My Review (5 stars out of 5) DCI Ryan’s plans to leave Newcastle in search of a killer are put aside when DC Jack Lowerson turns up on Ryan’s doorstep one night in a state of utter despair. Another officer is dead and Lowerson may be to blame. But in order to ensure everything is…
Category: murder
‘Personal’ by Lee Child
My Review (5 stars out of 5) On a bus heading for Seattle, Jack Reacher picks up a copy of the Army Times. In the personals column he finds a message aimed at one particular person – Jack Reacher. Having already read about someone taking a shot at the French president, and knowing he owes…
‘Stone of Fire’ by JF Penn
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Oxford University psychologist Dr. Morgan Sierra is thrown into a race-against-time quest when her sister and niece are kidnapped. Morgan discovers she must track down the twelve stone pendants once owned by the Apostles. Knowing she and her sister have two of the relics, Morgan will need all…
‘Unlawful Killings’ by Wendy Joseph QC
My Review (5 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) High court Judge Wendy Joseph QC relates six cases that are characteristic of the many murder trials she presided over during a ten-year period at the Old Bailey. Her writing style is witty and highly intelligent, though never difficult to read or heavy handed. The six cases…
‘Non-Suspicious’ by Ed Church
My Review (5 stars out of 5) When a British war veteran is found dead in a churchyard, Homicide marks it as non-suspicious. However, DC Brook Deelman wants to find out more, if only to track down the old man’s relatives. As he begins to delve into the man’s past, he learns of another veteran…
‘Supper with the Crippens’ by David James Smith
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife, Belle, lived in a rented house at 39 Hilldrop Crescent. Following supper with two of their friends, Crippen appears to have poisoned his wife and cut up her body, burying her under the cellar floor. Moving his mistress, Ethel le Neve,…
‘All That Remains’ by Patricia Cornwell
My Review (5 stars out of 5) A serial killer leaves a young couple dead in the woods, producing yet another murder where Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta cannot establish the cause of death. With the latest murder involving the daughter of a powerful woman who wants answers, Kay finds herself in a difficult position.…
‘The Poisonous Solicitor’ by Stephen Bates
My Review (5 stars out of 5) In 1922, solicitor Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong was tried and found guilty of killing his wife by poisoning her with arsenic. Hanged for her murder, the case caused a scandal not only in Hay-on-Wye where he lived but across the whole country. My first introduction to this story…
‘No Escape’ by Robert Crouch
My Review (5 stars out of 5) When Kent Fisher’s new wife Gemma takes his car and goes missing early one morning, the amateur sleuth is forced to focus on his detecting skills to work out where she is, why she left and who else might be involved. With only Gemma’s mobile phone and a…
‘Off Season’ by Jack Ketchum
My Review (5 stars out of 5) A New York book editor invites her sister and a few friends to spend a few days in the lonely cabin she’s rented near the quiet beach town of Dead River. Shortly after the friends arrive, a strange tribe of cannibals descend on the isolated house. Meanwhile, the…
Colin Garrow 