Crime
Stop Me by Richard Jay Parker
Spam E-Mails can be incredibly annoying, but most of us will have had to deal with them. Fortunately, we can hit the delete button and forget about them as quickly as they came. I certainly prefer not to torture my friends by sending such rubbish on, no matter how bad my luck is supposed to become if I don't. But I wonder how many of us would react if a spam E-Mail actually was a matter of life and death, rather than just claiming to be? Full review...
Blood Born by Kathryn Fox
To give support to a vulnerable gang-rape victim, forensic pathologist Anya Crichton offers to drive Giverny Hart to the courthouse on the day she is due to testify against the notorious Harbourn brothers. But when Anya arrives at the house she finds Giverny close to death and faces a battle against time to save her. In the panic, Anya fails to take note of an important clue which might help tell whether it really was suicide or a cleverly staged murder. Worse still, in trying to save the girl's life, Anya has interfered with a crime scene and the case falls apart. She blames herself for the Harbourn brothers being allowed to walk free and only hours later there is news of another attack. A pair of sisters have been stabbed and raped resulting in the death of one, while the other clings to life. Full review...
The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny
Early one morning, in the village of Three Pines, the local restaurateur is woken by the ringing of the telephone. There is a body in the bistro and Olivier is stunned. The man has been bludgeoned to death, but there's no sign of a weapon, no obvious reason for the killing and no clues as to the identity of the victim. Meanwhile, in Montreal, Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec is called into investigate, along with his colleagues, Inspector Beauvoir and Agent Isabelle Lacoste. They've been to Three Pines before, but this time the village is in chaos. Full review...
The Naming of the Beasts (Felix Castor) by Mike Carey
Felix Castor is a talented exorcist living in London, with zombies, ghosts and succubi for friends, and the odd human. His best friend, Rafi, has been taken over by a demon called Asmodeus, for which Felix feels slightly responsible. As such, he needs to get Rafi back to normal - the problem is that Asmodeus has other ideas - basically to kill everyone who has anything to do with Rafi. Felix himself is probably on the list, but before he worries about himself, he needs to do something about his closest friends - namely Pen, his landlady, Juliet, a succubus (a demonic female spirit) and Sue, Juliet's lover. At the same time, there are horrible things going on in a central London gym, and Castor must do something about it before people start to die. Can he solve all his problems without losing any of his loved ones? Full review...
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye by C J Box
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye is narrated by Jack McMcGuane, who describes himself as a hard-working, regular guy (more of that in a minute though). Nine months previously, he and his wife Melissa had adopted a baby girl, Angelina, when their world is shattered by a telephone call from the adoption agency to say that there has been a mistake on the forms and the teenage biological father had not signed his consent and now wants to take the baby back. Even worse news is that the boy's father is an influential federal judge. They have, you've guessed it, three weeks to say goodbye to their daughter. Full review...
Wasp-Waisted by David Barrie
Franck Guerin used to be one of the elite, dealing with national security, but after an incident in Corsica which left him badly wounded he's been moved into criminal investigations. His first case proves to be something of a problem when a young model is found dead in a luxury hotel in Paris. Worryingly, a stunning photograph of the body is delivered to Exposé, a big-circulation scandal sheet, before the body is discovered and it can only have been taken by the murderer. Despite the provenance of the picture it's difficult not to be in awe of the skill and artistry which produced it. All Guerin has to go on is the very expensive underwear which the body is wearing – or you might almost say modelling. Full review...
Hustle by Will Ferguson
Cons generally come in two forms, the long con and the short con. The long con is more elaborate and has more that can go wrong, takes a lot longer to set up but has correspondingly higher rewards if everything goes right. This is the art of fleecing a single person out of a lot of money all at once. It is this that the BBC TV show Hustle and Richard Asplin's Conman are based on. The short con can be something as basic as a rigged game of find the lady, which aims to part as many people from a little bit of money as quickly as possible. The short con may have a lower return, but that return comes a lot quicker and this is the basis for Will Ferguson's Hustle. Full review...
Conman by Richard Asplin
Thanks to the success of the BBC TV show Hustle, the art of the long con seems to be more popular than I ever recall. I've always liked the series, as it shows a battle of wits and there is so much that can go wrong the outcome is in doubt right until the end. Until Richard Asplin's Conman, I'd not read anything with quite the same level of intricacy, although Jeffery Deaver's The Vanished Man comes close. Full review...
The Complaints by Ian Rankin
Working in 'The Complaints' is not the job for you if personal popularity matters, because they're the cops who investigate other cops. Inspector Malcolm Fox has been there for some time and at the beginning of the book the Procurator Fiscal is taking on a case against a serving policeman. Most people think that Glen Heaton is a good copper who has taken a few shortcuts and done some unorthodox swaps of information just to get the right result when justice might not be served otherwise. They don't reckon that he's bent and there's a degree of resentment against Fox. Full review...
The Dark Place: A Karl Kane Novel by Sam Millar
Belfast PI Karl Kane is reluctant to take on the case of a missing teenager, but his secretary/girlfriend pushes him into it. As he looks into it further, it becomes apparent that a number of young women are being murdered in a peculiarly nasty way. The case soon becomes very personal as a friend who seemed to know something also becomes a victim. Karl finds himself looking for a serial killer who has abducted and murdered a number of very young women in an especially nasty way. It becomes all too clear that the police do not really care very much. Most of the victims are homeless women with a history of drug problems and a life on the wrong side of the law. Full review...
No Escape by N J Cooper
I've long had an interest in psychology, particularly abnormal psychology. The mind is a fascinating thing, but it has far more spectacular effects when things go wrong. The same is true of crime thrillers, which are a lot more entertaining when things don't work out too well for the police. So a combination of abnormal psychology and crime thriller was always going to appeal to me. Full review...
Family Life by Paul Charles
The Sweeney family along with wives, girlfriends and children were gathered at the family farm for Liam's birthday. There was just one empty seat at the table and the family waited for Joe – the only one of the children who wanted to farm – to return home. It wasn't Joe who arrived though – it was Inspector Starrett with the news that Joe's body had been discovered on land by a disused warehouse. There were no injuries to the body and Starrett could only assume that Joe had been murdered. Full review...
The Gigolo Murder by Mehmet Murat Somer
After a break-up, our unnamed hero (or heroine) has been wallowing in depression and self-pity for too long, so his friend, Ponpon, drags him out for an evening on the town in Istanbul. While out, he meets Haluk Pekerdem to whom he is immediately attracted, but unfortunately Pekerdem happens to be married. However, this meeting involves our hero in a new murder case, when Pekerdem's brother-in-law is accused of the murder of a gigolo. Our hero suspects that the brother-in-law is not guilty... but can he prove it? And if he is right, then who is the real killer? Full review...
Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey
When the Sealed Knot re-enact a Civil War battle on Lansdown Hill near Bath a couple of corpses sneak off for a crafty drink – one of them thoughtfully buried a six-pack in the shade of a fallen tree where he thought it would stay cool, but after unearthing two can he can find no more. Further exploration produces a human bone which they agree to rebury – convinced that it's a relic of the battle. One of the corpses goes missing – his car left at the nearby racecourse – and it turns out that the bone is nowhere near as old as they think, but the head of Bath CID still has difficulty in establishing who is buried in that lonely spot. Full review...
Bait by Nick Brownlee
Jake Moore was in the Flying Squad but a bullet put paid to his career and ten years later he's running a game-fishing business on the Kenyan coast. Times are hard and there's every chance that the business will fold unless he and his partner, Harry, can find the money to pay their bills. Some strange things are happening in the game fishing business too – one of their number has died in a mysterious explosion on his boat and the body of a man who shouldn't have been aboard has been washed up on the shore. Full review...
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
The close of the '60s, the dawn of the '70s. San Francisco. Some people say the most influential people are Nixon and his cronies. Some people say they're Charlie Manson and his cronies. Some people call the smog surrounding everyone in the Bay Area air pollution, others a drug haze. Doc, the sole proprietor of LSD Investigations, is approached by different people, requesting two jobs of him, which both point to the same bigwig property developer. One of these is from his ex, now with said mogul, another is from a man whose prime interest immediately dies. How will this escalate into a manic mystery, hitting on mysterious yachts taking odd journeys, missing people, Nixon, dead people coming back to life, unusual retreats, and a host more? Full review...
Bloodline by Mark Billingham
Detective Inspector Tom Thorne becomes involved in what initially seems like an ordinary domestic murder. However, slivers of an X-Ray are found in the dead woman's hand, and it is soon discovered that the woman's mother was murdered by the serial killer Raymond Garvey some years before. Other deaths with the same modus operandi soon prove that someone is out to murder all the children of Raymond Garvey's... That someone may just be Garvey's bastard son, who believes that the tumour that killed his father meant that Garvey was not responsible for his actions. Can Thorne trace the killer's next victims before he strikes? And how can they trace the killer when his identity is unknown? Full review...
The Dead Room by Chris Mooney
The third in the Darby McCormick series, the Dead Room sees the head of Boston's CSU investigating a horrific home invasion which leads to a woman's death and her son's hospitalisation. As McCormick becomes more deeply involved, she realises that the case is more complicated than she could possibly have imagined, with clues leading to people who are supposedly already dead, and suggestions that her father's death in the line of duty wasn't all that it seemed to be. Meanwhile, ex-cop Jamie Russo turns vigilante as she tries to avenge her husband's murder. Full review...
Playing With Bones (DI Joe Plantagenet) by Kate Ellis
Two teenagers went to a nightclub and the following morning the body of one of them was found in Singmass Close – a sinister part of Eborby reputed to be haunted by the cruelly-treated children of long-defunct Ragged School. The teenager had been strangled and mutilated – her left big toe cut off. By her side there was a Victorian doll – similarly mutilated. Back in the nineteen fifties there has been four murders in Singmass Close – young women who were strangled and mutilated and left with a doll by their side. The killer had never been brought to justice. He'd be likely to be in his seventies by now – was it possible that he was still fit enough to return to his old ways? Full review...
Ravens by George Dawes Green
Shaw and Romeo are two friends, moving across country for a new life, when they stumble upon Nowheresville, GA, and find that one family has just had the only winning lottery ticket for a $318million jackpot. The family involved is very average - slightly ineffectual father, mother who gets geared up for the weekly lottery and descends into a gin fug as a result, girl stuck on Facebook, boy glued to a PSP or something. There are enough gaps within the family for the pair of guys to break in between them, and have them under threat for half the winnings. Full review...
Cut Short (DI Geraldine Steel) by Leigh Russell
An au pair took her employer's young daughter, the next-door neighbour's son and his friend to the park, but the young girl was petulant about the inclusion of the second boy and with the wilfulness of a child who finds herself less than the centre of attention ran off into the bushes, where she knew that she must not go. In there she used a stick to stir up some leaves and uncovered the body of a woman. Full review...
Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One by Elliott J Gorn
John Dillinger was born and brought up in Indiana. His childhood was no better and no worse than most but the early part of his adult life was to be blighted by a spell in prison when he was convicted of an attack on a man in a botched hold-up. Hoping for leniency he pleaded guilty but was sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment, whilst the man with him pleaded not guilty and when convicted received a shorter sentence. It's easy to see where Dillinger's contempt for the law was spawned. Full review...
Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family by Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia
Joaquin 'Jack' Garcia worked for the FBI. That might sound rather glamorous but Jack had a special claim to fame. He was one of those rare people who always worked undercover – not just for hours or days at a time but sometimes for years. In Making Jack Falcone he tells the story of how he came to infiltrate the Mafia in New York and was responsible for a string of arrests which crippled the organised crime families. If that doesn't sound impressive enough, then just consider that Jack Garcia was a Cuban-born American and he went undercover as an Italian amongst Italians. Full review...
Burn by Nick Brownlee
Inspector Daniel Jouma was hoping that calm had returned to Mombasa the problems start mounting up again. A nun has gone missing in mysterious circumstances and the local priest doesn't seem all that worried. After a meal with his friend Jake Moore a respected member of the local community falls to his death almost at their feet – but how he had got into the fort ion the first place? Jake hasn't got it any easier either. Kenya's most ruthless and dangerous developer wants to sweep away the local village and build a five-star hotel in its place. To top it all a paid assassin has accepted some local contracts and the FBI are in pursuit. Full review...
The Tenth Case by Joseph Teller
I am a great fan of courtroom dramas, which is one of the reasons why I enjoy John Grisham novels so much and I pretty much look on him as the master of this genre. So, when I discover a book that claims that it's better than Grisham or your money back I am bound to be interested. This was the claim made by the publishers of The Tenth Case and I had to read it. I do think that Grisham at his best is pretty unbeatable although not all that he writes lives up to expectations. So could this book beat, or at least match, what Grisham does? Read on... Full review...
Still Bleeding by Steve Mosby
Alex Connor has been trying to negate the memory of his wife's suicide by running away. He's left all his friends behind and has barely been in touch with them for years. But now Sarah, one of his closest friends, has been murdered and the prime suspect is her partner, Alex's brother James. For Alex, this is the one thing that could call him home, as Sarah was the one who told him to confront death, not run from it. Full review...
Still Midnight by Denise Mina
On a quiet Sunday evening in the suburbs of Glasgow an old man is kidnapped from an unassuming house. The kidnappers are incompetent – they don't seem entirely certain who it is they're after and one of them fires his gun, badly injuring a teenage girl. As they leave, taking the old man with them, they demand a ransom of two million pounds. Have they got the right house and if so, why do they think that there's so much money to be had there? DS Alex Morrow is certain that this is going to be her case – after all, she was promised – but it goes to her arch rival, DS Grant Bannerman and she is to work under his command. Full review...
Gutted by Tony Black
There's always a risk in taking on a new author, even in a genre that suggests you should enjoy the book. The quotes on the backs of books are usually unanimous in their praise and can't be relied upon to be an accurate judge of the quality between the covers. But when an author is compared to others you already know are great writers, this does raise the expectation level a little. This is not always a good thing. Full review...
Inhuman Remains by Quintin Jardine
Primavera Blackstone wants to keep a low profile. After an apparent attempt on her life by her ex-husband, she is still feeling fragile, even though Mr Blackstone is now dead. Living in Spain with her seven year old son, Tom, she thinks she is safe from prying eyes, but then her Aunt Adrienne comes to visit and all hell lets lose. Adrienne asks Prim to find her son, Prim's cousin, Frank, who has been out of contact for some time and who she suspects is in some kind of trouble. Prim eventually tracks Frank down, or rather, Frank finds her, but by then Adrienne is in the hands of his enemies, the perpetrators of a massive commercial fraud. Can Prim help Frank to safety, find Adrienne and solve the mystery, all without putting her son's life in danger? Full review...
Bone by Bone by Carol O'Connell
Twenty years ago two teenage boys went into the woods outside the northern Californian town of Coventry but only one of them came home. The other was sent away by his father, Judge Hobbs and he's only just returned home because he believes that his father might be dying. During the first night there's a thump as a human jawbone – complete with teeth – lands on the front porch. Josh Hobbs is coming home – bone by bone. Full review...
Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo
Called out yet again in the freezing cold of an Ohio winter night to deal with stray cows in the road, Officer T.J. Banks, newcomer to the Painters Mill police department, is not a happy man.
His night, however, is going to get a whole lot worse. From the hole in the wire fence when the cattle escaped, a trail of blood leads him across the snow to an unknown woman, naked as the day she came into this world, and deader than Elvis. With the understatement of the year, Banks tells dispatch that this was no accident…I think we got us a murder. Full review...
The Neighbour by Lisa Gardner
Jason Jones returns from his late shift at the newspaper to find his four-year-old daughter, Ree, sleeping soundly and his wife nowhere to be seen. Sandy has not taken her bag, money or her mobile phone and she has not taken her car. More importantly she has not taken Ree. And Sandy would never leave Ree. Full review...
The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl
In Bengal, India on a June day in 1870 two young mounted policemen are hot on the trail of dacoit suspected of the recent daylight robbery of a train of bullock carts. The chests taken from the carts were full of Opium.
Meanwhile a few thousand miles away in Boston, USA, a young office boy is chased through the docks by a dark stranger of Hindoo appearance wielding a walking stick topped by a ferociously fanged idol. Full review...
Flipping Out by Marshall Karp
In the UK, when people used to be able to afford it, people might form a career in taking run-down houses, doing them up and selling them on for a profit. If very lucky (or particularly weird, as was more often the case) they might get a second career doing the same thing on TV. But over in LA, where the process is known as flipping, they do things much better. There, a group of policemen's wives have formed a group with a well-known mystery author. She writes a murder book set in the house the others are working on, and when both hit the markets together the profit is exemplary. Or so it is until someone starts bringing real life death to the houses - for the very women in the group. Full review...
The Last Fix by K O Dahl
Katrine Bratterud didn't really want to go to the party, but it was given by the people from her drug rehabilitation centre and she felt under an obligation as the social workers had done so much to help her. It wasn't going to be easy though – the other guests would be drinking heavily whilst she had to remain clean and to make matters worse she'd been physically attacked that day at the travel agency where she worked. Full review...
Mrs D'Silva's Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta by Glen Peters
During a picnic excursion with his mother Joan and other families from Calcutta's Anglo Indian community, ten year old Errol makes a gruesome discovery – the partly decomposed body of a young woman. The victim turns out to be Agnes, brought up by nuns and lately married to a much older man. As witnesses, Joan and Errol are required to attend the inquest at which a verdict of suicide is implied. After the inquest, Anil, a former pupil at the school where Joan teaches, and Philomena, both friends of the dead girl, confide in Joan that they believe that Agnes was murdered and ask for Joan's help in finding out who was responsible. Full review...
Through Violet Eyes (Violet Series) by Stephen Woodworth
To every generation, a few souls are born with violet-coloured eyes. These Violets can channel the dead. Viewed by the government as a commodity, they are taken into the care of the School from an early age and taught to use their abilities. While the School does teach them to control the souls constantly trying to invade their bodies from the black of death, it also trains them to serve the government – calling on the victims of murder and horrific accidents to ascertain exactly how they died or who killed them. Full review...