The Crossed Keys

By Phillip Jordan https://www.pwjordanauthor.com/ @pwjordanauthor

Published by Five Four Publishing

491 pages

Publication date 19 July 2023

The Crossed Keys Detective Inspector Taylor Crime Thriller, book 2 in the Belfast Crime series and follows on from Code of Silence.

I would like to thank Mr Jordan for sending me an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

The cover

A very sinister underpass just the thing to get you feeling on edge before page 1. I like it.

From the blurb

Detective Inspector Veronica Taylor is still reeling from the fallout following her last case. Although, her nemesis Gordon ‘Monster’ Beattie is now on the side-lines his influence remains with elected representatives calling on the police and other public bodies to take urgent action in the war against organised criminality.

Now tasked with finding the culprit behind a spate of vandalism targeting a prestigious developer and their client, a controversial evangelical group, Taylor resolves to move on from her pursuit of Beattie and the spectre of police collusion.

As her investigation uncovers some troubling historical allegations a tragic accident stalls her inquiries and the police ombudsman are engaged to examine the team’s actions.

With her case now at a standstill, Taylor receives assistance from an unlikely source, their information putting her on a collision course with an enemy who could not just end her career, but also her life.

My thoughts

Earlier this year I reviewed The Belfast Crime Case-Files Volume 1 which is a collection of three stories featuring DI Veronica Taylor and DS ‘Doc’ MacPherson which I enjoyed immensely. Those were relatively short, fast paced novellas whereas The Crossed Keys, like Code of Silence, is somewhat longer, even longer than many contemporary crime thrillers. This means that there is plenty to get one’s teeth into, and whilst naturally there are changes to the writing style, for me the quality remains just as high.

The chalk and cheese pairing of Taylor and MacPherson provides the scaffolding for the story and allows so many different emotions and attitudes to develop as it progresses. She is the more serious, career minded and at times a little dour, whereas he focuses on results, has a wicked sense of humour and being in the twilight career not afraid to ruffle feathers. What they have in common is that they are both are highly driven individuals.

Veronica is very determined woman, but one struggling to have a normal fulfilling existence. Her obsession to pursue criminals, the very thing that makes her such a great police officer is slowly destroying her private life. To hide grief in your work is understandable for a short while, but at some point, there must be a balance in life. Veronica is waking up to this, but she still wants to nail Beattie, almost like the addict’s ‘just one more’ fix. Fearless almost to the point of being reckless she fights to do it her way, gaining a freedom which causes Doc a lot of worry and some regret.  

Doc is a magnificent example of the old school unreconstructed man; the antithesis of the modern metro-sexual man as is possible withing the bounds of good taste. The sort of man who considers a balanced diet to be a sausage sandwich in one hand and a bacon one in the other. His bluff direct style being the perfect counterbalance to that of Taylor, not so much a man stuck in the past but one who can see that sometimes the old ways were better. Doc worked alongside Veronica’s father who was murdered with a car bomb and since then he has kept an eye of her, mentoring her and becoming a replacement father figure. A spiky exterior hides a kind heart of solid 24 carat gold.

I’ve seen some repeated comments, supposedly from publishers, on social media that fiction set in Northern Ireland won’t interest the mainland book buying public. Well, I think that is nonsense, it’s a great setting. It’s like Britain but retains a sense of individuality. It shares many of the economic and social issues that blight much of the North of England and Scotland, but it also has problems of its own making. The years of ‘The Troubles’ blighted the landscape stymying development and investment as well as creating huge divisions with communities. This is a great backdrop for crime fiction, and one used to great effect by the author, even Doc MacPherson knows when to tread carefully. A healing community, one that may take several generations to reconcile the past only for a festering boil to erupt like in this novel.

The plot is one that keeps unearthing painful memories of the past. The advice might be to bury painful memories but when the effects are felt every day, and a building stands as a tangible testament to suffering, then closure can never be achieved. Justice and closure are the goal, but that will mean exposing rich and powerful people determined to keep the past buried and confident that they can do that. The theme is only too realistic, power and wealth can corrupt. In real life similar revelations have been made and will continue to be made for years to come, such has been the control exercised by and the trust placed in authority. Some of the revelations beggar belief, but when there is a whole class of person whose motives are never to be questioned like doctors, the clergy and the police amongst many, then there is fertile ground for the seeds of corruption and abuse.

Whilst not as fast moving as earlier stripped back works, it doesn’t hang around, as there is much ground to be covered. This is a procedural at its core but one with regular injections of action and some violence. There is a classic manhunt, albeit it with the twist of three sides in pursuit, at least until there is an unofficial joining of forces. The storyline might appear to meander at little in the middle but its only working to build up the pressure like a volcano filling with magma. The action scenes are excellent, he really has a great feel for writing these, pushing the scope without becoming unbelievable, these are not indestructible heroes. Doc provides some amusing diversions and there are moments of gallows humour to provide a bit of lift, but it is respectful of the victim’s plight, it may be fiction but there are similar cases in the real world.

The Crossed Keys is an intense and explosive crime thriller that examines the dark heart of abuse and conspiracy. I’m already looking forward to the next instalment in this gripping series.

The Crossed Keys can be purchased via the author’s website here

The author

The Belfast Crime Case-Files Volume 1

By Phillip Jordan https://www.pwjordanauthor.com/ @pwjordanauthor

Published by Five Four Publishing

351 pages

Publication date 31 January 2023

This Kindle compilation comprises the first three books in the series, The Devil’s Elbow, Behind Closed Doors and Into Thin Air.

I was sent a copy of this Kindle compilation in exchange for a fair review.

From the blurb

The Devil’s Elbow

With the anniversary of one of The Troubles most infamous atrocities only days away, Detective Inspector Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Taylor and her team face another tense Halloween policing their divided city.

As pressure mounts to find the perpetrators behind a spate of illegal dumping, a mysterious witness puts Taylor and her colleagues on the trail of a missing student.

Will scepticism stop the investigation in its tracks, and is there a link between a university paranormal society and a case of coercive control?

Behind Closed Doors

Detective Inspector Veronica Taylor is summoned to assist in the aftermath of a horrific domestic incident.

With the suspect offering no opposition to the charges and with witness testimony and his own violent history stacking up against him, the charge officer deems the case open and shut.

As the victim’s influential Mother pressures her police contacts for a quick resolution and with only one lone dissenting voice speaking out, Taylor guided by her own intuition must uncover the circumstances leading up to the tragic events that played out Behind Closed Doors.

Into Thin Air

Aido Quinn went for a run and didn’t come back.

For his distraught wife, Aoife, the disappearance of a much loved family man has plunged her down a well of desperate grief. For his friend and business partner, Jackie Mahood, it brings deep distrust.

The discovery that Aido Quinn had been hiding personal financial troubles from them both and that his recent actions have put a valuable company expansion in jeopardy leave the business facing an uncertain future.

In the void left behind, family, friends and colleagues are torn in bitter conflict as they try to pick up the shattered pieces of Quinn’s seemingly selfish actions.

Detective Inspector Veronica Taylor investigates how a man who on the surface had it all; model wife, a young family and is the toast of his professional peers can suddenly vanish into thin air.

My thoughts

Phillip Jordan is an author with a distinctive writing style. It is deliberately stripped back and incisive, cutting straight to the core of the story. I have previously reviewed Agent in Place the first Taskforce Trident Mission File featuring Tom Shepard, a special forces style thriller, and this very focused approach was perfect for a edge of your seat thriller. The kind of book you won’t want to put down and one I suspect many readers will polish off in one sitting. Does this style work for crime fiction?

This compilation comprises three different stories, one a short story and two of novella length that are more like very short but complete novels. These three stories are completely different in content, something very welcome when it seems crime fiction must include at least a couple of murders and where serial killers are ten a penny.

The Devil’s Elbow draws on folklore and the paranormal. Most localities have a feature named and shrouded in superstition and hearsay (such as The Devil’s Bridge) and here is it refers to a particularly dangerous stretch of river. Naturally any deaths at this spot will be blamed on malign forces, the work of the Devil, even though it is the most dangerous spot. This comes into play in a dramatic finale infused with risk and danger. The supernatural element is provided by a university paranormal society, no doubt fuelled by all the ghost hunter shows that suffuse satellite TV, where all they seem to do is frighten each other, those pesky kids. There is also the input of a medium, who are always regarded as cranks until things get desperate and the police have no ideas. Nonsense of course, its all cold-reading and spotting tells, but then there is just occasionally an instance that has you thinking how they could possibly find that out. An entertaining story that just plants a little seed of doubt in it. Nicely judged.

Behind Closed Doors is a classic open and shut case, where there is pressure from on high to close it, to get a confession, but where doubt leaks in. A man arrested for killing his son and critically injuring his wife with a shot gun. He is traumatised, near catatonic at times, at other others he wants to know how they are and claims it was an accident, he was cleaning his shot gun. A man with some violence in his past and perhaps pent-up resentment and anger. The mother of the wife just happens to be head of the local Police Committee, which shouldn’t make any difference but of course it heaps more pressure on the investigating team. As the investigation gets deeper into their lives it uncovers the unexpected. A great story where things are not as they appear to be.

Into Thin Air is a case of literally that, a man appears to vanish on his morning run. Is he dead, is he injured with a lost memory, has he been kidnapped or has just gone on a break? This is a missing persons case that morphs into something else as information is uncovered. Fraud, improper dealing and emotional entanglements all come together in a case with one surprise after another. A story of how pressures can distort pipedreams and desires, where the goal you spend your life working towards may not be enough.

The minimalist style means that in any one story there isn’t a great deal of room for in depth character studies of the main players. However, over the three stories we do discover a surprising amount. DI Veronica Taylor is a determined and driven individual and this comes largely down from her parents. Her father, a policeman, was murdered by a booby-trapped bomb under his car and her mother died a year later, unable to come to terms with the loss, with a broken heart. This destruction of the foundations of her life is what drives Veronica on. She gets support from DS ‘Doc’ MacPherson colleague, mentor and at times surrogate father. Nicknamed ‘Doc’ after one of the Seven Dwarfs he may be short of stature but is big in heart, though the sort of man who would want this fact downplayed. An old school, old fashioned and unreconstructed man with a keen sense of right and wrong, who just gets the job done. It is Doc who is the catalyst for the light-hearted moments, the dodgy jokes and banter. He also possesses a prodigious appetite, with no stakeout complete without a takeaway.

Some readers will prefer more ‘meat on the bones’ but for me it’s all about the quality of the storytelling. Crime fiction doesn’t have to be 400 or 500 pages long, my journey into the genre started with the Maigret novels written by Georges Simenon, recognised as classics, and they were certainly on the short side.

Its good to have a bit of variety and The Belfast Crime Case-Files certainly provides that with three satisfying fast paced stories that still manage to surprise.

The Belfast Crime Case-Files Volume 1 can be purchased from Amazon here

The author

Phillip Jordan was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He had a successful career in the Security Industry for twenty years before transitioning into the Telecommunications Sector.

Aside from writing in his spare time Phillip has competed in Olympic and Ironman Distance Triathlon events both Nationally and Internationally including a European Age-Group Championship and the World Police and Fire Games.

Phillip now lives on the County Down coast and is currently writing two novel series.

Source: Author’s Amazon profile

Quick reviews 1: #BadActors by #MickHerron #BlueNight by #SimoneBuchholz #ThunderBay by #DouglasSkelton

Some of the books I’ve read or listened to recently

Bad Actors by Mick Heron

Published by Baskerville on 12 May 2022

338 Pages

The eighth instalment of the Slough House series.

Format: I listened to the Audible audiobook version which is narrated brilliantly by Sean Barrett.

A new government advisor, a super forecaster, is recognized by a ‘milkman’ (a washed-up spy who keeps an eye on other older wash up spies). Except it surely can’t be, that was a KGB colonel, and she hasn’t aged a day in over 30 years.

Just another ‘normal’ day in life at Slough House. One in which Shirley summonses her inner domestic goddess and Roddy tries Star Wars cosplay as a way to a woman’s heart (and bed). Naturally the Svengali like influence of Jackson Lamb, like a reincarnated Bernard Manning ensures a positive outcome.

 The concept of government special advisors and those morally bankrupt at the top is expertly shot down with a satirical guided missile. Seamlessly switching between funny, crass, and vulgar the crosshairs never leave the target. One of the greatest series of the new millennium just gets better and the author is now reaching the audience his work richly deserves.

Blue Night by Simone Buchholz

Translated by Rachel Ward

Published by Orenda Books on 28 December 2017

182 Pages

The sixth instalment of the Chastity Riley series.

Format: I read the paperback version which I bought in the Easter Sale.

State Prosecutor Chastity Riley has been side-lined to keep her out of mischief, well she did shoot a gangster in the ‘crown jewels’. Riley is a strong independent woman and quickly bores of her new role of witness protection which is little more than babysitting crime victims. However, when she is assigned the case of an anonymous, badly beaten man who has had his right index finger hacked off, she is determined to make a connection. Gradually he opens and she heads off to Leipzig, following up his lead, where she finds a new police ally. Working together they might be able to bring down a major drugs importation gang and provide Faller with a crack at Hamburg’s Albanian mafia boss.

Another wonderful slice of Ms Buchholz’s unique take on German Noir. The prose is stripped back and minimalist, almost as if each word is carefully selected and mounted like a jeweller would a stone. The result is amazing with language that ebbs and flows but then forms unexpected patterns, like Dave Brubeck experimenting with jazz time signatures. The dialogue is nice and crunchy like the best noir, with a hard edge and often a leftfield slant to it. Ms Ward again does amazing work on the translation to keep the form and poetic qualities of the prose.

Chastity Riley is a wonderful character, a woman taking on men and beating them at their own game but still retaining a vulnerable side. Tight plots and inventive situations promise a surprise with every turn of the page. The brevity and directness may not to be everyone’s liking but all I can say is wow.

Thunder Bay by Douglas Skelton

Published by Polygon on 7 March 2019

333 pages

The first instalment of the Rebecca Connolly series.

Format: I read the Kobo format eBook.

Mary Drummond is dead, and it seems likely that her son Roddie will return to the island of Stoirm for the first time in many years to pay his respects. He has been in self-imposed exile after he was tried for the murder of his girlfriend, Mhairi Sinclair, in a case which produced the Scottish third verdict of ‘not proven.’ Most on the Island believe him to be a guilty man and his return will stir up intense passions. Aspiring journalist Rebecca Connolly senses a story and sets off to Stoirm, but she also has an ulterior motive. Rebecca’s father was a native of the Island but left as a young man and refused to return or talk about his time there or why he left.

The portrayal of life on a small island is perfectly captured here as we get the juxtaposition of the lonely and desolate alongside the claustrophobia of living in a tightknit community and the paranoia it can breed. Problems and disputes on the Island are settled here not on the mainland. The business of Stoirm stays on Stoirm and people are judged by their peers. Overall, there is a feeling of darkness and foreboding to the novel which intensifies as the plot progresses. Likewise, the themes are dark and serious a hint at still having a foot in the past as change and progress is slow as well religious intolerance. Rebecca’s family secret is the darkest of all.

A mix of modern problems and historic wrongdoings blended perfectly to produce an intelligent story of morality and person strength, where doing the right thing now may cause suffering but far less than that experienced in the future. Serious, dark and at times harrowing but with jewels of sparkling Scottish wit. A truly impressive piece of fiction that could easily have its roots in fact.

Agent in Place by Phillip Jordan

Published by Five Four Publishing on 30 December 2019

162 pages

A Taskforce Trident Mission File: the first instalment of the Tom Shephard series.

Format: I read the paperback version gifted to me by the author in a Twitter prize (remember if you don’t enter you can’t win).

Dr Feriha Najir is a covert assent of western intelligence services codenamed Kestrel. She holds evidence of Russian involvement in a massacre of villagers by a pro-government militia given to her by a journalist. The evidence needs to be seen but Kestrel’s cover is blown, she needs immediate extraction. Tom Shephard’s team are called in to carry out the work, but hostile forces prevent it. Tom makes a split-second decision to leap from the helicopter and get feet on the ground in a desperate attempt to keep Kestrel alive. Fighting their way across hostile territory to a back up extraction site they link up with local militia. Together they take on government supporting militia and their Russian ‘advisors’ and discover more than they bargained for.

The style is stripped back but even so the reader gets a good feel of both the life on military camp and within hostile territory. The military sections feel convincing (don’t let the code names and acronyms put you off) as does the dialogue and banter between the characters. You get a sense of the camaraderie between men (and women) who put their lives in the hands of others. The action pieces are good, they don’t fall into the silly gung-ho territory of Rambo and fans of military hardware will be purring at the boy’s toys and weaponry. In amongst all the action difficult questions are posed such as whose side is anyone really on and do they really know what they are trying to achieve? Once all the violence ends someone will have to work to put things back together.

A very short novel but feels much more than a novella. It’s an intense and action packed read which is pacy and relentless. A genuine thriller but one that recognises the human cost of conflict.