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…
Category: murder
‘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…
‘Blue Lightning’ by Ann Cleeves
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Visiting his family on Fair Isle, Jimmy Perez and his girlfriend Fran are treated to a party to celebrate their engagement, but the celebrations don’t last long. One of the field centre workers is found with a knife in her back and bird feathers threaded into her hair.…
‘Dark Skies’ by LJ Ross
My Review (5 stars out of 5) A secret camping trip turns sinister leaving one person dead. Thirty years later the body surfaces during a diving expedition in Kielder reservoir, prompting a police investigation. DCI Ryan decides to treat the death as suspicious until another body is found. But are the two cases linked, and…
‘A Rising Man’ by Abir Mukherjee
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Calcutta, 1919. After the horrors of war and the death of his wife, Captain Sam Wyndham is keen to make a new start. Joining Calcutta’s police force seems like the perfect solution, as it offers a location and position that couldn’t be more different from his recent experiences.…
Colin Garrow 