***** Newly promoted to junior partner, Melanie Scott feels she’s got everything going for her, so when she meets the charming Hugo in a pub, it’s just another good thing in her life. And that’s when something in Melanie’s past comes back to haunt her. Taunted by mysterious texts and emails, it seems like her…
Category: detective
‘The Big Nowhere’ by James Ellroy
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy ***** Los Angeles, 1950. Communist witch hunts and a spate of violent killings throw three men into a complex and dangerous web of lies, deceit and murder. (Audiobook/paperback) This is Ellroy’s second novel in the LA Quartet series. Though there are a few nods to the first book, The…
‘Pietr the Latvian’ by Georges Simenon
**** Georges Simenon’s first outing with his Parisian detective follows the pipe-smoking investigator round the seamier side of the city, as he attempts to track down master criminal, Pietr the Latvian. My first impressions of this book were that either Simeonon was a really crap writer, or that the translation is at fault, my reasoning…
‘Deadly Harm’ by Owen Mullen
***** Five years after being abducted and held captive, Mackenzie Darroch is making a difference in the world. Running a refuge for abused women, things are going well. Then she’s thrown into a bizarre situation when she saves the life of a car-crash victim. But offering the woman a place to stay, has consequences –…
Author Spotlight – Jennifer Lee Thomson
Welcome to my stop on the Blog Tour for ‘Cannibal City’ (Detective in a Coma #2) by Jennifer Lee Thomson. Thanks to Emma at Damppebbles Blog Tours for including me. Book Blurb: A killer is stalking his victims on Glasgow’s streets. Men are being abducted, kept tied up for weeks and force-fed, then strangled and…
‘Trouble in Cornwall’ by Joy Mutter
***** Seconded to Cornwall to investigate the kidnapping of Jessie O’Sullivan’s son, DCI Cosgrove and his sex-addict liaison officer, Kate, get themselves into yet more bizarre situations. Book 3 in this powerful erotic thriller series follows on from ‘The Trouble with Liam’ and ‘The Trouble with Trouble’. As with many of this author’s books, this…
‘Noel’ by AJ Griffiths-Jones
***** When a rain-drenched Dutch traveller hitches a lift to a rural French monastery, the monks take care of him. But when the young man dies, detectives Mallery and Hobbs launch an investigation and the monastery’s seventy inmates quickly fall under suspicion. The mystery deepens when the Dutchman’s grandmother arrives, as the old woman introduces…
‘The Rock’ by Robert Daws
**** Detective Sergeant Tamara Sullivan finds herself exiled to Gibraltar as punishment for disobeying orders during a police operation. Together with her new boss DCI Gus Broderick, Sullivan investigates the suspicious death of a police constable, leading to the discovery of a dark and sinister secret. This is the first adventure in the Sullivan…
‘High Force’ by LJ Ross
***** (Audio Book) Following the escape from prison of murderer Keir Edwards, one of DCI Ryan’s best detectives is missing. Kidnapped from her own home by the notorious serial killer, Ryan knows Edwards will flaunt his new-found freedom and won’t hesitate to slice up his most recent captive. With Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips at his…
Oh, What a Lovely Murder
Ever since Blackwood’s Magazine published Thomas De Quincey’s satirical essay, ‘On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts’, in 1827, the British (and of course the rest of the world) have been fascinated by the slaughter of our fellow man in all its many permutations and variations. De Quincey’s musings were prompted by the…
Colin Garrow 