Tag Archives: crime fiction

#Bookreview ‘Hide and Seek’ by @mjarlidge #crimefiction

Different from the preceding five books in the series and even faster-paced, Hide and Seek by MJ Arlidge is a relentless page-turner. DI Helen Grace is in prison, awaiting trial. Unsurprisingly, as a copper she receives brute treatment from her fellow inmates. And then one of them is killed and the prisoners don’t know who to fear – Grace, who is accused of murder; a fellow prisoner; or a prison guard. The action switches viewpoint as Helen tries to identify the killer and prevent him killing again. Her friend DC Charlie Brooks is on the outside, trying to prove Helen’s innocence and find the real murderer, the prison governor can’t cope, and the killer is planning the next attack. Meanwhile the aggressive journalist Emilia Garanita is somehow getting photos from within the prison. While Helen is struggling to survive from one day to the next, the prison guards are under-staffed and under-pressure.
Helen uses a few old prisoner tricks to unlock her cell door and move around the prison, I don’t know how realistic this is but it certainly moved the story along. How often do murders happen in a prison wing at night when the prisoners are locked in their cells?
This is a series to read from the beginning if you are to get the most out of Helen Grace’s ongoing story.

Read my reviews other books in this series:-
EENY MEENY #1HELENGRACE
POP GOES THE WEASEL #2HELENGRACE
THE DOLL’S HOUSE #3HELENGRACE
LIAR LIAR #4HELENGRACE
LITTLE BOY BLUE #5HELENGRACE
LOVE ME NOT #7HELENGRACE
DOWN TO THE WOODS #8 HELENGRACE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Nationalist’ by Campbell Hart
‘The Pure in Heart’ by Susan Hill
‘The Black Tower’ by PD James

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HIDE AND SEEK by @mjarlidge via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2mH

#BookReview ‘Referendum’ by Campbell Hart ‪@elharto #crime

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Scottish politics and policing offer a fertile source for fictional plots, and former journalist Campbell Hart makes the most of it. Referendum is the third in his series about Glasgow Detective Inspector John Arbogast. The heft of this series is developing nicely, as the characters and setting gain depth with each book and the plots are layered with threads from the previous books. Arbogast and his police colleagues are familiar now and Hart chooses his political setting, in the run-up to the Scottish Referendum for Independence, with care. Throw in a bent copper, an Irish thug, a BBC reporter, a family struggling with debt, and a nationalist determined to have his moment of propaganda, and there are many narrative threads to follow.
A man dies beneath a bridge, suicide or murder? But then a debt collector calls on his wife, which kickstarts a chain of events involving Arbogast. As well as chasing down a missing teenager, he takes a secret trip to Belfast to research the background of a fellow officer. What he finds there leads straight back to Glasgow and a deadly climax at the partly-constructed new police headquarters building, a sparkling transparent glass and steel building. Is Glasgow’s policing as transparent as its new HQ?

Read my reviews of other Arbogast novels by Campbell Hart:-
WILDERNESS #1ARBOGAST
THE NATIONALIST #2ARBOGAST

If you like this, try:-
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley
‘The Silent Twin’ by Caroline Mitchell
‘Snow White Must Die’ by Nele Neuhaus

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview REFERENDUM by Campbell Hart @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-225 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Little Deaths’ by Emma Flint #mystery #suspense

4 Replies

This is another of those novels which is an uncomfortable read. What kept me reading? The characters. I wanted to know what really happened. But of course this is fiction and characters don’t always tell the truth, only their version of the truth. Little Deaths by Emma Flint is an accomplished debut, as I read I could tell she had got under the skin of her characters. There is an intriguing set-up, we first hear Ruth’s voice. She is in prison. We don’t know why, but she compares her life now with her life before. When she was a single mum with two small children. As I read, I felt a shiver down my back: where are her children now? Starting the story with Ruth in prison surely gives away the ending, doesn’t it? Not really. This is a nuanced tale of trial by jury in 1960s America [though until the Sixties were mentioned, it seemed to be set in a curiously non-time specific period] where prejudices about women could wrongly influence outcomes, where social pre-conceptions coloured witness statements, and hearsay evidence seemed admissible if the accused was disliked. It is a tale of presumed guilt, and it should make all readers stop and think.
Ruth, separated from her husband Frank, works as a cocktail waitress to support her children. It is a hard life when Frank’s support cheques bounce and the children don’t want to eat the only food she has to feed them. Ruth puts on a persona when she leaves the house, it is her way of coping. She is a proud woman, who doesn’t want to admit her struggles or to ask for help. She is attractive and uses make-up and tight clothes to attract boyfriends who give her cash, cash which helps her to survive. And then one morning when she goes to the children’s bedroom, Cindy and Frank Junior are not there. The police questioning starts, and the make-up, short skirts and lack of friendly neighbours come back to haunt her.
We are told Ruth’s story, first by Ruth herself, and also by Pete Wonicke, a young journalist who reports on the case. As the months go on and no-one is arrested we see Ruth’s anger and helplessness in the face of police who wait to convict her rather than investigate other clues. Meanwhile, Pete becomes obsessed with Ruth and with proving her innocence.
This novel stayed with me for days afterwards. It made me question how quick we are to judge others by what we see on the outside, how easy it is to allow our prejudices to dominate our views on life. Sometimes the guilty-looking person will be guilty. But sometimes they won’t.
You will have to read right to the end to find out if Ruth is guilty or not guilty.
The novel was inspired by a real life case, read more about this in The Alice Crimmins Case by Kenneth Gross.

If you this, try:-
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell
‘Disclaimer’ by Renee Knight

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview LITTLE DEATHS by Emma Flint http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2iW via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Taunting the Dead’ by @writermels #crime

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The first in the Detective Sergeant Allie Shenton series, Taunting the Dead by Mel Sherratt hits the ground with a bang. Literally, the murder victim has her head bashed in. Nine out of ten murders are committed by someone who knows the victim, unfortunately for DS Shenton, the husband of the victim is a local businessman/crook. Unfortunately, too, that Allie and Terry Ryder seem to have some sexual chemistry going on. And the third unfortunate thing is that Terry has an alibi. Steph Ryder is killed on a girls night out, then the story retreats to show her life in the days before she is killed. An abrasive alcoholic, she has few friends and has arguments with her husband and daughter Kirstie. She is also having an affair with one of her husband’s employees. Not a clever thing to do. The Ryders flash the cash around and accumulate enemies. At one point it seems as if practically everyone has a motive for killing her.
This is a full-on read without pause so if you want a book to keep you reading through a boring journey, then this is the one for you. The action is brutal and unremitting and the pages turn quickly. The setting, Stoke-on-Trent, is somewhere I don’t know but Sherratt makes it a real, dark, creepy sort of place. This is crime in the raw, so if you’re not keen on sex and swearing it might be best to give this a miss.
Allie Shenton is a typical fictional detective, likeable with flaws, who at times seems young and naïve for her job. She makes decisions which propel the story along nicely, though I hope real detectives would not make similar choices.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of more books in the Allie Shenton series:-
FOLLOW THE LEADER #2ALLIE SHENTON
ONLY THE BRAVE #3ALLIE SHENTON

If you like this, try:-
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley
‘Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley’ by MC Beaton
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview TAUNTING THE DEAD by @writermels via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2ch

#BookReview ‘Deadly Descent’ by Charlotte Hinger @lottiejosie #familyhistory #crime

#BookReview ‘Jellyfish’ by @levdlewis #crimefiction

4 Replies

Genre fiction can sometimes be a bit predictable but often that is why we buy it: because we know what we are getting and we become attached to the characters. Crime series in particular fit this description, but sometimes a new voice appears which is a little bit different. Jellyfish by Lev D Lewis is such a debut novel, featuring the Philip Marlowe-obsessed private investigator Frank Bale. Frank is a solicitor who lost his legal career because he liked the girls too much. Now he works as a PI but most often as a process server, tracking down individuals and giving them the legal papers they do not want to receive. But he longs to be a PI like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Classic detective fans will love this novel, I am sure there are loads of Marlowe references I missed. I love Frank’s wry turn of phrase, such as the goon who has a face ‘a bit wonky, like it had been painted on by children.’ But Frank doesn’t just have a smart mouth, there are hidden depths: he prefers the radio to television, he knows his Doric columns from his Ionic, but beneath the swagger is a gentle man. Frank’s dilemma is that when he gets into trouble, his smart mouth makes it worse.
One day he serves divorce papers on a wife who subsequently hires him to photograph her cheating husband. Frank stumbles onto a dodgy lap-dancing club and a dead body and quickly finds himself the main suspect. Sky, the dead girl, was living a double life: law student by day, exotic dancer by night. Investigating Sky’s life, Frank meets her flatmate Shreeti and the two set out to uncover the real murderer. Shreeti is the calm member of the team which is just as well as they find themselves drawn into the underbelly of South London, searching for a murderer amongst jellyfish which do more than sting.
A refreshing new voice.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge [Helen Grace #1]
‘The Truth Will Out’ by Jane Isaac
‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A refreshing new voice: JELLYFISH by @levdlewis via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2dc

#BookReview ‘The Nationalist’ by ‪Campbell Hart @elharto #crime

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The Nationalist by Campbell Hart starts with an explosion, on Remembrance Sunday. The culprit: an elderly man, a veteran, wearing a suicide vest. Scottish nationalism, the treatment of veterans and policing in Scotland are the drivers of this narrative. This story hits the ground running and doesn’t stop. It’s a while since I read Wilderness, the first in Campbell Hart’s series about Glasgow detective John Arbogast. The Nationalist was just the tonic after a tiring week, I needed to relax into a book which moved fast and didn’t demand much from me. This took me for a ride and finishes at a sprint as the end game approaches. Right up until the end, I didn’t know how it would finish.
Arbogast is at times an unsympathetic character, his relationship with Rose, DCI Rosalind Ying, gets complicated and he retreats to alcohol. This gets him into trouble, trouble he cannot have foreseen would link him to the Remembrance Sunday terrorist attack. As pieces are pulled together, Hart keeps the mystery going until the end whilst weaving in the complicated politics in Scottish policing, resentments, ambition and dislike.

Read my reviews of other Arbogast novels by Campbell Hart:-
WILDERNESS #1ARBOGAST
REFERENDUM #3ARBOGAST

If you like this, try:-
‘Due Diligence’ by DJ Harrison
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary
‘Dead Simple’ by Peter James

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE NATIONALIST by Campbell Hart @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-21L via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Blood Atonement’ by Dan Waddell #genealogy #crime #mystery

1 Reply

A fascinating mixture of modern crime novel and family history research, Blood Atonement by Dan Waddell takes Nigel Barnes from London to the USA as he races against time to find answers for Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster. Foster’s first case after returning to work following injuries sustained in The Blood Detective [first in this genealogical crime series] is a dead actress and her missing daughter. Links to the actress’s past, mystery about her family and unanswered questions, lead Foster to call in the help of genealogist Nigel Barnes. Both men are strong characters who walk off the page, both loners of a kind, both lonely in love.
This is a fast-moving mystery revolving around what happened to Horton and Sarah Rowley, who we know from flashbacks were teenage sweethearts planning to run away, but who only appear in records in the UK from 1891. Before that, they cease to exist. Where did they come from, and why were they running? Simply because their parents disapproved of the marriage, or something more sinister? And what has this to do with the dead actress found lying face down on her lawn in London? As he searches for the missing 14-year old, Foster finds chilling parallels with Leonie, another 14-year old who disappeared three years earlier and has never been found. As links to a cult are uncovered, attention focuses back on Sarah and Horton.
A satisfying well-written plot which manages to slip in a little history too.

Here’s my review of the first book in this series by Dan Waddell:-
THE BLOOD DETECTIVE #1BLOODDETECTIVE

If you like this, try:-
‘Hiding the Past’ by Nathan Dylan Goodwin #1MortonFarrier
‘Blood-Tied’ by Wendy Percival #1EsmeQuentin
‘Deerleap’ by Sarah Walsh

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BLOOD ATONEMENT by Dan Waddell http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ub via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Nutshell’ by Ian McEwan #crime

7 Replies

I can see Nutshell by Ian McEwan occupying many inches of column space this autumn. Where to start? You must have heard by now that this is the one about the foetus who overhears his mother Trudy and her lover, her brother-in-law Claude, planning to murder Trudy’s husband and father of the narrator. It is both ingenious and awkward. At one moment I would chuckle at the audacity of the unborn narrator and his take on life, the next I was hit by a brick wall – how would a foetus know that? He is an incredibly sophisticated, philosophical, well-educated foetus. I’m sure I missed loads of literary references. McEwan covers this off very early by saying his mother, Trudy, listens to Radio 4 documentaries by day and mind-improving podcasts by night. I know the reader is expected to suspend disbelief, as we do in the theatre, the fourth wall and all that; but in Nutshell the fourth wall is more a flimsy partition.
Is it too clever? Perhaps. But the author is Ian McEwan whose books I love, so I was prepared to indulge him. At the back of my mind all the way through was, in this foetus an unreliable narrator? After all, he is blind, can’t touch or smell. He doesn’t know everything, although he talks as if he can. He can hear and taste – primarily his mother’s imbibing of red wine. But his take on life is limited and he is not privy to the workings of Trudy’s mind.
For many it will be a Marmite book, a love/hate thing. For me, the narrator’s voice got more sophisticated and all-seeing as the story went on and it began to grate. I read on because I wanted to know who died in the end.

Try these reviews of other McEwan novels:-
MACHINES LIKE ME
THE CHILDREN ACT

Read the first paragraph of these McEwan books:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CHILDREN ACT
THE CEMENT GARDEN

If you like this, try these:-
‘Elizabeth is Missing’ by Emma Healey
‘A Fatal Crossing’ by Tom Hindle
‘Butterfly on the Storm’ by Walter Lucius

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview NUTSHELL by Ian McEwan via @Sandra Danby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2aR

#BookReview ‘Himself’ by @JessKiddHerself #mystery #contemporary

6 Replies

I loved Himself by Jess Kidd from the first page. It defies pigeonholing: at once a literary crime mystery, a fond comic tale of an Irish village, an investigation of long-buried secrets of murder and illegitimacy.Jess Kidd is a refreshing new voice, I don’t remember enjoying a debut novel this much since Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites though the two books are completely different.
In 1976 Mahony walks into the village of Mulderrig, seeking the truth of his birth twenty-six years earlier. From the forest around the village, and the houses within it, the dead walk out to greet him. They are a silent cast throughout the book, do they hold the answer to the mystery?
Kidd has created a village which feels alive, filled by a cast of characters so clearly drawn, and which swirls between the horrific beating of a nurse, downright nastiness, belly laughs and hallucinogenic drugs. The cast includes a pinched, controlling priest; a wizened old actress who organizes the village play from her wheelchair; a bogeyman who reputedly lives in the forest; and a pub landlord who tries to court the Widow Farelly, a nurse who has the sourest disposition visible to everyone except him. Mahony grew up in a Dublin orphanage, knowing only that he was left there as a baby with a letter marked ‘For when the child is grown’. What he reads in this letter sends him to Mulderrig to find out what happened to his mother, Orla, in 1950.
Did she disappear, running away to a better life, as most of the villagers tell him; or was she murdered? And why was she so hated by her neighbours?
As Mahony, Bridget Doosey, Shauna Burke and the indefatigable Mrs Cauley investigate his origins, the true nastiness of the village emerges.

And see my reviews of these two other novels by Jess Kidd:-
THE HOARDER
THE NIGHT SHIP

If you like this, try:-
‘A History of Loneliness’ by John Boyne
‘Ghost Moth’ by Michele Forbes
‘After the End’ by Clare Mackintosh

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HIMSELF by @JessKiddHerself via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-23K

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SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS

Sharing thoughts on the books I read, new authors, favourite authors, classics re-visisted

Tag Archives: crime fiction

#Bookreview ‘Hide and Seek’ by @mjarlidge #crimefiction

#BookReview ‘Referendum’ by Campbell Hart ‪@elharto #crime

#BookReview ‘Little Deaths’ by Emma Flint #mystery #suspense

#BookReview ‘Taunting the Dead’ by @writermels #crime

#BookReview ‘Deadly Descent’ by Charlotte Hinger @lottiejosie #familyhistory #crime

#BookReview ‘Jellyfish’ by @levdlewis #crimefiction

#BookReview ‘The Nationalist’ by ‪Campbell Hart @elharto #crime

#BookReview ‘Blood Atonement’ by Dan Waddell #genealogy #crime #mystery

#BookReview ‘Nutshell’ by Ian McEwan #crime

#BookReview ‘Himself’ by @JessKiddHerself #mystery #contemporary

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