Tag Archives: detective fiction

Great Opening Paragraph 133… ‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ #amreading #FirstPara

#BookReview ‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve #crime

I love finding a new series to explore. Fortune Favours the Dead by Stephen Spotswood is first in the late 1940s New York-set Pentecost & Parker detective series. Certainly different from anything else I’ve read in this genre. The post-war city setting is dynamic and refreshing. When circus runaway Willowjean Parker meets her new boss, private detective Lillian Pentecost, it is so nearly their last meeting. Ms Pentecost, whose advice has been sought in the past by Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of the wartime president, recognises Will’s unusual talents – knife-throwing, sharpshooting, bareback horse riding, fire-eating and how to get out of a straitjacket – and recruits her as her private assistant. New York is a swirling mixture of poverty, opportunity, change and excess. The war has ended and everyone is adjusting to the new rules of life. When wealthy widow Abigail Collins is murdered not long after her husband committed suicide, and in the same room of their mansion, the police investigation stalls. So the family calls in Lillian Pentecost to investigate. The Collins family steelworks faces financial trouble as wartime contracts are up for renewal, soldiers are returning from war to the jobs done in their absence by women, and rumours are circulating that Abigail was killed by her dead husband Al.
The Abigail Collins case is told from Will’s viewpoint, a nice mixture of detecting, caring for her fragile boss, and going off track pursuing her own suspicions. Will – newly trained in law, shorthand, car mechanics, bookkeeping and driving – is brave, strong and well-meaning. Sometimes she gets into trouble but she often digs up new evidence. Something that MS-sufferer Ms Pentecost, Ms. P, is less able to do. In a future book I’d like to hear more from Ms. P.
The death of Abigail in a locked room seems impossible to solve but the combination of Ms. P’s razor-sharp mind, memory of past crimes and vast cuttings archive, with Will’s derring-do, leads them to clues the police have failed to spot. There are plenty of suspects and witnesses; a theatrical fortune teller and her slimy assistant, a brawny factory manager, Abigail and Al’s fragile son and daughter, Al’s business partner, a failed journalist turned archivist and an academic sceptical about clairvoyancy.
The setting is special, the relationship between the two lead female characters is special. I’ve read a lot of crime novels of different sub-genres and have an eye for spotting the guilty party, Fortune Favours the Dead kept me guessing until the last pages. And it’s fun.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood [#2 Death in Paradise]
‘Big Sky’ by Kate Atkinson [Jackson Brodie #5]
‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FORTUNE FAVOURS THE DEAD by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-6VM via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-

#BookReview ‘A Change of Circumstance’ by @susanhillwriter #crime

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Lafferton, the small town at the heart of the Simon Serrailler crime novels by Susan Hill, has until now only known small-scale drugs crime. In A Change of Circumstance, a young local man is found dead of a presumed overdose in a flat above the Chinese pharmacy in neighbouring hippy village Starley. County lines drug gangs are using local Lafferton children and people are beginning to die. This is the eleventh instalment of this excellent series. Hill’s Serrailler novels are always a delight to read, thoroughly grounded in the town of Lafferton with familiar characters and landmarks set against beautiful countryside. A reminder that crime happens in pretty places too. I wasn’t so sure about the veracity of some of the police procedure but the stories of Brookie and Olivia feel real enough, both children from fractured families pulled into crime by lies and bribes. A Change of Circumstance is a horrible portrayal of the manipulation and abuse of children but lacking in the narrative drive of earlier books. I finished it quickly but it is short – 315 pages compared with first in the series The Various Haunts of Men which is 448 pages long.
As always, a network of minor storylines add depth and colour to the main themes and Simon’s sister Cat is the beating heart of the drama. Now a GP for a private doctors’ service, she is called out to an elderly man who refuses to go into hospital. Her Yorkie terrier Wookie goes missing while son Sam is home from medical school and being secretive about his study plans. Small details that add to the real life feeling of the series, typical family life.
It’s an odd ending to the drugs case, almost as if a television drama stopped five minutes before the end. I felt slightly let down in not seeing the arrest of the guilty party, instead it is more a hint than an action scene and I missed that final feeling of justice done. The ending to Simon’s story is the change of circumstance of the title. I’m still not quite convinced but it will add a new angle to the next Serrailler story.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz #1SusanRyeland
‘The Killings at Kingfisher Hill’ by Sophie Hannah #4Poirot
‘The Killing Lessons’ by Saul Black

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE @susanhillwriter #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5vO via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Skull Beneath the Skin’ by PD James #crime

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A classic closed room whodunit, The Skull Beneath the Skin is the second of only two Cordelia Gray private detective mysteries by PD James. I wonder why she didn’t write more? Gray’s fledgling detective agency is relying on finding missing cats when Sir George Ralston arrives unannounced to request Gray ensure the safety of his actress wife, Clarissa Lisle, at her next performance. Lisle has been receiving threatening letters and worries about freezing on stage. Sir George seems unconvinced of Clarissa’s danger. ‘The job I’m offering is a mixture of functions. You’d be part bodyguard, part private secretary, part investigator and part – well, nursemaid.’ Which sounds unpromising but the job pays well. So Cordelia leaves for Courcy Island, location of an amateur private performance of The Duchess of Malfi in which Lisle will play the starring role. As with all James’ novels, there is a delicious laying of pragmatic fact about those in attendance mixed with literary references and poetry.
Of course, Clarissa Lisle is murdered. The police arrive and Cordelia finds herself one of the suspects. There is the usual ragbag of potential murderers. The cuckolded husband; the dying former lover; the pampered stepson; the unsuccessful sister; the silent and sullen dresser; the efficient butler and his wife; the boatman and handyman; and the host of the event, arts patron and novelist Ambrose Gorringe. The setting is beautiful with hidden horror. Courcy Island, set off the Dorset coast, was the scene of nastiness and death during World War Two. Gorringe takes great delight in showing his newly-arrived guests around the island and displaying its dark past.
James writes such dense yet enlightening paragraphs that kindle curiosity. For example, at the end of chapter four, ‘He was discovering that even hatred died a little at the end. But it still lasted longer than desire, longer even than love. Walking slowly in the sunshine and thinking of the weekend ahead, he smiled at the realization that what was most alive in him now was the capacity for mischief.’ James, as always early in her novels, sets the scene with much hinting, veiling of the truth and making her own mischief.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Here’s my review of the first Cordelia Gray mystery:-
AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN #CGRAY1

And two other books by PD James:-
INNOCENT BLOOD
TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

If you like this, try:-
‘The Doll Funeral’ by Kate Hamer
‘Due Diligence’ by DJ Harrison
‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN by PD James https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3n8 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Only the Brave’ by @writermels #crime

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A dead body, a bag of money, and a group of people all lying to the police and each other. Only the Brave by Mel Sherratt is third in the DS Allie Shenton books set in the Midlands city of Stoke-on-Trent. The sub-plot is a strong storyline here and it weaves in and out of the murder investigation throughout the book: Allie’s beloved sister Karen is expected to die within days. With a head full of grief, guilt, regrets and love for her sister, Allie confronts the underworld of Stoke to find the killer. Is the city’s crime lord Terry Ryder behind it all, even from his prison cell?
Mel Sherratt’s books are good value easy-read novels which get you hooked from page one and don’t let you go. As Karen lies in hospital, Allie must work out which petty criminal is lying to who and why, who has the most to gain and whose fingers are covertly dictating the action. And all the while she dreads having to question Terry Ryder in prison, the man she found herself attracted to despite all her instincts and her much-loved husband Mark. And to top it all, Allie senses someone is following her. Is her imagination running riot? Is it lack of sleep, or stress? Or is she being trailed by the attacker who put Karen into her coma seventeen years earlier?
If I have one criticism, it is that at times it moves too fast. I felt a little like a rabbit in the headlights and would have liked a few pages to catch my breath, to let the clues sink in and try to work out for myself whodunit.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of more books in the Allie Shenton series:-
TAUNTING THE DEAD #1ALLIE SHENTON
FOLLOW THE LEADER #2ALLIE SHENTON

If you like this, try:-
‘Beginnings’ by Helen J Christmas
‘Found’ by Harlan Coben
‘Lord John and the Private Matter’ by Diana Gabaldon

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

#BookReview ‘Follow the Leader’ by @writermels #crime

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This police procedural is not about identifying the killer as the reader knows who it is from page one, but a chase against time. Will the police stop him before he completes his series of murders? Follow the Leader is the second in the DS Allie Shenton series by Mel Sherratt and, as well as being a story in its own right, it continues the thread of Allie’s story and of her sister Karen. So much so that the ending made me want to pick up book three and keep reading. The story is told in the present time from the viewpoint of the murderer, and Allie, plus flashbacks to schoolchildren in 1983. There is bullying, nastiness and violence at home. Patrick keeps his head down, hoping not to be noticed. Unfortunately for him, he has ‘victim’ written all over him. The schooldays segments are horribly realistic. The setting of Stoke-on-Trent is a critical part of this book and it is clear Sherratt is describing real places. The first body is found on the canal towpath. A man was walking his dog, in the same place, at the same time, as he always does. The next victim is a woman. Both have coloured magnetic letters left on the body.
The murders come thick and fast, the police are twisting and turning but the murderer has planned meticulously and remains one step ahead. There are many characters, most of which were at school in 1983, though the identities are muddled with the use of nicknames. As we see the former schoolfriends now, going about their daily life, we wonder who will be next.
Patrick is a difficult character to like or sympathize with despite his abusive childhood. Towards the end Sherratt does consider whether someone can change, can leave behind their violent past. Unfortunately the unthinking cruelty of teenagers to each other has consequences, but there is never an excuse for murder.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of more books in the Allie Shenton series:-
TAUNTING THE DEAD #1ALLIE SHENTON
ONLY THE BRAVE #3ALLIE SHENTON

If you like this, try:-
‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land
‘The Anarchist Detective’ by Jason Webster
‘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 FOLLOW THE LEADER by @writermels via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2v9

#BookReview ‘An Unsuitable Job for a Woman’ by PD James #crime

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When Cordelia Gray’s boss at the Pryde Detective Agency dies, he leaves her the business… and an unregistered gun. And so begins An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by PD James, with a female private detective who is a long way away from Adam Dalgliesh, James’s famous creation, but who has been trained by an ex-copper who worked for Dalgliesh. And so the tentacles of ‘the Super’ stretch to Cambridge where Cordelia Gray undertakes her first case. She is not a female private detective in the busybodying, gossiping style of Miss Marple or Agatha Raisin, but a liberated, independent woman who is financially motivated to make a success of her business. Employed by a Cambridge scientist, Sir Ronald Callender, to discover why his son Mark dropped out of university and committed suicide soon after, Cordelia takes up lodging in the rundown gardener’s cottage where Mark died. So much is unclear. Mark left a stew uncooked and a garden fork stuck in half-dug earth. His friends feign friendliness to Cordelia but dance around her questions. Sir Ronald’s assistant/housekeeper is superior and unhelpful. The Marklands, who employed Mark in his last few weeks, are shadows on the edge of the story. Something is evidently not right and Cordelia is soon convinced Mark was murdered. But how can it be proved?
This is a satisfying read with plenty of twists, mysteries and unexplained behaviour. The Seventies college setting in Cambridge – student parties, punting on the Cam – felt authentic. And I did not guess the ending.
Disappointingly, PD James only wrote two Cordelia Gray novels, this in 1972 and The Skull Beneath the Skin ten years later.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Here’s my review of the second Cordelia Gray mystery:-
THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN #CGRAY2

And two other books by PD James:-
INNOCENT BLOOD
TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

If you like this, try:-
‘Dead Simple’ by Peter James
‘Hiding The Past’ by Nathan Dylan Goodwin #1MortonFarrier
‘I Refuse’ by Per Petterson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN by PD James via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2nN

#BookReview ‘Referendum’ by ‪@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?
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

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:
REFERENDUM by @elharto http://wp.me/p5gEM4-225 #bookreview 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 ‘The Nationalist’ by ‪@elharto #crime

2 Replies

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.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

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 @elharto via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-21L

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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: detective fiction

Great Opening Paragraph 133… ‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ #amreading #FirstPara

#BookReview ‘Fortune Favours the Dead’ by Stephen Spotswood @playwrightSteve #crime

#BookReview ‘A Change of Circumstance’ by @susanhillwriter #crime

#BookReview ‘The Skull Beneath the Skin’ by PD James #crime

#BookReview ‘Only the Brave’ by @writermels #crime

#BookReview ‘Follow the Leader’ by @writermels #crime

#BookReview ‘An Unsuitable Job for a Woman’ by PD James #crime

#BookReview ‘Referendum’ by ‪@elharto #crime

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

#BookReview ‘The Nationalist’ by ‪@elharto #crime

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