==Crime==
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{{newreview
|author=Adrian Magson
|title=Death on the Rive Nord: An Inspector Lucas Rocco Mystery
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Illegal immigrants are not a recent phenomenon. Back in 1963, in Picardy, a truck dropped a group of illegal workers close to a deserted stretch of canal, at the dead of night. Seven people left the truck, and it was only when the driver investigated that he found an eighth inside the truck, stabbed to death. It was a few days before the body surfaced in the canal and Inspector Lucas Rocco was given the job of investigating the death. The problems in Algeria were in the past but not forgotten and Rocco would find himself involved with notorious gang leaders from the former colony – and occasionally wondering if he has bitten off more than he can chew.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749008393</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ira Levin
|summary=Captain Franck Guerin of the Brigade Criminelle was about to learn a lot more about ballet than he ever expected or wanted to know. Sophie Duval was a leading dancer with the Paris Opera Ballet – an etoile – and she was murdered in her home. A chord had been wrapped three times around her neck and then she had been strangled, but why? It seemed simple to rule out professional jealousy and she seemed to have little life outside of the ballet. The Opera Ballet is a tight-knit and dedicated world, but it's not long before it's a world of terror, because Sophie Duval is only the first person to die.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251846</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Quintin Jardine
|title=The Loner
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Jardine starts with some background on Xavier Aislado. Even at school in Edinburgh, his bulk and rather serious manner ensures that he sails through his academic courses. This is against the odds of a chaotic life at home. His Spanish father's a bit of a cold fish, his Scottish mother is as meek as a church mouse so Xavier (or Xavi) is really guided and nurtured by his rather ferocious grandmother, Paloma. Even I was afraid of her. She takes no prisoners, wears the trousers in the Aislado household (in both Spain and Scotland) and speaks her mind every time. Although there are certain areas which are out of bounds. But I also loved her too. Jardine has created a terrific character in Paloma, in particular.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755357167</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=M C Beaton
|title=Hamish Macbeth: Death of a Valentine
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Remembering ''Hamish Macbeth'' from the 1990s TV series, in the person of Robert Carlisle, accompanied by a Westie called Wee Jock, I'm only just beginning to get to know the real Hamish as brought to paper by M C Beaton. More robust in appearance than your man Carlisle, with a shock of red hair, he's accompanied on his rounds by an indeterminate hound called Lugs and a wildcat called Sonsie. That both animals are referred to by the locals as the beasties, and only a special few of said locals are willing to look after them in Hamish's absence, says something about their temperament. Hamish would call it exuberance. Or loyalty.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015090</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Bill Knox
|title=Stormtide
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Webb Carrick is a Chief Officer in the Scottish Fisheries Protection Service and he's out in the North Atlantic where he strays into the middle of a feud between shark hunters and local fishermen. It's a little time since it happened but they're still angry about the death of a young woman. The consensus of opinion is that she discovered she was pregnant and committed suicide from the pier. One of the shark hunters is held to be responsible. It all threatens to come to a head when Carrick boards a fishing boat and finds her skipper dead on the deck.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849014574</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Robin Cook
|title=Cure
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=New York City Medical Examiner Laurie Montgomery is returning to work after her maternity leave. It's been longer than usual because her son had a potentially fatal neuroblastoma but this is now in complete remission, but leaving him and going back to work is not going to be easy. It's not going to be easy for whoever is looking after JJ either. Laurie is just a little bit neurotic about leaving him. She's lost a bit of confidence with regard to the job too so it's perhaps fortunate that her first case is what looks like an open and shut case of a natural death. Laurie's not so certain though – although quite a few people would like her to make up her mind that no further investigation is needed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0230750648</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Guillaume Musso
|title=Where Would I Be Without You?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I love the cover, which I think angles this book firmly towards women. With that old Beach Boys hit from the Sixties as the title, it encapsulates everything you need to know when choosing this book. It's not really crime fiction, in that it lacks a whodunnit aspect in favour of following the protagonists, a French cop and a Scottish master criminal, through a romantic entanglement and into the jaws of death. The interest is in which of the two men will gain command of the other – and who is really driving the action – when both their attentions are focused on the same girl.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906040346</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Adrian McKinty
|title=Falling Glass
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Like all good ''noir'' fiction, McKinty provides us with a charismatic central character - here in the form of Killian. Of Pavee traveller, Irish stock (otherwise known as 'tinkers') he has made his name as an enforcer of other people's laws, collecting debts and finding missing people. He's tough and capable of violence, but generally gets his man by avoiding force where possible. A sort of hit man with a conscience. However, when the book kicks off he has semi-retired, but his decision to invest his ill gotten gains in property has fallen foul of the property crash, so when a job comes up offering a cool half million for simply finding the ex-wife and daughters of budget airline magnate Richard Coulter, it's not one he can easily turn down. Killian knows this sounds too good to be that simple. And, of course, he's right.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687829</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=M C Beaton
|title=Hamish Macbeth: Death of a Sweep
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Back in the mid-1990s, despite the encroachment of satellite and cable, Sunday evenings still seemed to be a time to sit down to watch the Beeb or ITV with the family for a dose of gentle viewing. "Drama" is too strong a word for the programmes that aired in that prime time slot (somewhere between 7pm and 9pm). Technically, they ''were'' dramas – but they were laced with humour, protected from over-exposure to violence or sex or the truly dark underbelly of the stories they actually told.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010218</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=M J Trow
|title=Maxwell's Island
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Maxwell had never been intending to go to the Isle of Wight but when his colleague went sick at the last moment he volunteered to take her place on the school trip. His wife, Jacquie wasn't entirely convinced that this lived up to the family holiday they'd been planning, but she went along too. There were quite a few adults, as there have to be nowadays, including Medlicott, the new head of art, and his wife. Jacquie feels that it's even less of a holiday for her when Medlicott's wife goes missing and she's forced to be the policewoman she'd hoped to leave at home.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>074900892X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Elizabeth Haynes
|title=Into The Darkest Corner
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=The book didn't actually look that appealing. The cover is on the sepia side of dull. I didn't know the author's name and the title didn't really grab me. When I started reading we were straight into the transcript of a court case in which it seemed that a police officer was being questioned in court about his relationship with a woman. He was accused of being violent to her, but it seemed that the boot was really on the other foot. Then we were into a story – or even two stories – with two time lines some four years apart. Within ten minutes I couldn't put it down.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251579</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jon Osborne
|title=Kill Me Once
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=The title and the book cover plus the wording 'Introducing a new breed of serial killer' leave the reader in no doubt as to the type of book it is. A lot of innocent blood is going to be spilled throughout these pages. And, in the case of many individuals with evil at their core, we get to visit the childhood of one of the main characters, Nathan Stiedowe. I wasn't at all surprised to read that he was 'different' from the other little boys at school. He often got nasty nicknames thrown at him from his peers. But did he care? Add to all of that, his parents were bible-bashers but their fervent love of God didn't seem to extend to their son. Why? Nathan decided from a very early age that, in order to survive, he'd better develop a pretty thick skin - and fast.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009955092X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helen Black
|title=Blood Rush
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Lilly has had the baby she was expecting in the last book, and daughter Alice is the child from hell. Sweet and angelic with just about anyone other than her mum, she won't sleep at night, is prone to screaming fits and about as disruptive to a previously one-parent, one-child household as a baby could be. Fortunately father Jack (copper, ex-boyfriend, current status indeterminate) is welcome to come and lend a hand whenever he can spare the time. Of course, Alice adores him. Equally fortunately, first-born and now teenage son, Sam, is unbelievably cool about his baby sis. Just to round it off, Lilly and Sam's father are also on speaking and son-sharing terms (and sod his new girlfriend!).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849014736</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Molly Carr
|title=The Sign of Fear
|rating=3
|genre=Crime
|summary=Meet Mary Watson - a distant second to John Watson, who of course was a distant second to Sherlock Holmes. Fed up with staying at home while her new husband spends too much time at 221b Baker Street, or away with Holmes sleuthing, she gets to dabble her own feet in the underworld waters when a certain Professor Moriarty comes calling.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907685006</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Craig Smith
|title=Cold Rain
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Life was pretty good for Dr David Albo. He'd just had fifteen months away from his job as an associate professor of English at a university in the mid-western USA. He lived on a plantation-style farmhouse with a beautiful and intelligent wife and a step-daughter who adored him. He was even going back to work in the expectation that he might well be offered a full professorship in the not-too-distant future and just to put the icing on the cake he's been clear of alcohol for two years. Yes; life was very good.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190580234X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jo Nesbo and Don Bartlett
|title=The Leopard
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Still completely traumatised by 'The Snowman' investigation, Inspector Harry Hole has fled Norway for the seedy underbelly of Hong Kong where he is happy to lose himself to debt and drugs. Back in Norway, two women are found murdered by the same gruesome means and Crime Squad believe they have another serial killer on their hands. Harry's boss, Gunner Hagen wants his best detective back, as he believes Harry is the only person who can find the killer, after two months with no leads. Despite being persuaded to return to Oslo due to his father's illness and with no apparent interest in the case, Harry's detective instincts take him straight to the murder scene when a third woman is found dead and he cannot resist getting involved, especially when the current investigative team seem to be making such a mess of it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554004</amazonuk>
}}
