. An avid reader of crime fiction, she has long been a fan of the private detective from Chandler to McDermid, from Grafton to Galbraith.

This combination of facts may explain why her debut novel contains a PI, a pier and a pet – and a ghost girl in need of help.

Over the years, Wendy has worked in international logistics, customer service banking, and education – but she has always been a writer. Like many others who doubt themselves, few of her tales have seen the light of day, despite the Creative Writing core of her OU Bachelor’s degree.

But recovery from a severe bout of depression a few years ago led Wendy to re-evaluate her priorities and then she came across the UEA’s amazing MA Creative Writing Crime Fiction. Ever the ‘learnaholic’, the idea appealed. Write a whole novel while studying crime fiction? Yes! In a ‘seize the day moment’ she applied. She was thrilled and terrified when offered a place.

Fuelled by huge mugs of tea and a lake of prosecco, she wrote the book and achieved the MA.

Now her world is all murder and mayhem – and she’s very happy with that!

Source: Amazon profile

The narrator

Yorkshire born, Judi has lived, worked and made theatre in Norfolk for the last forty years. She completed her MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2019, and her debut novel was shortlisted for the Little, Brown UEA writers prize. That novel became Under Violent Skies, which was long-listed for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger in 2021.

Judi was a working actor with a portfolio career spanning twenty years of theatre, film and television; directing; workshops; audio narration and medical roleplay. These days she writes full time from her study in a North Norfolk village. She also enjoys crafting, art history, watching horror films and going on cruises, none of which she has much spare time for!

Source: Amazon profile

A Death in Malta #PaulCaruanaGalizia #ADeathInMalta

By Paul Caruana Galizia @pcaruanagalizia

Narrated by Paul Caruana Galizia

Published by Riverhead Books, Penguin Books, Penguin Audio https://www.penguin.co.uk/ @PenguinUKBooks

336 pages (9 hours 52 minutes) ISBN‎ 9781529151558 (HB) 9781803282503 (A)

Publication date 7 November 2023

I reviewed an audiobook version purchased from Audible.

The cover

A lovely photograph of Daphne at the pool with her three boys. A powerful reminder that underneath everything in this story is a loving family orientated woman.

The narration

Narrated by the author, not something I usually like, but for a deeply personal story it is totally appropriate. He does a remarkable job, under similar personal circumstances I don’t think I could have done it. He does have an accent that takes a little time to attune to, is suitably solemn at the appropriate points, but most of all its the affection he holds for his mother and family shines through. Paul Caruana Galizia I doff my cap to you sir.

Pete’s ponderings

When I read about the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia in The Times I was dumbfounded. This wasn’t the Malta I knew and visited so many times over the last 30 years. I had read the Malta Times and Independent when over there so had some background knowledge of the island. I knew the politics was quite partizan and vociferous, but a political assassination seemed inconceivable, it was the twenty first century after all and they were part of the EU. I took an interest in the story which has been long-running, and this incisive book sets out what has happened.

My review

“There are crooks everywhere you look.”

From the final blog post of Daphne Caruana Galizia, 16 October 2017.

On the afternoon of 16 October 2017 Daphne Caruana Galizia was hurrying to a meeting with her solicitors, a meeting she had forgotten, but she never made it. Some 40 seconds down the country lane where she lived, Triq il-Bidnija, a car bomb that had been placed under her leased Peugeot 108 was detonated. She never stood a chance of surviving. An event that would resonate around the world, albeit briefly in some places, and would have wide reaching effects which are still being felt and yet to be resolved.

She was a remarkable woman, brave, determined, forthright but most of all she had a strong sense of morality, of determining right from wrong. Fellow blogger Manuel Delia, a former Nationalist Party official had this to say at the news of her death “…the only ethical voice left. She was the only one talking about right and wrong.”

In this book her youngest son sets out the background to the assassination (that effectively is what it was) and the family’s long and arduous path to justice, one that is still far from complete. The author has followed his mother into the profession of journalism and certainly the part of the book dedicated to the investigation has all the hallmarks of great investigative journalism, it is precise, cogent, analytical and dispassionate. It is much more than this though as within the first half of the book he paints a thoughtful and passionate biography of a formidable but deeply caring woman.

We start with a little history of the island, which is great background even for those who may be familiar with the island. Then we get down to the serious, dirty world of post-independence (from Britain) politics, with the Labour Party leaning quite far to the left and right/centre Nationalist Party. Were it not for the extreme bitterness involved it could have evoked thoughts of the immediate post WWII Italy of Giovannino Guareschi and his classic Don Camillo and Peppone stories. A communist mayor flexing his muscles to the disgust of the Catholic Church juxtapose with Dom Mintoff sideling up to Communist despots for the new Malta. It was no village, though at times it may seem so, but a fully independent country, where there is much more at stake, disputes sometime ended in violent clashes and even murder was not unknown. On 28 December 1977, fourteen-year-old Karin Maria Grech was killed opening a parcel bomb intended for her father.

Daphne was destined to become a writer from birth, being named by her mother who was reading a Daphne du Maurier novel at the beginning of her labour. In a typically Maltese scenario, she was informed by the nuns that Daphne was an unacceptable name being neither a saint or mentioned in the bible and so would not be registered. We see the struggles that Daphne went through to even start a career at a time when opportunities for women were restricted, especially so in a conservative and catholic country. Determination gets her there, not only did she become the first regular female columnist but the first of either sex to eschew anonymity and publish under a byline. This being a fine example of the fear and pressure journalists found themselves under, as she wrote ‘fear demoralises people’ and the courage of one woman to stand up and be counted, to press for truth and transparency. She was to come to be regarded as the Maltese Cassandra.

Not one to compromise she found more and more restrictions being placed on what she could write in print she resorted to blogging her more explosive exposes online. As indication of the impact of her writing and its reach, it can be noted that some posts had more that double the island’s population in hits. Her peak was to coincide with the leaking of the Panama Papers, just the sort of expose she would revel in, and it wouldn’t take long for her to uncover serious corruption in Malta. She had always written about corruption, the different here was more noughts could be added to the sums involved. This also set in motion a chain of events that would end in that car bomb.

The investigation section brings into stark contrast the ugliness behind the power in Malta. The nepotism that becomes almost incestuous, patronage, money laundering, the passports for cash all making Malta the dirty money capital of the EU. Look in any small-town local newspaper and you will see the familiar faces of the same dignitaries, week in week out and it was just the same in Malta, except it is a country and so the stakes are much higher. If the First Minister commits a crime how can justice be served by a senior investigating officer who is married to one of his ministers? Here the book is uncompromising, much in the style of his mother he leaves no doubt where he stands.

For the Caruana Galizia family the fight for justice continues and I wish them well. We in Britain should not be complacent though, as there are so many parallels here with what has happened in Malta, where they become more apparent in a microcosm. Our politics is becoming more divided and partizan, whilst the calibre of incumbents and parliamentary standards is declining. The police and judiciary fare little better and there is a growing sense of disquiet. The Covid enquiry appears to be opening eyes to potential large-scale fraud. The free press which should be bring people to account are lost in a world of celebrity and clickbait, such that when a piece of true investigative journalism is carried out it is met by shock. It really is time for people to wake up.   

A Death in Malta is a touching, heartfelt portrait of a remarkable woman, who was a determined and courageous journalist, but moreover one who was caring and loved her family.

A Death in Malta can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

Her journalist spirit lives on at The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation.

The author

Paul Caruana Galizia became a journalist after his mother was assassinated and since then has won an Orwell Prize special award, a British Journalism Award and other honours for his reporting. With his brothers, he has received a Magnitsky Human Rights Award and an Anderson-Lucas-Norman Award for campaigning to achieve justice for Daphne.

Source: Publisher’s website

Blood Ribbons #LinLeVersha #BloodRibbons

By Lin Le Versha @linleversha

Published by Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

288 pages ISBN 9781915817327

Publication date 6 February 2024

Blood Ribbons is book 4 in the Steph Grant Murder Mystery Series. Click on the links to see my review of Blood Ties book 3 in the series.

I was sent an electronic copy in exchange for a fair review.  I would like to thank Rebecca at Hobeck Books and the Author for the invitation to participate in the Blog Tour.

The Cover

A very atmospheric scene in misty woodland that harks back to the past as well as the current day. The fabric tied to the tree takes on a significance within the story. A great cover with a perfect strapline.

My review

The college where Steph Grant works are over in the Netherlands on an educational trip. They are visiting Arnhem with a group of veterans of Operation Market Garden, the audacious but ultimately fruitless plan to capture three bridges over the Rhine. An operation whose success might have shortened the war, but it ended up as one of those military disasters we British seem to fixate upon. Brave men let down in what was literally A Bridge Too Far. The project intends to expose the students to the events of 1944, though the visiting museums, the war graves, the drop zone and talking to the veterans on site. Then they are to collaborate and produce a book of their experiences ready for the 75^th Anniversary. What a fabulous idea to keep memories alive and final closure for the old soldiers.

For one student, Zoe, this is going to be an especially poignant visit. Her great grandfather private Duncan Shaw was part of the operation, and he recorded his thoughts, feelings and experiences as they battled for survival. His diary, written in a school exercise book, is going to be in part a guide for the students to follow. Sadly, Duncan did not return and as a result his family suffered greatly. His death changed their futures forever. Stepping into Duncan’s shoes through his diary is going to be an emotionally charged experience for Zoe, but it also proves to be a catalyst to uncovering uncomfortable family secrets.

Steph sees the visit as a chance for her and Chief Inspector Philip Hale to have a mini-break and hopefully get some quality time together, amongst the chaperoning of the students. However, when a body is found tangled in rushes in the river close by, it naturally turns into a bit of a ‘busman’s holiday’ as he lends a hand to the Dutch police.

A story set in the present day, but references back to the past, to dark days of 1944, through a diary and reminiscences of old soldiers. The structure is cleverly worked as Zoe reads from the diary in public and then the students and veterans discuss it in both public and private. This allows for Zoe to develop as a character and gain confidence, which is helpful as she takes an emotional battering thanks to the revelations over the course of the story.

The sections of the imagined diary are exceptional. The author has managed to capture the fear and desperation of a young man facing an enemy in battle, but also the boredom and inactivity that joins it. For many war is a series of short intense periods of fighting punctuating long periods of waiting, of killing time and building up a sense of dread of what is to come. It also introduces the mystery of what happened to Duncan as there is confusion and uncertainty of how he was killed. Much happens in the fog of war as the reader is about to discover along with the significance of the title. All this is beautifully written and sensitively handled.

The idea of mixing the veterans, who by this stage will be into their nineties, with the students is another winner. Much fiction is written along generational lines, so it is nice to read such a varied profile. Respect for our elders is seen as declining in the western world, projects like this would help to redress the balance. Certainly, in terms of this story it works so well and helps to unlock the mystery of what happened to Duncan. It was nice to see the veteran portrayed as a feisty as well as wise bunch.

The modern-day crime is well handled and of the sort that will happen every week. Whether the detectives would be given such a free reign falls under artistic licence for me, it sets the plot up nicely as the action moves from the Netherlands to the UK. It also keeps officers from both countries within the story.

Steph and Hales are a great fictional couple, albeit a very sensible one for modern crime fiction. Somewhat middle of the road, middle class and edging towards comfort of sitcom suburbia, but they provide a sense safety and security, which dovetails with the experiences of students. We are not chasing psychotic serial killers but dealing with crimes in a down to earth and logical manner where their ordinariness is a strength. With them on your side you feel that all will come good in the end, though you may end up with a bit of a lecture and a risk of detention. Derek only plays a small part this time, but as usual deserves an award for best supporting canine.

This series is never going to be gritty and urban, but that doesn’t mean that it is all comfortable and cosy, as there are dark elements within the story. The crimes they tackle are a real problem in Britain and the central characters are put in danger and jeopardy that fit with the theme. The section in Arnhem is nicely paced as the contents of Duncan’s diary are absorbed, then it moves up a gear back in Suffolk before it suddenly careers of to a frantic finale. The reveal is clever and surprising with some bluff and deception.

Blood Ribbons is a poignant marrying of a painful the past and present within a gripping murder mystery.

Blood Ribbons can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Lin Le Versha has drawn on her extensive experience in London and Surrey schools and colleges as the inspiration for her debut crime novel which Hobeck were thrilled published in 2021. That novel, Blood Notes, introduces Steph Grant and her four-legged companion, Derek. Shortly after came Blood Lines and in 2023 Blood Ties. In addition to crime writing, she has written over twenty plays exploring the issues faced by secondary school and sixth form students. Commissioned to work with Anne Fine on The Granny Project, she created the English and drama lesson activities for students aged 11 to 14.

Creative writing courses at the Arvon Foundation and ‘Ways with Words’ in Italy, encouraged Lin to enrol at the UEA MA in Creative Writing (Crime) and her debut novel was submitted as the final assessment for this excellent course.

Lin is the Director of the Southwold Arts Festival, comprising over thirty events in an eight-day celebration of the Arts.

Don’t forget to check out the other great reviews on this blog tour:

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Smoke Kings #JahmalMayfield #SmokeKings

By Jahmal Mayfield https://jahmalmayfield.com/ @jahmal_mayfield

Published by Melville House https://mhpbooks.com/ @melvillehouse

390 pages ISBN 9781685891114

Publication date 8 February 2024

I was sent a paperback Advance Reader Copy in exchange for a fair review. I would like to thank Nikki at the publisher for arranging this.

The Cover

A young black man on a red background will promote thoughts of aggression in some, but the title almost completely covers his face. Perhaps this is to signify a novel to challenge attitude based upon snap judgements. It’s certainly an arresting cover.

My review

The story starts with the corpse of a talented young man, Darius, being identified by his family, brother Joshua and Cousin Nate. Darius was planning to go to Rutgers University, but of course that dream has died too. Another young black man cut down before his potential was given chance to flourish. The police are acting as if they are going to treat it as the death of just another black boy. Joshua is upset and reticent; Nate is furious and determined.

How Darious comes to be murdered is told as a series of interludes between chapters as the current day position is being set up. Its touching and poignant as much as it is senseless, an escalation of what for some one suspects is a regular if not daily occurrence. How the friends react to his death differs greatly.

Nate becomes a political activist for black rights. Not for him the role of keyboard warrior or the protest marches and candle lit vigils that seem to achieve nothing. He believes in direct positive action. Together with Cousin Joshua and friends Isiah and Rachel he sets up an action group seeking retribution. Their scheme is a simple one, to make the relatives of the unpunished perpetrators of hate crimes from the distant past pay for those deeds. This is achieved by way of kidnapping these modern relatives, then using physical threat and coercion, ‘persuade’ them to pay reparations. In other words, to tax them just like the Mafia and other criminal gangs, but this time it is in the name of justice.

Not all the kidnappings go to plan though and there is an escalating level of violence, as their actions begin to spiral out of control, which brings them to the notice of others. One is an ex-cop and now ex-private security officer who is taking on the interests of an old friend; the other is a group of white supremacists with survivalist/prepper tendencies.

I do love a story with mixed up morals. They seem to matter more now that there appears to be a determination to polarise opinions, whilst throwing out nonsense statements like ‘the right side of history’. In Smoke Kings we have an abundance of it. Here we have an intelligent novel with race at its core that creates a multitude of situations and opinions that pose questions to reader, rather than taking a blinkered approach favoured by groups like BLM. There is great subtlety to the writing, and it is left for the reader to pick up on them, which means that this will prove to be a great book club read, as there is so much to discuss.

Nate is driven by a need for justice that turns into rage, he may see himself as focussed but others see him as short-sighted. He clashes with Isiah over who they are seeking vengeance for. Isiah wants to widen the net, but Nate believes that only blacks are truly wronged, it is they that should be the focus, thereby creating a hierarchy of oppression. Isiah, who is of Korean descent and is the IT specialist and researcher of the group becomes increasingly uncomfortable as things escalate. Isiah’s fiancé Rachel is almost as fervent as Nate even though she is mainly of Italian descent with very little black blood in her lineage. Nate doesn’t even consider her as being black, but she is useful to him as she becomes the honeypot if there is to be that kind of trap. Exploitation of women is nothing new and neither is the violence directed towards them.

Over the period the story spans, several characters change significantly. The most interesting I found was the former cop, Mason. Having served with the police he has a dollop of institutional racism and outdated attitudes, made worse by the attack on his wife’s car by a gang of black youths. He goes on a journey that changes his perspective and attitude. Not quite a Damascene conversion but proof that even the most jaded with ingrained attitudes have a capacity for change.

There is violence, how could there not be with such a novel, some of it brutal but the reader is spared the worst of it. It does allow for the introduction of a truly magnificent over the top character, brutal, evil, perhaps edging towards insanity but one that has read philosophy and can quote poetry. A character to steal the show, if it were ever filmed, but also provides a counterpoint to Nate. A case of Nietzsche’s comment about staring into the abyss, as Nate begins to mirror others? Perhaps, there is a certainly a desensitisation to violence amongst some in society

The writing style is tight and compact but not stripped back, this is not a short novel, there is a lot of scope to fill, and characters are given space to breathe. There’re some great descriptive phrases (like the condensation on beer cans likened to sweat) as well as great put downs (Budweiser being beer flavoured water) but the attitude is kept low key, this is very much a serious novel with a message.

The pacing is great, after the original set up it moves along rapidly with plenty of action and danger to satisfy the thriller fan. The story is quite linear but is kept interesting in the second half as there are a series of intersections where the various factions collide. Much of the story feels like a literary tragedy with the sense that it is running to an almost inevitable conclusion, but the reader is uncertain whom the doomed one is. That said there is also the seeds of hope for the future, if Mason can change then so can we all.

Smoke Kings is a powerful and thought provoking story of modern attitudes to race. A scorching debut novel.

Smoke Kings can be purchased direct from the publisher here or the bookshop.org here

The author

Jahmal Mayfield was born in Virginia but currently resides in New Jersey. In addition to writing crime fiction, he serves as the director of a nonprofit program that provides employment support to people with disabilities. SMOKE KINGS was inspired by Kimberly Jones’ passionate viral video, “How can we win?”

Source: Publisher’s website

A Deadly Promise #RachelAmphlett #ADeadlyPromise

By Rachel Amphlett https://www.rachelamphlett.com/ @RachelAmphlett

Published by Saxon Publishing

319 pages ISBN 9781915231925

Publication date 6 February 2024

A Deadly Promise is the 13th book in the DI Kay Hunter series.

I was sent an electronic version to enable me to take part in this Blog Tour. I would like to thank Anne at Random Things Tours @RandomTTours for the invitation to participate and of course the author.

The Cover

A well lit up park bench at night. Fine if a little generic.

My review

An affluent couple are returning home after a wonderful driving holiday in France. Unable to book a nice hotel to break up the final leg of journey in the UK, they settle for a one-night rental of a house. This is no Air BnB, but rather a big house set in large gardens down a remote lane. How wonderful, well it does cost £600 for the night! On arrival they notice an odd odour. In the master bedroom they find a woman’s mutilated body, evidence of torture and with a savage cut to the throat. They say that once you smell death you never forget it.

So, we start with a killing that really grabs the attention, one that is going to prove challenging for DI Kay Hunter and her team. The victim is quickly discovered to be the household cleaner, who was employed through an agency, and was preparing for the guests (the householders are in USA.) There is nothing in the victim’s past to suggest a reason for her murder. She is clearly struggling to make ends meet, she is painfully thin, had few possessions and was withdrawn from any meaningful social life. Kay’s team diligently work away but to no avail, with no clear motive and few clues they struggle to identify a suspect.

A second body turns up at a storage depot when a brother and sister are sorting through their late father’s possessions. The reveal here is a masterful handling of a comedy/horror staple which I won’t spoil. The body has cuts like the first victim and the same evidence of torture, suggesting the same killer. A third body suggests an escalation, but this is no ordinary serial killer, and they are scrambling to discover a connection to link the three victims. The break when it comes is certainly serendipitous.

A lot of bloodshed, but this is very much a traditional old-school police procedural, true to the genre and honest with it. Its light on thrills and spills, there is some danger, but it is the story of an investigation largely as seen by the investigating officers.

Kay Hunter is dedicated and determined investigator, and rarely for crime fiction well adjusted. She rides her team hard but is fair and generous, so they respond in kind. Their camaraderie shines through whether their enthusiasm is realistic or not doesn’t matter it provides touches of normal life, preventing the story becoming too dark.

The plot is detailed rather than complex, but played out gradually so the reader can never get ahead of themselves, here it is cleverly constructed. Halfway through you might think, as I did, that doesn’t make sense that would be the last thing the killer would do. Then Kay Hunter points out this logical fallacy, so there must be more to it. The answer is as brilliant as it is simple.

The writing is perfectly judged, it moves along at pleasingly rapid pace, such that you are just digesting that last small revelation when the next one arrives. It never falls into the trap of becoming dull, the form filling authenticity that some authors love (and write so well) is omitted and the little details of the investigation are introduced within the regular team briefings. There are no brilliant deductions appearing to come from nowhere, but solid hard graft and teamwork, reviewing CCTV footage, trawling the internet and archives.

There is a nice down-to-earth feeling to the story telling style. An early description of a street with its pavement a patchwork of holes left by utility companies and covered in dog faeces, then later a man urinating in bus shelters gives it a sense of honesty. Then there is the desperation of the victims, that of the poor, those disadvantaged of society, suffering from sheer bad luck or addiction. A sense of desperation is there throughout as the police struggle for a lead and even the rich have their own self-created problems. It’s not all dour though, a series of light-hearted interludes are introduced by a litter of baby hedgehogs (hoglets) who are rescued by Kay’s husband. These short scenes adding sights, sounds, smells and a little mirth to the story.

If you are a fan of police procedurals, A Deadly Promise delivers  just what you are looking for, a difficult investigation, a tightly constructed plot and a tense ending.

A Deadly Promise can be purchased direct from the author here

The author

Before turning to writing, USA Today bestselling crime author Rachel Amphlett played guitar in bands, worked as a TV and film extra, dabbled in radio as a presenter and freelance producer for the BBC, and worked in publishing as an editorial assistant.

She now wields a pen instead of a plectrum and writes crime fiction with over 30 novels and short stories featuring spies, detectives, vigilantes, and assassins.

Rachel’s stories are available in eBook, print and audiobook formats from libraries and retailers as well as her own shop on this website.

A keen traveller and accidental private investigator, Rachel has both Australian and British citizenship.

She loves hearing from readers and personally replies to every email.

Source: Author’s website

Don’t forget to check out all the other fabulous reviews on this Blog Tour:

Gallows Drop #TEAMDANIELS #MariHannah #GallowsDrop

By Mari Hannah https://www.marihannah.com/ @mariwriter

Narrated by Colleen Prendergast @CMPrendergast_

Published by Pan Macmillan https://www.panmacmillan.com/ @panmacmillan

512 pages (12 hours 15 minutes) ISBN 978-1447287339 (HB)

Publication date 5 October 2017

Gallows Drop is the sixth book in the Kate Daniels @DCIKateDaniels Mysteries series. Click on the links to read my reviews of the first five books in the series, The Murder Wall (1), Settled Blood (2), Deadly Deceit (3), Monument to Murder (4) and Killing for Keeps (5).

My review is based upon the audiobook version purchased from Audible. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers #CompulsiveReaders http://www.compulsivereaders.com/ for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMDANIELS review project. My review of Without a Trace the seventh novel in the series will be posted on this blog later in February.

The Cover

Its atmospheric (the print version more so) but it is lacking one obvious element for me…

The narrator

There is continuity using Colleen Prendergrast and she does a fine job.

Pete’s ponderings

Landmarks often bring a work of fiction to life. For me one of the best at this would be Christopher Fowler and his Bryant and May series, where Arthur Bryant would go doddering off across London introducing readers to the parts that tourists miss. He also spent a lot of time visiting the libraries and museums of the capital, finding plenty of oddball characters along the way. Sadly, there will be no more. Edinburgh is another city packed with landmarks that features well in crime fiction, and a fabulous city to explore.

The Gallows Drop features real-life gallows known as Winter’s Gibbet near the village of Eldson. William Winter was hanged at the Westgate in Newcastle, then his body wall suspended from this gibbet in chains as a message. A grisly reminder of a dark past, but if you search for images online you will see some fabulous evocative photographs, a fitting setting for a great piece of crime fiction.

My review

The body of a young man is found hanging from Winters Gibbet at dawn, the morning after the local country show. DCI Kate Daniels realises that she recognises him, she saw him only yesterday at the show, in the Cumberland wrestling. Kate is due to leave on a much needed, extended holiday with Jo Soulsby, after the demands of her last case, which led to danger in Spain. Determined to leave this case in a good position for handover, she is stopped in her tracks by the early arrival of her cover DCI James Atkins. He makes his presence felt with all the subtlety of a bull in a China shop and is deliberately provocative. Atkins and Daniels have history, there is much bad blood between them. The attempts of Bright to avoid their presence overlapping was scuppered by Atkins cancelling his rostered days off. Here is a man looking for trouble, will he find it?

The plot is quite straightforward, after determining that it wasn’t suicide there is a search for the killer. The complexity comes from the search amongst a close-knit community with a small number of likely suspects and most alibis interlinking. The real tension starts when Kate discovers that Atkin’s daughter Beth was a witness to a fight involving the victim the night before. The truth will only come out after a lot of questioning of troubled young adults, exposing their problems and fears. Surprises are revealed along the way and this aspect is covered with real sensitivity.

The heart of the novel is a series of clashes, some vociferous and abrasive, others more angst ridden with disappointment and resignation. This is a very emotive and emotional story. Quite simply it’s the past versus the present, the ability to put the events of the past behind you and move on, sometimes requiring some bridge building to do so. But this is career driven Kate, and she never has the time for things like this.

The main dispute, that between Kate and Atkins goes back to when Kate first started in the force, and so has festered for around twenty years. Bright has nurtured Kate’s career and protected her, but one day confrontation was going to come. When it comes it is explosive, angry and abusive leading to soul searching and reflection; will Kate have the heart to carry on?

The stand off relationship Kate has with her father comes to a head at just the wrong time, but when do they ever come at the right time. The trigger comes as a surprise, they are both stubborn but need to compromise if ever there is to be anything like a reconciliation.

Then there is the on-off relationship with Jo. A chance to get things back as they were, with affection rekindled by a holiday in Scotland, but as Kate says she is a ‘crap lesbian’. Understanding, support, affection, bickering, cold shoulders and cross words are all there, it must be so emotionally tiring being a lesbian.

All of this is skilfully pulled together in the sort of novel that becomes a turning point in a series. It fills in a big chunk of back story in a way that fits perfectly and makes complete sense. There is a fabulously delivered shock added to the story, that has the reader thinking what, wait a minute and a cliffhanger tagged on at the very end. Finish this and you will be desperate to crack on with Without a Trace.

Gallows Drop adds explanations and meaning to the back story of the DCI Kate Daniels series and sets her up with a series of big questions to answer in her immediate future.

Gallows Drop can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

When an injury on duty ended my career as Probation Officer, I began writing. I am the author of the Kate Daniels and Ryan & O’Neil series published by Pan Macmillan and the Stone & Oliver series published by Orion. My debut, The Murder Wall, was written as a TV pilot for a BBC Drama Development Scheme – before the adaption. The novel won the Polari First Book Prize. Before becoming an author, I fell in love with scriptwriting and submitted speculative original dramas to the BBC Writersroom. I’ve also written a romantic comedy feature film that I hope will find a producer one day. In 2010, I won the Northern Writers’ Award for my second novel, Settled Blood. And in 2017, I won the Dagger in the Library for my body of work. I’m represented by AM Heath literary agent, Oli Munson, and live in Northumberland with my partner, a former murder detective.

Source: Goodreads profile

Four Shots in the Night #HenryHemming #FourShotsInTheNight

By Henry Hemming https://henryhemming.com/ @henryhemming

Published by Quercus Books https://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/ @QuercusBooks

352 pages ISBN 9781529426755

Publication date 28 March 2024

I was sent an electronic copy in exchange for a fair review.

The Cover

A desolate, lonely street scene that gives a great impression of the unique Northern Ireland landscape.

Pete’s ponderings

When somebody mentions spies and espionage, we readers immediately think of the Cold War and the great authors of the genre, like John le Carre and his creation George Smiley (for me Bond wasn’t really a spy more a not-very-secret agent.) But who amongst us would have imagined for Britain in the 1970s and 1980s the epicentre was in Northern Ireland where MI5 and the Army were desperate to infiltrate the IRA.

This was clearly a well-guarded secret which is staggering considering the numbers involved, but I guess timing played a key part. Any true crime investigating journalist or author until recently not only put lives of agents and families at risk but also themselves. Cancel Culture of its current form may not have existed then, but any cancellation that would have taken place would have been permanent, as in deadly.

My review

Could it be possible that a British agent murdered another whilst they were working undercover? It seems rather implausible, but when you consider that their sphere of operation was Northern Ireland in the 1980s, at the height of ‘The Troubles’, it becomes a possibility.

On 26 May 1986, the body of Frank Hegarty, an undercover agent was dumped in a muddy lane, with his hands tied and packing tape across his eyes. It has all the hallmarks of a gangland execution, this gang being the Provisional IRA. Their executions were carried out by the notorious Internal Security Service, known to all and sundry as the ‘Nutting Squad’. If this sobriquet has you imagining them dishing out a ‘Glasgow Kiss’, then you are well wide of the mark. Nutting in this sense is not a headbutt, which is painful but not fatal, but rather a bullet to the head. Executions carried out in the night with a trademark four shots. At the time of this execution the British had an agent in the Nutting Squad codenamed ‘Stakeknife’ (it started as steak knife, but the misspelling became the accepted version). Had Stakeknife been ordered to kill Hegarty? A ‘friendly fire’ murder to preserve his anonymity or a refusal that would condemn them both, a tough choice.

War is dirty, civil war even more so; the road to peace is a treacherous one. The British Security Services, the Army and MI5 decided that inside information was the key to saving innocent lives. They began a push to recruit low level IRA members, often men who were sick of the violence, to become informants. This is not a role to be taken lightly as discovery and capture would not lead to a trade off of agents across a bridge (a scene so loved by film makers) but certain torture and execution. However, such was the success of the venture a plan was developed to try and place an insider close to the decision-making centre of the IRA the ‘Army Council’ and attempt to steer them to peace. In Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness MI5 believed they had identified the men to negotiate a settlement, fail and the likelihood was they would be replaced be younger hard liners and the chance would be lost for a generation.

This is a book that lays out the salient facts, covering the history of ‘The Troubles’ from 1969 to the Good Friday agreement, in a cogent way and exposes a series of moral dilemmas throughout. It is clearly meticulously researched, being fully referenced and indexed, but is far from a dry academic tome. The writing is accessible and in the style of modern true crime reporting but coupled with the critical analysis of a true investigative journalist. Embellishments are subtly used to get a feel of storytelling such as the first approach to Frank whilst he is out walking his greyhound Blue, giving a warm human touch. At the start the author is at pains to explain that he has no personal connection with either side of the conflict and this is reflected in the writing, this is a fair and honest account of what he has discovered. I would also recommend reading the author notes to get an idea of the task he faced.

So, what will the reader discover?

Perhaps the most surprising thing for me was the lack of legal back up for agents in the field. James Bond 007 famously is licenced to kill, but the reality was up until a couple of years ago they had no more protection than that of the man in the street. Any illegal activity they participated had the potential for prosecution, as could be seen by Operation Kenova the biggest murder investigation in British history which centred upon Stakeknife.

Countless dilemmas were faced and generally settled by taking the choice that results in the greater overall good, no matter how unpalatable it may be. This is demonstrated by the police investigation into the murder of Frank Hegarty. He didn’t pull the trigger but Martin McGuinness’ ‘fingerprints’ were all over the operation, however a prosecution was prohibited so as not to scupper peace talks.

Martin McGuinness’ codename was Penguin. In a deadly (quite literally) serious book this did raise a chuckle. Most people see penguins as loveable birds, so it is hardly fitting, Vulture might have been more appropriate.

The road to peace was a long an arduous one. It initially began in secret, with both sides wishing to deny they were happening, right back to the times of Margaret Thatcher’s government trying to end the 1981 Hunger Strikes in which ten men died. (On a personal level I was interested in Richard O’Rawe’s role in these negotiations having reviewed his novel Goering’s Gold.)

Peace could only come once both sides had worked themselves into a stalemate position, neither side could enforce a quick victory and had fought themselves to a standstill. Big compromises were made and the author gives a great background to what happened and the concessions made. The process was far from perfect as can be seen by the pursuit of old soldiers through the courts, but the solution was a much-needed peace which has largely held.

Four Shots in the Night is a gripping insight into the role of covert agents during ‘The Troubles’ and their crucial role in the overall peace process. This engaging and clearly written account feels to be coming out at the perfect time to remind people what is at stake.

Four Shots in the Night can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

Henry Hemming is the bestselling author of seven books including Our Man in New York, M, published as Agent M in North America, the Dolman Travel Award-shortlisted Misadventure in the Middle East and the New York Times bestseller The Ingenious Mr Pyke. He has written for the Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Times, The Economist, FT Magazine, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, is an experienced public speaker and has given interviews on Radio 4’s Today Programme and NBC’s Today Show.

Source: Publisher’s website

The Brutal Tide #TEAMSCILLY #KateRhodes #TheBrutalTide

By Kate Rhodes @K_RhodesWriter

Published by Simon & Schuster UK https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/ @simonschusterUK

445 pages ISBN  9781398510326

Publication date 27 October 2022

The Brutal Tide is the sixth book in The Isles of Scilly Mysteries featuring Ben Kitto. Click on the links to read my reviews of the first five books in the series Hell Bay, Ruin Beach, Burnt Island, Pulpit Rock and Devil’s Table.

I was forwarded an electronic copy in exchange for a fair review. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers http://www.compulsivereaders.com/ for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMSCILLY review project. My review of Hangman Island the seventh novel in the series will be posted on this blog later in February.

The Cover

A dark, foreboding and dramatic cover which fits in with the rest of the series. The location may look a little generic, but the force and explosive energy of the waves perfectly reflect the finale.

• 

My review

 The action returns to Bryher where Ben Kitto lives and where the series started with Hell Bay. A husband-and-wife team of architects have an audacious development planned for the island, that combines an activity centre with cutting edge building design. The development has gained official approval, though not everyone appreciates the glass and steel creation that will cascade down the cliffs. They are hoping that Ben’s respect and popularity on the Island will win folk over, but when he makes a visit to see progress on site, disaster strikes. An earthmover uncovers more than just soil, there is a skeleton. Initial thoughts that the skeleton is an ancient burial but then an expert dates it as no more than twenty or thirty years. Ben has a cold case on his hands, problem enough but the builders want to continue working.

Back in London trouble is brewing. Ruthless gang leader Craig Travis has cancer and is close to death, but someone appears to be seeking to avenge those that brought him down. When Ben was working undercover he infiltrated Travis’ gang and was instrumental in bringing him to justice. Ben is warned formally by his old boss, but he believes he is safe enough far away in the Scilly Isles. Besides, Nina is heavily pregnant and with the birth of their first child and a cold case to solve Ben has enough to contend with.

With any long running series, it helps to keep reader engagement by making changes, and this sixth instalment differs in style from the previous five. Firstly, there are two active strands, one set in the Scilly Isles, the other on the mainland, before they coalesce, and both provide echoes of the past. Then there is the introduction of the cold case, Ben is not a cold case specialist, but as the lead investigator on the group of remote islands the task falls into his lap. Naturally this is something he comes to relish and attacks it with his usual gusto. The mainland section centres on revenge, of a bloody visceral form and is certainly more graphic than the reader has become accustomed too. This brings a real coldness to the thread that is enhanced when the identity of the perpetrator is known, and the exploration of this complex character helps to add depth and texture. Truly a case of nurture over nature, with a touching glimpse of what might have been, will be registered by the even hardest of reader hearts.

The slow cold case balances perfectly against the action-packed finale, that includes a chase, a race against time and plenty of jeopardy. A true thriller that suddenly explodes with gripping effect.

For the regulars the story is an emotional rollercoaster. Nina is close to giving birth, with mixture of excitement and concern that it brings but something as (apparently) trivial as baby names is causing angst. Ben is bothered by Nina wanting to use her late husband’s name if it is a boy, a silly concern due to his surprising lack of confidence and understanding of the woman he wants to marry. When the naming does come it is inspired.

Zoe is back on the island, visiting with husband Dev, but all is not well, she is probably at her lowest ebb. Kind-hearted Dev cannot seem to reach her, to mend her hurt, and is despondent. She is even refusing to see her lifelong friend Ben, which shows how low she has got, but Nina and Ben are determined to help her in their own ways.

Even uncle Ray has being paying his cards so close to his chest that Ben is unaware of one aspect of his life. That Ray ends up being tied to the cold case provides some introspection for Ben and a rebuke from DCI Madron (a maligned character but one essential to make the mix work).          

The Brutal Tide part procedural, part thriller, adds a welcome dash of fear and adrenaline to the ‘locked island mystery’ set up.

The Brutal Tide can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod, and visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child, which gave her the idea for this series. She is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group.

Source: Publisher’s website

Blunt Force #TEAMTENNISON #LyndaLaPlante #BluntForce

By Lynda Le Plante https://lyndalaplante.com/ @LaPlanteLynda

Narrated by Rachel Atkins

Published by Bolinda/Bonnier Audio, Zaffre https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/imprints/zaffre/ @ZaffreBooks (an imprint of Bonnier Books UK)

432 pages (13 hours 52 minutes) ISBN 9781785769870

Publication date 20 August 2020

Blunt Force is the sixth novel the Jane Tennison Thriller Series.

I reviewed an audiobook using the BorrowBox library app https://www.borrowbox.com/ @BorrowBox. I would like to thank Tracy Fenton @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers http://www.compulsivereaders.com/ for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMTENNISON review project. Click on the links to read my reviews of Tennison, Hidden Killers, Good Friday, Murder Mile and The Dirty Dozen. My review of Unholy Murder the seventh novel in the series will be posted on this blog in the first week in March.

The Cover

The familiar lone woman seen from behind, this time about to enter a brightly lit up theatre at night. Fits in perfectly with the plot.

The narration

Another new narrator facing a difficult task, as this is a novel that requires a broad range of voices, which she tackle with some aplomb. The posh female voices were perfect, a couple of the male voices were less convincing but an excellent effort all round. A very entertaining performance.

My review

Another couple of years have passed and Jane has experienced her first career setback. After an extraordinary start to life in the Flying Squad things eventually turned sour and it was Jane who paid the price professionally. Leaving her observation post and getting involved with a takedown, whilst unarmed, she froze when faced with an armed suspect, which led to a colleague being wounded. This mistake provided her Governor with the perfect excuse to have the woman he didn’t want on the squad removed. Perhaps lucky to still have her stripes she is moved to Gerald Road in London’s upmarket Knightsbridge district. For Jane this feels like moving from one extreme to another, now faced with petty crime and little of the action that she craves. Or so she thinks…

Jane is not the only one on the ‘naughty step’ as her old friend Spencer Gibbs has been busted down to sergeant, due to altercation with another officer that almost ended in blows and is also at the same station. So, we now have two officers pondering their futures.

It’s a particularly horrible murder of a well-known theatrical agent, found decapitated and dis-embowelled, that proves the opportunity to remind themselves what great detectives they can be.

The meteoric raise of Jane through the ranks had to stall at some point, the short-lived career at the Sweeney making sense for the early 1980s. The true test of character is how we react to adversity and Jane, despite some soul searching and confidence battering, tackles it head on. To find the killer Jane and Spence need to scratch beneath the surface veneer of glamour and unearth dirty secrets.

The real strength of the story is the exposure of what lies behind the façade of showbusiness. What better author to do this than one who has had so much of her work brought to the screen. We see the murky activities of the agents, pulling strings behind the scenes, in pursuit of success which is merely measured by the contents of their bank balances. It is not just them; highly strung, neurotic actors and sleazy producers are skewered with rapier precision too. Just like in The Wizard of Oz the curtain of illusion is drawn back and what it reveals is found lacking. Fame, adulation and great wealth can be achieved but often at great personal cost.

Written whilst the #MeToo revelations were still fresh we see the exploitation of the dreams of the young, some are aware of the cost, others are more naïve. Here Jane’s empathy is at the fore and the subject is covered with sensitivity and subtlety. The anger it raises will resonate with most people, especially parents.

We start with a disillusioned Jane, thinking for the first time that perhaps her future lies elsewhere. As always keen to develop she decides that learning to shoot would conquer her fear of guns and put the awful past behind her. Sweeney friend Dabs gets her access to the gun club and an instructor Elliott, who proves to be a harsh, highly disciplined teacher and rather mysterious. Initial friction between them eventually makes way to a mutual respect. Jane senses a bit of a spark between them but Elliott provides her with an opportunity for something much more important, a shot at profession redemption.

There is a lovely cameo from a rather large ‘businesswoman’ by the name of Mandy, who helps to provide some lighter moments in a serious story. There are aspects of the story that could have been quite salacious but have been left to the readers imagination albeit with sufficient prompts.

Blunt Force is a polished police procedural that lays bare the exploitation of 1980s showbusiness.

Blunt Force can be purchased from the Bookshop.org here

The author

Lynda La Plante (born Lynda Titchmarsh) is a British author, screenwriter, and erstwhile actress (her performances in Rentaghost and other programmes were under her stage name of Lynda Marchal), best known for writing the Prime Suspect television crime series.

Her first TV series as a scriptwriter was the six part robbery series Widows, in 1983, in which the widows of four armed robbers carry out a heist planned by their deceased husbands.

In 1991 ITV released Prime Suspect which has now run to seven series and stars Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison. (In the United States Prime Suspect airs on PBS as part of the anthology program Mystery!) In 1993 La Plante won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her work on the series. In 1992 she wrote at TV movie called Seekers, starring Brenda Fricker and Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson.

She formed her own television production company, La Plante Productions, in 1994 and as La Plante Productions she wrote and produced the sequel to Widows, the equally gutsy She’s Out (ITV, 1995). The name “La Plante” comes from her marriage to writer Richard La Plante, author of the book Mantis and Hog Fever. La Plante divorced Lynda in the early 1990s.

Her output continued with The Governor (ITV 1995-96), a series focusing on the female governor of a high security prison, and was followed by a string of ratings pulling miniseries: the psycho killer nightmare events of Trial & Retribution (ITV 1997-), the widows’ revenge of the murders of their husbands & children Bella Mafia (1997) (starring Vanessa Redgrave), the undercover police unit operations of Supply and Demand (ITV 1998), videogame/internet murder mystery Killer Net (Channel 4 1998) and the female criminal profiler cases of Mind Games (ITV 2001).

Two additions to the Trial and Retribution miniseries were broadcast during 2006.

Source: Goodreads profile

The narrator

RACHEL ATKINS trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. She has performed onstage in Romeo and Juliet, Blithe Spirit, and The School for Scandal, among others. Her television and radio credits include Midwinter of the Spirit, Law & Order, and The Archers, and she is also a regular voice for BBC Radio Drama and BBC Radio Comedy.

Source: Goodreads profile

The Dancer #ÓskarGuðmundsson #TheDancer

By Óskar Guðmundsson http://www.oskargudmundsson.is/ @oskargudmunds

Translated by Quentin Bates https://graskeggur.com/ @graskeggur

Published by Corylus Books https://corylusbooks.com/ @CorylusB

233 pages ISBN 9781739298951

Publication date 1 February 2024 (Corylus Books paperback), originally published in 2023 as a Storytel Original Series

The Cover

Blood splattered white cloth… or on closer inspection are those white feathers?

Pete’s ponderings

Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width was a comedy series, that ran in the early 1970s, of the kind that would never get commissioned these days. It starred John Bluthal, perhaps best known as dotty Frank in The Vicar of Dibley, and Joe Lynch, a stalwart of British TV and film and who was the voice of Chorlton and the Wheelies, as a pair of tailors in business together. The situations for comedy arise from one being Jewish and the other an Irish Catholic. The title has become an expression for where quantity is valued greater than quality and can perhaps be applied to publishing. Debut novelists often write short novels of 250-300 pages and then when they gain confidence expand to longer ones. Now it seems as if the major publishers have a target of 450-550 pages and the output of many of the big hitters fall into this range. Perhaps its deemed value for money or the impact on the shelf, but surely this one size fits all approach doesn’t suit all fiction.

Luckily the independent publishers are brave enough to take on shorter novels and since I started writing this blog, I have been lucky to read some great ones, and the occasional astonishing one. These are not short stories or novellas, but fully formed novels with the ideas and concepts explored, in a format stripped of the unnecessary. At just 233 pages The Dancer certainly fits the bill, not only does the writing pack a punch, then just when you recover your senses, it follows up with a head butt and then the finale is delivered like a kick in the ribs when you are down. Dark, intense and quite disturbing, this is not a story you will forget in a hurry.  

My review

“Life was never going to be a bed of roses…”

Indeed, it’s not the case for Tony. He has been brought up by a disturbed alcoholic mother, his absent father being a US serviceman. She has given him little but the spirit to dance, she was once a dancer herself, though her methods to develop his ability are somewhat cruel and quite brutal. He finds solace with grandfather Jón who is teaching him carpentry skills in the hope he will take over his business when he finally retires.

A body is found under a tarpaulin, and it has been there for a while. The mystery is it appears to be the body of an American who was believed to have died in a plane crash on the island six months previous. The case is handled by veteran detective Valdimar, who is supported by rookie Ylfa.

Then a fresh body is found in the snow, killed in a unique and disturbing way. Life is going to get complex…

An interesting storyline that is direct and linear, that splits into two stands, dancing and investigation with the emphasis on the former. This is far from the regular police procedural.

There is impact from the very beginning, with a strange torture set piece and a dance to the death. Dancing and a sense of the macabre intertwine throughout but the feeling is not gothic but more a touch of overblown camp horror; Vincent Price would have been a great narrator. Perhaps this down to the ballet aspect, ballet dancers are tough, strong, athletic and determined but those tights raise a titter amongst the unenlightened. Tony is driven relentlessly by his mother and we get a sense of the pain and suffering he must go through, in both body and mind, in the name of art. She also makes him dance naked.

The story packed with themes and motivations that manage to tesselate together perfectly like a complex tiled floor pattern, all from simple cause and effect. The mother Gunnhildur is bitter as her hopes of a career as a dancer are dashed, but as we later discover that is not all that is taken from her. This manifests in transference to Tony with her relentless teaching and desire for success vicariously through him. Does she love him? It is hard to say, Tony certainly resents her and having to care for her (she is in a wheelchair). Jón may provide a modicum of stability for Tony, but he is estranged from Gunnhildur, wracked with guilt and haunted by the past. In the end it is the desire for revenge and final atonement that win out.

Considering the length, the amount of characterisation within is impressive. Naturally the police officers have problems Valdimar is approaching retirement and Ylfa is struggling with family life with a boyfriend and baby she doesn’t see enough of. These are sketched in enough for the reader to understand them without unnecessary embellishment. Tony is the key character, with his relationships and interactions with his mother and the dancers he befriends taking up much of the story. He finds making friends difficult, is confused about his own sexuality and struggles with rejection, wearing his shame like an invisibility cloak. It becomes apparent that Tony is anguished, and we see his mental health deteriorate alarmingly as reality and imagination merge.

There is violence, a bit of gore, elements of horror and moments of real insanity which are handled magnificently. One of the crime reader’s ‘golden rules’ is even broken but for once this can perhaps be overlooked due to the shock it brings to a bizarre scene. Entertaining without being overly gratuitous, perhaps not one for the timid, but the rest will read along thinking where did that come from. Fabulously imaginative and written with complete conviction, making for a gripping and all-consuming read. Once again Quentin Bates does an excellent translation job, keeping everything tight and compact. I don’t think I could have coped with another 100 pages of that!

The Dancer is a stunning piece of gory crime fiction, written in a tight and compact style, that manages to tell a disturbing story that is still quite touching.

The Dancer can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

With a unique voice and a style that doesn’t shy away from a sometime graphic take on shocking subject matter, Óskar Guðmundsson is one of the rising stars of the Icelandic crime fiction scene. His debut Hilma was awarded the Icelandic Crime Syndicate’s Drop of Blood award for the best crime novel of 2015, and the TV rights have been acquired by Sagafilm. This was followed by a sequel Blood Angels in 2018. The first of his books published in an English translation, The Commandments, was a standalone novel which appeared in Iceland in 2019. All of Óskar’s books have been bestsellers and rewarded with outstanding reviews. The first in a new series of novels The Dancer was published in Icelandic simultaneously as an
eBook, audiobook, and paperback – accompanied by an original song in which Óskar’s words have been put to music featuring some of Iceland’s leading musicians – and was an immediate bestseller. Óskar’s talents don’t end there, as he is also an artist and has held a number of exhibitions of his work.

The translator

Quentin Bates has personal and professional roots in Iceland that go very deep. He is an author of series of nine crime novels and novellas featuring the Reykjavik detective Gunnhildur (Gunna) Gísladóttir. In addition to his own fiction, he has translated many works of Iceland’s coolest writers into English, including books by Lilja Sigurðardóttir, Guðlaugur Arason, Einar Kárason, Óskar Guðmundsson, Sólveig Pálsdóttir, Jónína Leosdottir and Ragnar Jónasson. Quentin was instrumental in launching Iceland Noir in 2013, the crime fiction festival in Reykjavik.

Don’t forget to check out all the other fantastic reviews on this Blog Tour:

The Lover of No Fixed Abode #CarloFruttero & #FrancoLucentini #TheLoverOfNoFixedAbode

By Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini

Translated by Gregory Dowling

Published by Bitter Lemon Press https://www.bitterlemonpress.com/ @bitterlemonpub

304 pages ISBN 9781913394905

Publication date 25 January 2024

I was sent an electronic copy of the novel in exchange for a fair review.

The Cover

What a beautiful cover. It captures all the key elements of the story, its fabulous setting, but also gives it a period feel.

Pete’s ponderings

They say that a change is as good as a rest. I don’t just read crime and thrillers, I feel it is important to read other genres too, to act in the same way a palate cleanser works at a fancy restaurant. One simply cannot dine on serial killer fiction alone, well not without turning a little bit strange…

This novel caught my attention for several reasons. Firstly, it is not a new story, it was published in 1986 but has never been translated into English before. This might be because it’s not very good, but equally it could be a largely ignored ‘lost classic’, just as much European cinema and television has gone unnoticed, though since the success of The Killing this is being addressed. Having read and enjoyed a few translated works from the publisher, Bitter Lemon Press, it gave me the confidence that it would be a worthwhile read. It is set in Venice which in terms of fiction, be it literary or pulp, is always a fabulous location. Finally, the collaborative authors have written crime fiction too, so just how far out of my comfort zone might this be…

My review

The story starts with a flight into Venice and the usual mix of tourists and businesspeople onboard. Mr Silvera is a tour guide taking a party of tourists first to Venice and then onwards to Greece by cruise ship. Silvera is very well travelled if a little world weary and dresses in what now might be regarded as shabby chic, but very much towards the shabby end of the scale. So here we have a central character who is as well-worn as his attire. On the flight, whilst putting up with those distractions of humanity that make you wish you had walked, he spots a beautiful younger woman and she notices him.

On landing they go their separate ways, he to guide his tour party who are already irritating him, she to carry out her assignment. She is an art appraiser from Rome who works for a major English auction house, and is to give her assessment on a collection of paintings that are to be brought to the market.

Silvera delivers his party to the cruise ship and seemingly on a whim abandons them there, taking the tour company’s emergency funds to tide him over. A couple of days distraction in Venice and then he can decide on what the future may bring. Does he realise that his path will shortly cross that of the woman…

This is a curiously and cleverly constructed novel that plays its mystery close to its chest and features modes of transport throughout without really getting anywhere other than an aeroplane flight in and a ship out. In between Venice is thoroughly explored on foot and by various forms of boat. Venice is a beautiful city but like Silvera is worn and a little down at heel and from the descriptions of the surroundings this novel is a kind of love letter to this formidable and historic city with its fading beauty and wealth. Here there is a great depth to the writing with draws out the richness of the surroundings.

The narrative is split; it is first person from the perspective of the woman (who is never named) and third person elsewhere. The storyline itself is also divided into two, which are a period of discovery and then the reveal and its aftermath. As may be deduced from the title, at its core this is a love story, an unusual one given the players and the short timescale of three days, but probably more memorable because of this. Silvera shows her the hidden Venice that he knows, but she is keen to discover the man behind this persona he has constructed. The reveal comes following on from a party; there are hints along the way, Silvera is so knowledgeable and multilingual, but I still couldn’t guess his identity.

There is also a layer of comedy underneath the story. Silvera has an acerbic eye for the withering put down (‘double door’ Americans for the overweigh tourists) and there is a satirical edge to the description of the dealings of the art world. They may well deal with fine art worth a fortune, but they fare here no better than used car salesmen and there is duplicity on the side of the seller and the buyer. Being draw into this world of the rich and upper classes he is also exposed to what is a comedy of manners and the absurdity of social norms and etiquette, beautifully highlighted by the consommé course at a dinner.

If you are a lover of fine prose then you will enjoy this, its beautifully written, mysterious and complex as the narrative shifts around, but there is also a deft lightness to it all. Excellent work from the narrator managing to capture all of this from the original. It manages to take the reader through the whole gamut of human emotions during the three days but there is almost an inevitability to the melancholy that is fitting for the cold and dreary Venice of November. The ending perhaps comes as no surprise, but it is touchingly handled.

The Lover of no Fixed Abode may not be my preferred genre, but here is an example of superb writing making a story come to life.

The Lover of no Fixed Abode can be purchased from the Bookshop.org here

The authors

Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini were a well-known literary duo in Italy for several decades until Lucentini’s death (by suicide) in 2002. For about forty years, they co-wrote newspaper and magazine articles, literary essays, edited numerous anthologies and published six ground-breaking and best-selling mystery novels. The Lover of No Fixed Abode, first published in Italian in 1986, is the fourth of their novels.

The translator

Gregory Dowling grew up in Bristol and read English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford. Gregory lives in Venice. He is a celebrated translator from Italian, a novelist (The Four Horsemen and Ascension, both set in Venice). and a local university professor.

Killing for Keeps #TEAMDANIELS #MariHannah #KillingForKeeps

By Mari Hannah https://www.marihannah.com/ @mariwriter

Published by Pan Macmillan https://www.panmacmillan.com/ @panmacmillan

448 pages ISBN 9781447246121

Publication date 6 July 2015

Killing for Keeps is the fifth book in the Kate Daniels @DCIKateDaniels Mysteries series. Click on the links to read my reviews of the first four books in the series, The Murder Wall (1), Settled Blood (2), Deadly Deceit (3) and Monument to Murder (4).

I was sent an electronic copy in exchange for a fair review. I would like to thank Tracy @Tr4cyF3nt0n from Compulsive Readers #CompulsiveReaders for the opportunity to take part in the #TEAMDANIELS review project. My review of Gallows Drop the sixth novel in the series will be posted on this blog in early February.

The Cover

Clearly Tyneside with the bridge. Fine if a little bit dull when other options would have been available as readers will discover.

Pete’s ponderings

Serendipity. What a great word, one we don’t use enough, and it applies to my reading of this novel. In my last review, of Once a Killer, I mused over moral ambiguity in fiction and how the reader may react in real life. In that novel the killer targeted evil men, but the reaction to gangland violence against victims deemed to ‘deserve it’ has been ambivalent at best for some people, including media stars both sides of the Atlantic. Just a few pages into Killing for Keeps I realised that here was a novel featuring just such a gang feud, but will DCI Kate Daniel’s judgement be clouded with such ambiguity?

My review

We start with not one but two gruesome murders, in quick succession. One body is left under a van on a Newcastle industrial estate; the other is left on a trolly in the A & E department of a local hospital. The injuries inflicted are horrific and there is clear evidence of torture involved. The savagery demonstrated shows the perpetrators are not petty criminals but real hard-core killers, the kind who have Screwfix Direct on speed dial for the tools of their trade. Dangerous men who must be caught.

The two victims were brothers from a local crime family, relatively small fry, but their late father was a big player in the Glasgow underworld before he relocated to Newcastle with a ‘target on his back’. He died on a Spanish golfing holiday some years ago though, so who from his past would have a reason target his family?

DCI Kate Daniels and her team are faced with the unenviable task of protecting those of the family who are left whilst tracking down the killers. A case that has them digging into the past and stretches from Newcastle to Glasgow and over to Spain in what proves to be far from a ‘busman’s holiday’.

The most violent story in the series so far, justifiably so to hold a degree of realism, these people are amongst the most vicious in society. Much is left to the imagination though, as it is not too graphic or gratuitous, so I doubt many readers will lose sleep. As might be expected there is some danger and jeopardy, that manages to surprise by both the timing and intensity, along with a decidedly creepy interaction.

Kate is going through a tough time and approaching burn out or complete breakdown. Her life is out of balance; she has no lover, is estranged from her father and has no real friends outside work. Her career has taken over her life, she is still determined but now totally obsessed and with no other outlet, is prone to making errors of judgement. In danger of alienating those around her, matters come to a head when the use of an unregistered snout (informant) leads to unexpected consequences. Confronted by Detective Chief Superintendent Bright and given an ultimatum, Kate must face up to the mess of her life and career and act before it is too late. In Hank she has the right-hand man who can perhaps save her from herself. The plot may centre on a manhunt (well more than one actually) but much of the central thrust and themes revolve around the friendship between Hank and Kate. Kate’s mental health is a key factor and in a well-judged storyline, there is the need for her to recognise she has a problem and acknowledge it before she can find the path to recovery.

The shackles of Newcastle are broken firstly by a visit to Glasgow to see the luxury that the modern gang boss lives in, a visit that proves to be an eye opener in more ways than one. Then in the second half of the story Kate and Hank follow the trail to Spain, but it’s not really a jolly, well perhaps a little. Here the story and the writing get rather playful as our odd couple detectives settle in at being man and wife as part of their cover. Expect brits abroad observations, bickering like a real married couple and Hank trying to dress like a holidaymaker. Its all rather fun as Hank tries to make the most of it, a shaft of bright sunlight to set against the darkness of the story.

For such a dark story it is surprisingly upbeat, with those around Kate finding happy times, and even the prospect that Kate might find her way through the fog that envelopes her and eventually find a reconciliation with Jo. This can only mean that the next instalment in the series is going to result unhappiness for someone, but we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Killing for Keeps brings some variety to excellent series and we all know a change is as good as a rest. Another high-quality police procedural.

Killing for Keeps can be purchased via the publisher’s website here

The author

When an injury on duty ended my career as Probation Officer, I began writing. I am the author of the Kate Daniels and Ryan & O’Neil series published by Pan Macmillan and the Stone & Oliver series published by Orion. My debut, The Murder Wall, was written as a TV pilot for a BBC Drama Development Scheme – before the adaption. The novel won the Polari First Book Prize. Before becoming an author, I fell in love with scriptwriting and submitted speculative original dramas to the BBC Writersroom. I’ve also written a romantic comedy feature film that I hope will find a producer one day. In 2010, I won the Northern Writers’ Award for my second novel, Settled Blood. And in 2017, I won the Dagger in the Library for my body of work. I’m represented by AM Heath literary agent, Oli Munson, and live in Northumberland with my partner, a former murder detective.

Source: Goodreads profile

Once a Killer #MurrayBailey #OnceAKiller #BlackJack

By Murray Bailey https://www.murraybaileybooks.com/ @MurrayBaileybks

Published by Three Daggers, Heritage Books Publishing

322 pages ISBN 9781916382824

Publication date 1 September 2022

Once A Killer is the first novel in the BlackJack thriller series.

I reviewed an eBook from Amazon Kindle.

The cover

I love the cover. It has the ubiquitous figure, but this time approaching rather than from the rear, but it is translucent. Through the figure is pictured the Hong Kong skyline and locals on boats. An evocative cover, though one that perhaps hints at a more modern world than the 1953 in which the novel is set.

Pete’s ponderings

There is something about human nature that is drawn towards redemption. We like to see those who do wrong atone for those actions and then go on to do good works. For example, worker in a drug rehabilitation programme who was previously an addict seems to be more impressive than someone who has never been so burdened. Perhaps it comes from our Christian basis, the idea of the sinner repenting, the bad becoming good. These stories make for great journalism in the real world and great fiction in film and in print.

What about the irredeemable or perhaps those who don’t want to walk a righteous path? Well, they make great villains in fiction, but what if we add a touch of moral ambiguity. The serial killer who only targets other killers, perhaps those escape justice? We wouldn’t support the death penalty and murder is always wrong, but would we really be willing to pursue such a killer with the same determination as say a child killer. If it were your friend, would you give them up? Many friends, some celebrities, of the London gangsters of the 1960s turned a blind eye to violence, their excuse was the victims were other gangsters, or they deserved it.

So, this brings us to BlackJack a killer who struggles to contain his urges…

My review

Its Hong Kong in 1953 and Charles Balcombe is starting anew, for Charles Balcombe is dead, he was killed in a freeclimbing fall. His best friend and fellow climber sees this as a great opportunity, somewhat callously, to dump his own stained persona and take on Charle’s identity. A perfect case of identity theft and a way of escaping his murderous past, at least for a while.

Charles is comfortable in Hong Kong, he has money and a string of bored, mostly older, other men’s wives to keep him entertained in the bedroom. He has a sophisticated edge and knows how to play the social status game to his advantage, but deep down this lothario is an absolute cad. We are introduced to him in the bedroom of a married woman whom he comes close to killing by strangling in a vigorous bout of rough but consensual sex, only just controlling his killing urge. The bounder.

Charles has a history of attending Sandhurst and then becoming a Military Policeman where he realised he had a talent as a special investigator. What better way to spend his time between dalliances with married women and the thrill of the racetrack than a little PI work, especially when it pays well. So, when the beautiful young wife of a wealthy banker asks for help in finding her missing stepson how could he say no, a generous fee and the promise of a perk on the side being a deal clincher. Naturally there is more to the case than initially communicated as Charles will come to discover.

These are colonial times; the behaviour is very much of the period and the setting is a very evocative one. There is the white supremacy and the looking down on indigenous peoples. This is captured so well with the police investigation where the mixed-race Detective Inspector Munro is in the paradoxical position of a foot in both camps but belonging to neither. When he questions white people he must be accompanied by a white junior officer to whom he must defer the job of  questioning to. It is perhaps attitudes like this that imbue him with a somewhat pragmatic streak, providing justice is served in his eyes. We also see the hypocrisy of the white ruling classes and their antics behind closed doors, with a real feel of decadence akin to the Kenyan Happy Valley set of White Mischief fame.

There are three aspects to the plot that develop and eventually merge. There is the ‘release’ of BlackJack who like Dr David (or Robert/Bruce) Banner reveals The Incredible Hulk, appears in a murderous rage killing a thoroughly despicable man. Then there is Charles’ investigation to find the missing young man. Finally like a blood hound on their heels is the doughty DI Munro who is on the case of several murders including one of his own men.

In Charles we find a thoroughly objectional man who is utterly compelling. He is impossible to like, but at the same time the reader might find themselves warming to him as he possesses a certain amount of charm. Whatever the readers feelings about him, they are going to read on just to see what he does next, he is an inveterate risk taker.

Much of the story revolves around Charles and Munro, these are two characters who can hold the attention of the reader, but there are also great cameos. I particularly like the rickshaw boy Albert who goes around almost unnoticed and latches on Charles early in the story, rather than being a hinderance he proves to be rather useful. I suspect there will be more to come from Albert.

Sex, violence, mystery and intrigue, a storyline that rattles along nicely and a murderous antihero, what more could you want from a thriller?

Once a Killer is a stylish period thriller that introduces a compelling character who regards murder with moral ambiguity.

Once a Killer can be purchased via Amazon here

The author

Murray Bailey Is the author of Amazon bestseller Map of the Dead, the first of the series based on his interest in Egyptology. His main series however is the Ash Carter thrillers, inspired by his father’s experience in the Royal Military Police in Singapore in the early 1950s.

Murray is well traveled, having worked in the US, South America and a number of European countries throughout his career as a management consultant. However he also managed to find the time to edit books, contribute to articles and act as a part-time magazine editor.

Murray lives on the south coast of England with his family and a dog called Teddy.

Source: Amazon profile

The Dentist #TimSullivan #TheDentist

By Tim Sullivan https://timsullivan.co.uk/ @TimJRSullivan

Narrated by John Heffernan

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ @BloomsburyBooks, audio by W.F.Howes Ltd https://www.wfhowes.co.uk/ @WFHowes

384 pages (10 hours 12 minutes) ISBN 9781801107716 (PB) 9781803282503 (A)

Publication date 2 September 2021 (audio 1 October 2022)

The Dentist is the first book in the DS Cross Mysteries series.

I reviewed an audiobook version from Audible.

The cover

Pretty standard effort, man on a waterfront, in this case in sight of the Severn Bridge which sets the location nicely.

The narration

I was impressed with the work of the narrator overall, but especially his portrayal of George, at times deadpan but always sympathetic. Not an easy part to play but very well done.

Pete’s ponderings

For crime writers it must be difficult to come up with original ideas. Most plot ideas have been done so often that the seasoned reader can gauge where the story is heading, so it is always refreshing when this is flipped on its head like in Yule Island. Smaller publishers are trying to introduce readers to crime fiction from unexpected places, and last year I read some excellent novels from such unexpected places as Uruguay (The Hand That Feeds You) and Romania (Deadly Autumn Harvest) which had very different settings and writing styles.

It is the same with lead detectives. Authors tend to put them through hell for the readers delectation. So much so that a policeman who is well adjusted, with no addictions, a happy marriage and family life is so unusual that it comes as a breath of fresh air. Brian Price’s Mel Cotton is one such officer but from a quick read of Fatal Blow we can see Brian puts her through the wringer in the day job. In The Dentist we start a series with a rather unusual lead character in that he suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time did a lot to raise awareness about Asperger’s in a very original novel, but I can’t recall a crime novel with police officer that has it.

My review

DS George Cross is a very singularly individual man and one other people find difficult to work with. He takes an intensely detailed approach to investigations, unerringly relies upon logic and is determined to discover the truth. This results in him having the best conviction rate in the force but still he is lauded by so few. He is socially awkward, cannot read peoples expressions or any hidden meaning to their words and he has several peculiar habits such as having his breakfast separated onto a series of small plates. This is because George suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome and few of his work colleague understand how this affects him. His partner DS Josie Ottey wants their association to be temporary because she finds him infuriating, but to DCI Carson he is a secret weapon to assist him rising through the ranks, whilst George has such a stunning success rate, he is willing to accommodate him.

A body of a homeless man is found on Clifton Downs. Such tragic deaths and sadly not uncommon but this isn’t natural causes, he has been strangled. Initial thoughts are it is likely to be a falling out between members of the homeless community and a prime suspect is quickly identified, a troubled ex-solider. For most this is case closed, but for George there are too many unanswered questions, and George doesn’t like them. He can’t accept it was a meaningless murder and decides they need to know more about the victim, much to the annoyance of senior officers. This digging leads to an unsolved case from fifteen years ago which is now a cold case. A flaw in the investigative process leads to the past unravelling as George doggedly searches for answers.

George Cross is such a mundane name for a modern fictional detective I wondered if there was something I was missing, perhaps it was a metaphor for his Asperger’s being a cross they had to bear. As the story develops you realise that it is not though, George struggles to comprehend the world around him and can’t understand why others do not see it the way he does. It is akin to speaking to someone in a foreign language, once accommodations are made an understanding and rapport is built up. This journey is of understanding is the one Ottey undertakes through the story.

The portrayal of George is masterful, there are his foibles and frustrations but also how he uses his individuality to his advantage. He is usually underestimated by suspects and those he questions which can give him the upper hand. His use of logic and bloody-minded persistence is perfect for policing and skilfully woven into the story but it is his perceptions that struck me as the most telling. It is difficult to put ourselves in his shoes but without spoiling the flow we understand why order means so much to George, how logic becomes his coping mechanism in an illogical world such that unanswered questions affect him almost as much as physical pain. The relationship he has with father is equally as touching as it is bizarre. We also see he does have outside interests too, how he became a cricket scorer as a child (perfect) and his love of organ music.

The plot is straightforward even if the solution is not so much; it is very much the standard police procedural, with George’s careful step by step investigation and station bound interrogations. It is light on action and danger, but those are for other detectives, George would never chase a suspect or put himself in grave danger. Perhaps because of this the story develops at its own steady pace and never rushed.

Levity is brough by way of George’s habits and misunderstandings but never in a hurtful or malicious way, more a case that we can laugh at the absurdity of life and social norms. Why would you have a sleeve tattoo that will never change for the rest of your life? George doesn’t have an extensive wardrobe but likes to vary things around a bit, a simply perfect logical observation.

The Dentist is an impressive police procedural which manages to be both thoughtful and entertaining. This promises to be a fascinating series ahead.

The Dentist can be purchased direct from the publisher here

The author

Tim Sullivan is an acclaimed screenwriter. He originally read English and Law at university – the latter forced on him by his Dad – but instead he wriggled free of those parental ambitions and pursued his own, to make films. His writing credits include A HANDFUL OF DUST, starring Kristen Scott Thomas, WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD, starring Helen Mirren and Helena Bonham Carter, JACK AND SARAH (which he also directed) starring Richard E Grant, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen and LETTERS TO JULIET, with Amanda Seyfried. He is also a Television director whose credits include SHERLOCK HOLMES and COLD FEET and CORONATIONS STREET. He has written extensively in Hollywood in both live action and animation, working with Ron Howard, Scott Rudin and with Jeffrey Katzenberg on the fourth SHREK movie.

He has now embarked on a series of crime novels featuring the eccentric and socially-awkward, but brilliantly persistent DS George Cross.

He self-published the first two books and once they’d achieved over 200,000 downloads he came to the attention of Head of Zeus publishers. So thanks to all his readers for this success and their shared love of George.

The novels are set in Bristol in the south west of England, Cross’ methods often infuriate his colleagues and superiors “not so much a thorn in my side as a pain in my arse,” according to his boss DCI Carson. But his conviction rate, thanks to his dogged persistence and attention to detail, is the best in the force. Tim has now written the first four in the series with The Patient being published on March 3rd 2022.

Tim feels confident in his claim that he is the only crime writer around who has also co-produced and written a My Little Pony movie for Hasbro. MY LITTLE PONY – A NEW GENERATION is now available on Netflix.

Tim lives in North London with his wife Rachel, the Emmy award-winning producer of THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA and PIONEER WOMAN. Their daughters live near by.

Source: Goodreads profile

The Narrator

John Heffernan grew up in Connecticut and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Cornell. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Los Angeles where he worked at USC Film School for three years as a Production Coordinator for student films. After working as a development assistant for Davis Entertainment and Dreamworks-based Patchwork Productions, John sold his first script, A Chance for Both Barrels. This was followed by numerous writing jobs including a development deal with MTV Films and the New Line release Snakes on a Plane in 2006. Since then he has continued to write extensively for film and TV and has expanded into multiple forms of graphic literary media, including Driver For The Dead, his first comic book series.

Source: Goodreads profile

Catch as Catch Can #MalcolmHollingdrake #CatchAsCatchCan

By Malcolm Hollingdrake https://t.co/3FU8Z3YsGg @MHollingdrake

Narrated by Adrian Hobart @adrian_hobart

Published by Hobeck Books https://www.hobeck.net @HobeckBooks

310 pages (7 hours 45 minutes) ISBN  9781913793272

Publication date 16 April 2021 (audio 31 January 2022)

Catch as Catch Can is the first book in the Merseyside Crime series.

I reviewed an audiobook version purchased from Audible.

The cover

Fits in with so many these days, a figure seen from behind at a waterfront, which presumably is part of the Mersey Estuary. Could it be one of Antony Gormley’s figures?

The narration

Excellent general narration that doesn’t try too many different voices, which is fine. Enjoyed the Merseyside accents which clearly of the region without becoming full blown Lily Savage.

On a couple of occasions there was a scene change during a chapter where a slight pause would have made it clearer, but this is a minor grumble.

Pete’s ponderings

Most crime readers when they pick up a novel are expecting a murder, usually the more the merrier, after all it is only fiction. The simple fact is it is murders that have impact, are usually shocking and have a perverse glamour in the eyes of some. In The Silence of the Lambs, it is Hannibal Lecter that grabs the attention not Clarice Starling, even though despite being cultured and educated he is still the baddest of the bad. Thankfully in the UK, even though crime always appears to be at an all-time high, murder is still relatively rare, with random killings and serial killings amongst the rarest.

Low level crime can still produce wonderful fiction if the author manages to capture the grimy and grittiness of real life in the deprived areas and sink estates. There are a couple of murders in this novel, but they arise through other crimes. It centres on the sort of crimes that plague many communities that if not acted upon can escalate out of control.

My review

April Decent is a fast-track graduate officer, already at the level of Detective Inspector, who has moved from her native Yorkshire to the other side (the wrong side) of the Pennines to Merseyside for her promotion. She faces a fresh start with new colleagues and settling into a new home, a coastal cottage with her brindle greyhound Tico*.

April starts has she means to go on, setting ground rules for her team to the annoyance of some, who perhaps are not fully behind the team. There is one person who she cannot immediately get a handle on, Skeeter Warlock. Skeeter is an intense, stocky woman with a piercing stare whose effect is enhanced by her having heterochromia, different coloured irises. These are two women who decide that they must earn each other’s respect and trust.

Metal detectorists (who are now starting to rival dog walkers in fiction) discover a washed-up mutilated corpse on a beach, along with a medal and a plastic disc. Not a great deal for April and her team to go on, but if he has been tortured then it is presumably for information, but what?

With any first novel in a series there is a balance between introducing a back story and keeping a flow of action and here I think the author has just about got it right. The series is presumably centred on April as the principal character, but Skeeter is so striking I can see it developing into a two-hander. Both characters are interesting and have complementary skills and personalities and it is going to be fascinating how their interaction develops further.

April is the more reserved of the two, happy with a degree of solitude, going for beach walks with Tico or working on her hobby of making stained glass windows. Skeeter may appear menacing, but she is more outward going. Her hobby is wrestling, not the ‘Sports Entertainment’ nonsense of WWE but proper grappling known as Catch or Catch as Catch Can, similar in style to Greco-Roman. She is never happier than when training youngsters in this martial art. I can’t remember the last time I read a novel featuring two characters with such leftfield interests, bravo Mr. Hollingdrake.

The story moves along at a cracking pace, there is a lot going on with a real sense of danger at times and violence not glossed over. The low-level crime is convincingly covered, with the scooter gangs and drug distribution using youngsters through county lines, working for a modern-day Bill Sykes. There is a whole stratum of people on the fringes our communities who drift or are dragged into crime and a separate sub-culture, where crime becomes a way of life. The lure of easy money, of getting rich quick, is like a drug, but all addictions eventually come at a cost. It clearly demonstrates that the escalation of these crimes leads to greater risks being taken and ultimately to danger.

The local environs are well used, the run down and deprived areas of Liverpool provide the stark grittiness, but then there are the more affluent areas and the Antony Gormley statues on the beach. These bold contrasts make for an atmospheric read.

Of course, Liverpudlians like to think that they are hilarious, so it is fitting that there are some good one-liners, put downs and nicknames. The gang taking names from Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs is the sort of silliness I can get behind; these are not sophisticated criminals. Then there is how Skeeter came to be so ludicrously named and her life of nicknames, that in the end makes perfect sense.

Catch as Catch Can is an engaging police procedural with plenty of action and a seam of gritty realism throughout. Looking forward to reading more about April and Skeeter.

* Tico a black greyhound famously won both the English and Irish Greyhound Derbies in 1986

Catch as Catch Can may published direct from the publisher here

The audiobook version that I listened to can be purchased from Audible/Amazon here

The author

Photograph (c) Tony Bithell

You could say that the writing was clearly on the wall for someone born in a library that they might aspire to be an author, but to get to that point Malcolm Hollingdrake has travelled a circuitous route. Malcolm worked in education for many years, including teaching in Cairo for a while. Malcolm has been happily married to Debbie for over forty years. They met in their first weekend at Ripon college through strange and unusual circumstances. Serendipity was certainly cupid on that occasion. Malcolm has written a number of successful short stories, has twelve books now published in the Harrogate Crime Series. He is also working on the third book of the Merseyside Crime Series which Hobeck will be publishing. The books introduce us to DI April Decent and DS Skeeter Warlock. Malcolm has enjoyed many diverse hobbies including flying light aircraft, gliders and paragliders, learning to fly at Liverpool Airport, designing and making leaded windows and collecting works by Northern artists.

Catch as Catch Can and Syn published in 2021. The third book, Edge of the Land, will be out in 2024.

Source: Publisher’s website

The narrator

Hobeck Books is the brainchild of author and broadcaster Adrian Hobart and publisher Rebecca Collins, and is based in a big old barn in the Staffordshire countryside.

Adrian has been a broadcaster and journalist with the BBC for twenty-five years, and is an audiobook narrator, filmmaker and a writer. 

Source: publisher’s website