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…
Category: murder
‘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Morris Bellamy breaks into the writer’s house with a view to stealing a stash of notebooks that could contain an as-yet unpublished novel.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…
‘Ripley Under Ground’ by Patricia Highsmith
My Review (3 stars out of 5) A team of art fraudsters at the Buckmaster Gallery in London plan an exhibition of work by Derwatt – a dead artist whose works they’ve been forging. Tom Ripley’s part in the scam requires him to help perpetuate the myth. Travelling to England from his home in France,…
‘The Shadow of Death’ by Philip E Ginsburg
My Review (5 stars out of 5) (Audiobook) During the 1980s, a killer stabbed six women in the Connecticut River Valley, between New Hampshire and Vermont. Despite rigorous investigations, the murderer has never been caught. Author Philip E. Ginsburg reveals the pioneering forensic methods police and FBI agents used to track the killer. The only…
‘Silent Voices’ by Ann Cleeves
My Review (5 stars out of 5) Following her doctor’s orders, DI Vera Stanhope makes the effort to take regular exercise by swimming a few lengths of the pool in her local gym. When she discovers a body in the sauna room it looks as though the woman died of natural causes, but ligature marks…
Colin Garrow 