Newest Crime Reviews
Crime
Where Would I Be Without You? by Guillaume Musso
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. Full review...
Falling Glass by Adrian McKinty
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. Full review...
Hamish Macbeth: Death of a Sweep by M C Beaton
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. Full review...
Maxwell's Island by M J Trow
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. Full review...
Into The Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes
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. Full review...
Kill Me Once by Jon Osborne
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. Full review...
Blood Rush by Helen Black
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!). Full review...
The Sign of Fear by Molly Carr
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. Full review...
Cold Rain by Craig Smith
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. Full review...
The Leopard by Jo Nesbo and Don Bartlett
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. Full review...
The Lost Stories of Sherlock Holmes by John H Watson, Tony Reynolds and Chris Coady
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a successful detective character will have far too many cases in his career for it to be at all realistic. The worst case in point are the Hardy Boys, who have had two hundred or more adventures and are still not 20. Slightly more literary, but no less busy it can seem, was Sherlock Holmes, for Watson declaimed many times that he did not write down all that man's exploits. Tony Reynolds here gives us eight more cases, making Holmes' workload even more impressive. Full review...
The Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawken
Although the story related here is a work of fiction, the situation is based on fact. The Mexican border city of Juárez has a shocking problem with female homicides (usually young and invariably pretty). Official statistics put the number of murders at 400 since 1993 while, we are told, residents believe that the true number of disappeared women is closer to 5000. But attention to this problem is diverted by drug crime, although the two may not be entirely unrelated. Anything that raises public awareness of this terrible situation, such as Hawken's book, is to be encouraged.
So much for the fact, what about the fiction? Full review...
A Sickness in the Family by Denise Mina and Antonio Fuso
In Eton Terrance there lives the Usher family, in a house above a basement flat where a gangster holds sway over a Polish "girlfriend". After a bloodbath in there, the Ushers expand downwards, clearing a cavernous hole in their home where a staircase is due to go. This is not the only crack in proceedings, however, as we soon discover while witnessing the fall of this House of Usher. Full review...
A Shortcut to Paradise by Teresa Solana and Peter Bush
The characters are introduced to the reader one at a time. The main ones have a whole chapter or two to tell their story, including a bit of background information but aside from all of this, they all seem to have some sort of connection to a swish, literary event. So, for example, there's a young, rather frazzled husband called Ernest. You can tell that he's a kindly, mild person. He takes his role as father, husband and (although meagre) breadwinner very, very seriously. He's a translator. He's had some bad luck to contend with lately and the household bills are piling up but he spares his wife the sorry details of their current financial state. But all he's doing is piling on the pressure for himself. Something's got to give ... and it does. Big-time. And without wishing to spoil the plot in any way, I think I can safely say that he ' ... decided to put himself into the shoes of the heroes he translated and, for the first time in his life, he took the bull by the horns.' Full review...
The Burning by Jane Casey
The book opens with a bunch of young women enjoying a drink-fuelled night out in the capital. And as often happens, there's always one absolutely paralytic - with drastic consequences. Casey gives her readers a sharp taste of danger early on as we accompany the unfortunate Kelly on a terrifying taxi ride. The media is stirring up a right old frenzy and calling this local serial killer The Burning Man. And yes, it's a suitably horrible title and we hear it time and time again throughout the book. Full review...
Bandit Love by Massimo Carlotto
In 2004 three criminals-turned-good are approached by a stranger to investigate a drugs haul, stolen from a fully-secure institute. Rather than be pressurised into the job by a man who cannot state what info he needs, nor for whom nor why, they let him die, leaving his ugly bling ring behind for his operators. In 2006 one of them has the nightmare of his girlfriend being kidnapped, and replaced by the same ring. Can the trio work out the identity of a man dead two years, involved somehow in the federal theft, and counter the current crime? Full review...
Kiss Me Quick by Danny Miller
The jacket cover is certainly eye-catching, a nice sepia-tinged photograph of Brighton seafront. The Prologue opens in the year 1939, also in the Brighton area. A young Jack Regent is enjoying the start of what appears to be a new life. He's apparently paid the price for previous 'events' and is now a reformed character. Or is he? The next couple of pages would suggest otherwise. But then again, Jack's smart, very smart. He makes sure that he doesn't get his hands dirty. He leaves that for others. For the mugs. Full review...
Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot
The first book in this series didn't end particularly well for DI LeBrock, the badger who works for Scotland Yard. At least the main problem, 'Mad Dog' Mastock, was sentenced to the guillotine. But in the prologue here he bursts out of his quandary, and once more causes problems for LeBrock - this time by slaughtering some Parisian prostitutes. Are they linked? What might their story be? And is there a darker part of the past yet to come out of some secretive hiding place, and cause even more danger and peril? Full review...
Frozen Out by Quentin Bates
When a body was washed up on the beach of a rural Icelandic fishing village the powers-that-be were rather keen that the death should be written off as an accident. After all, falling into the water when you've had far too much to drink is not unusual. Hvalvick's police sargeant, Gunnhildur, isn't convinced though. The 'drinking too much' was done in the bars of Reykjavik, some hundred kilometres away. If the man was too drunk to walk he was certainly in no position to drive a car – so who brought him to his death – and why? Full review...
The Oxford Virus by Adam Kolczynski
When Dr Olembé discovers a potential cure for cancer and is given the go-ahead to begin human trials, the potential rewards are huge. Sadly, his first human patient dies shortly afterwards. Medical neglect? Is Dr Olembé's reputation finished? Well, before we have much time to consider these things, a second body is discovered. This time it's a career academic at the university. Was this suicide? Are the two deaths linked? Part medical crime story, part academic satire, part speculative fiction, The Oxford Virus addresses this case. Full review...
Thereby Hangs a Tail by Spencer Quinn
I have to admit to both skepticism and curiosity when I realised that this novel is narrated by a dog. It's crime fiction, which isn't my usual genre of choice; I don't like anything gorier or more suspenseful than Agatha Christie's relatively tame works. But the pun in the book's title suggested that there might be an element of humour, so I succumbed to my instincts and requested this book. Full review...
The Art of Murder by Michael White
Detective Chief Inspector Jack Pendragon has had a lot of experience of murder but he's never experienced anything like the one he was called to on a wintery January morning in Whitechapel. The man is horribly mutilated but he's held up in a chair and the scene has been set as a nod to the surrealist painter, Magritte. This is art as murder.
Back in Whitechapel in the 1880s the man who was probably the most famous murderer of them all. He's planned the murder of four local prostitutes with the bodies being horribly mutilated. Four, he feels, is a satisfyingly balanced number. This is murder as art. Full review...
Scream: A DCI Mark Lapslie Investigation by Nigel McCrery
When I read on the back cover that McCrery's writing credits include television's 'Silent Witness' I was impressed and expecting a terrific read. But did it deliver? This book opens with DCI Mark Lapslie attending a terrorism conference, yes, you heard correctly, a terrorism conference which is being held in Pakistan. Meanwhile, back in wet and cold Britain, one of his colleagues, DS Emma Bradbury is having to step into her boss's shoes, so to speak. A body has been discovered and the police need to get their investigation started. There's no doubt, by the state of the body, that it is murder. And soon the whole team is a hive of activity - from the CSIs to the pathologist. Full review...
The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath by Jane Robins
During the early months of 1915, Britain was fighting for her life during the First World War, and newspaper headlines were preoccupied with the army's exploits and outrages by the enemy. For a time, only one event at home could compete with them on the front news pages – the unhappy fate of two or three brides who had been drowned, in separate incidents, in their baths, and the fact that one man was probably responsible. Full review...
Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason
Maria's body was found by her friend Karen. It was hanging from the rafters of her holiday home at Lake Thingvallavatn and when Detective Erlendur arrived it seemed like a straightforward case of suicide. Maria had been in a poor mental state since the death of her mother two years previously and there was a history of depression. It wasn't until Karen approached Erlendur with a recording of a séance which Maria had attended shortly before her death that his curiosity was aroused. There was no great pressure at work and he had the time to indulge himself, so he looked further into the case along with the unsolved disappearances thirty years earlier of two unconnected people. Full review...
To Die Alone by John Dean
The bodies of a man and his dog are found in an isolated part of the northern hills. The injuries, particularly to the dog are horrific and although it initially looks though the man might have died from accidental injuries it soon becomes obvious that he's been stabbed. The victim – Trevor Meredith – has been acting strangely lately as it looks as though he might have been aware that he was in danger. And where has his girl friend disappeared to? More to the point, who, exactly, is Trevor Meredith. Chief Inspector Jack Harris and his team have their work cut out. Full review...
Long Time Waiting by Rachel Sargeant
Pippa Adams is determined to do well on her first day as a CID detective, especially when she is plunged straight into a murder case. However, an unfortunate comment about Agatha Christie plunges that into disarray and she becomes known as 'Agatha'. There is little time to dwell on this though; there is a murder to solve. Two men broke into the Brocks' home late one night, took Carl Brock away and killed him, and chained his wife, Gaby, to a chair. Carl Brock was a teacher and presumably above reproach - but as Pippa and her colleagues investigate, all sorts of issues come to the surface and it seems that Carl was not as innocent as they first presumed. Can Pippa find out the truth and persuade her disdainful colleagues that she is a capable detective? Full review...
Death on the Marais by Adrian Magson
We meet the central character, Inspector Rocco and are informed that he's a city man, happiest pounding the elegant streets of Paris. But suddenly and against his will, he finds himself in the sticks. He's not too happy about it. His new colleagues are more than happy to rib him a little, tell him that nothing much in the way of crime happens here. One of these colleagues takes things a stage further - puffs up his cheeks before commenting 'we get the occasional punch-up over a game of bar billiards ...' Rocco thinks he'll be bored out of his skull in no time. Big surprise then when on day one, yes, on day one he's involved in the discovery of a young woman. And Magson wastes no time in giving his readers all the gory details of this woman's last few hours alive. We almost feel her slow, agonising death. And the question is why? Full review...
The Island of Sheep (John Hannay) by John Buchan
Richard Hannay is feeling old. He looks at himself and his contemporaries and sees a spread of complacency. Luckily - or perhaps very unluckily - an old pledge will come to haunt him. His earlier career in Africa saw Hannay and his friends swear to protect a man from others - and now a second generation of animosity is ripe for Hannay to step in and be a protective detective. Add in a supposed treasure hoard, and who knows where his last journey might end up? Full review...
The Body in the Fjord by Katherine Hall Page
Page gives us another The Body In The... book within a tried and tested format. The book jacket covers are always bright and jazzy and this one is no exception. We're deep in Norway, its picturesque countryside and world-famous fjords. We are in the company of two different but interesting women. Mother and daughter. Pix, the daughter (I think the name sounds as if it belongs to someone young) is a mother in middle-age with teenage children. She has responsibilities, but at times she behaves like a sixteen year old and I suppose that is part of her appeal. She cannot seem to say no to anyone and now finds herself enlisted to solve an unexplained death and a missing person. The latter is the more important as the missing person, Kari, is related to Ursula's best friend. Yes, perhaps a few too many names at the beginning of the book to grapple with but it soon settles down. Full review...
The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
We concentrate in and around bustling Delhi and straight away Hall gives a great description of his main character. Once seen, never forgotten apparently. And as if that were not enough to be going on with, we're also given the low-down on his 'team.' Their nicknames are very funny and all of this delightful information gives the reader a taster of what's to come later in the book. I can't resist giving one explanation. Puri has several undercover operatives (I'm smiling to myself just recalling it) one of whom is called Flush. Why? Simple. ... he had a flush toilet in his home, a first for anyone in his remote village in ... You just cannot help but smile, you really can't. And this gentle humour runs throughout the book. Full review...
Outsourced by Dave Zeltserman
I loved Dave Zeltserman's man out of jail series, with both Pariah and Killer being among the best crime thrillers I've read in a long time. All good things must come to an end, however, and with Outsourced he has branched out slightly. Full review...
Paint It Black by P J Parrish
The central character, PI Louis Kincaid has decamped to Florida. He doesn't really want to be there but he has no job prospects elsewhere, he's still young and he needs to do something, fill his days. Even when a well-paid job as a PI falls in his lap, he still hesitates. Then he thinks, what the hell's he got to lose, a man's got to eat etc. Full review...
River of Shadows: A Commissario Soneri Mystery by Valerio Varesi
Rain was falling heavily in the River Po catchment area in northern Italy and the old hands knew that it would burst its banks and there would be flooding. But even they are surprised when they see Tonna's barge setting out downstream. He knows the river well, but his course out of the mooring was erratic and when the barge was eventually found Tonna was nowhere to be seen; the barge was deserted. Was it coincidence or something more sinister when Tonna's brother appeared to commit suicide on the day of his brother's disappearance: Commisario Soneri is convinced that there is more to this than meets the eye. Full review...
A Kind of Vanishing by Lesley Thomson
The novel interweaves between the past (the 1960s) and the present (the 1990s). Thomson gives us the run-down on the two playmates, the two young girls, Eleanor Ramsay and Alice. They have been instructed by their respective parents to play together nicely. The Ramsay family is middle-class, they live in a big, rambling house and are always busy doing things. Alice is an only child of working-class parents. They are over-protective and monitor her every waking moment. Will a noisy tom-boy and an angelic Alice who wears impossibly shiny shoes get on, have things in common? Full review...
Wake Up Dead by Roger Smith
Straight away Smith plunges us into the underworld of Cape Town and the street chat of the locals. Boozed up and drugged up most of the time, violence is a nightly occurrence. And when local 'businessman' Joe is gunned down, it sparks off a whole chain of events for his American trophy wife, Roxy. Strong language, strong violence and strong feelings from the local criminals and low-life are the order of the day in this uncompromising novel. Full review...
Blood Road by Caspar Walsh
The book opens with an extremely uncomfortable and graphically depicted scene of violence, made all the more so by the cool, calm and collected manner of the perpetrators. The episode ends in a bloody death. We're in London so straight away there's a smattering of East End humour with lots more to follow. We're introduced to the main male character, Nick, who's really nothing better than low-life scum. That's pretty clear from the outset. Even although he's old enough to know better he's still scum. Add in the fact that he's a husband (separated) and a father and the whole sorry saga starts to unfold. His wife's sick of him and his criminal interests - and so are Jake and Zeb, his two sons. Full review...
Deceptions by Rebecca Frayn
Life has not been easy for Annie Wray. Her husband died of leukaemia and she was left to bring up her two young children Dan and Rachel. She appears to have a second chance at happiness after meeting Julian who eventually proposes to her. Before they can set a date for the wedding though, twelve year old Dan fails to return from school one day and appears to have vanished without trace. This is the situation that is met by the reader at the start of 'Deceptions' and no one has a clue where he might be or what might have happened to him. Full review...
Deadly Communion by Frank Tallis
Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt arrives at the Temple of Theseus in Vienna to investigate the murder of a young woman at the hands of a deviant sexual predator. Discovering the woman died by the unusual means of a hatpin inserted into her brain, Rheinhardt soon turns to his friend the young psychoanalyst Max Liebermann for assistance and the type of psychological insight that only Liebermann, a disciple of Freud, can provide. Meanwhile, Liebermann is already caught up in his own investigations with a patient named Erstweiler, who believes he has seen his doppelganger and that this is a precursor of death. Full review...
The Phantoms of Breslau: An Eberhard Mock Investigation by Marek Krajewski and Danusia Stok
Eberhard Mock (a name you would not easily forget) is a police Criminal Assistant. He's a single man still living at home with his father and leading a rather ordinary, uneventful life. Until, one day, four young men who are apparently sailors, are found dead. And Mock is asked by his superior to be part of the new murder commission. He accepts and from there on his life is one roller-coaster of events and emotions. Full review...
