My Review (5 stars out of 5) During a wedding celebration, one of the guests ventures outside to meet an admirer – only to discover the individual has something more deadly in mind. Called to the scene, DI Clare Mackay is faced with a puzzle. The dead man has a white card on his body…
Category: murder
‘The Night Shift’ by Gemma Rogers
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Nina spends her nights working at a storage facility where all she has to do is keep an eye on the occasional visitor while giving herself time to study for her medical degree. But one night a man appears whose behaviour makes her suspicious… This is the third…
‘Out of Bounds’ by Val McDermid
My Review (5 stars out of 5) A crash involving a teenage joyrider and a routine DNA test prompts a new look at a twenty-year-old murder inquiry. But Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie’s interest is piqued by a different case – one her boss tells her to leave alone. Digging into both cases, Karen soon…
‘Dead Lions’ by Mick Herron
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Slough House boss Jackson Lamb travels to Oxford to check what a dead body might be doing on a bus. When the corpse turns out to be former spy Dickie Bow, it sets Lamb wondering if the apparently assassinated spook left some sort of message, something that might…
‘Get Carter’ by Ted Lewis
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Back home for his brother’s funeral, Jack Carter wants to know what happened. Told that Frank was found dead and drunk in a car at the bottom of a cliff, mob-enforcer Jack knows his sibling was no great drinker. Instructed by his gangster bosses Gerald and Les to…
‘Finders Keepers’ by Stephen King
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Obsessed with the books of author John Rothstein, Morris Bellamy breaks into the writer’s house with a view to stealing a stash of notebooks that could contain an as-yet unpublished novel. Years later, as Bellamy is coming to the end of a jail sentence, schoolboy Pete Saubers discovers…
‘Mystic River’ by Dennis Lehane
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Three childhood friends – Sean, Dave and Jimmy – are thrown together again when the daughter of one of them is murdered. Now a cop, Sean is part of the investigation and finds himself regurgitating an incident from the past involving Dave, while Jimmy struggles to get his…
‘Bedlam’ by LJ Ross
My Review (5 stars out of 5) While lecturing in the US, forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Dr Alexander Gregory is invited to help the New York State Homicide Squad. The wife of a notorious Mafia boss has been admitted to a private psychiatric hospital. The FBI is concerned she won’t be able to follow…
‘You Are Dead’ by Peter James
My Review (5 stars out of 5) A disturbing case sets Detective Superintendent Roy Grace on the trail of a serial killer. Someone is targeting young women who all have similar features. Bizarrely, those bodies that have been recovered have been branded with the words, ‘U R Dead’. Following the abduction of Logan Somerville, Grace…
‘Mary Ann Cotton – Dark Angel’ by Martin Connolly
My Review (5 stars out of 5) In West Auckland, County Durham, in 1872, Mary Ann Cotton was arrested and charged with the murder of her stepson. Married four times and supposedly having borne twelve children, she was found guilty and hanged in Durham Goal. Charting the details of the trials and claims she may…
Colin Garrow 