The Quiet Kill. Robert Bryndza

London 1987 and Detective Constable Jamie Day arrives in London as a transferee from a uniform post in rural Norfolk.

On his way into the station, the day before he is supposed to start, he is sent to a murder scene. A young cop from the sticks he isn’t expecting his first incident to be a body chopped up and dumped in bags, but that’s what he gets.

Unfortunately for him this is just the first in a line of gruesome discoveries that lead Jamie, and his new team, to start investigating the gay scene where it is becoming obvious that a serial killer is active.

Jamie is keen to impress and his boss DCI Harry Dean is impressed, as is one of his colleges, WPC Tracy Steel.

But there’s always that one person in a team that has his nose put out by the newcomer, and in this case its ex vice copper DC Liam Cole, who takes an instant dislike to Jamie.

The serial killer investigation overlaps an internal police investigation which is looking at a senior officer who is deeply involved in the seedier, and more violent side of the gay sex scene, and police politics soon starts to make things awkward, especially for Jamie who is as naive to the politics as he is to the types of crime he is now investigating.

This is not a complex story. There is no “shark infested Custard” scenarios. Everything just slowly unwinds. In a very captivating manner.

Set in London, in the mid 1980s, it is set in the time when being gay was just about becoming acceptable, people were acknowledging that a gay life style existed, and that not all gay men were perverts. But it was also when AIDs was at its height as an incurable death sentence.

The police investigation in this story highlights the fear that was present both in the gay community, and also a largely ignorant general population.

It makes the investigation more sensitive and difficult.

It also shows the Met Police at a turning point. Female Constables were common place but they were still in uniform, which included a bowler type hat, a skirt, a woolly tights.

It amazed me that in the book, and in real life, even the female constables working with the plain clothes CID officers were still in uniform.

I was in the Fire Service during these times and I clearly remember female police officers turning up at incidents in these uniforms.

I also remember how scary the AIDs disease was, and the precautions we had to take when dealing with casualties at scenes.

Because I was there in those days I can vouch for how realistic the background in this book is. It brought back many memories of the way we dealt with incidents, and how the gay community was treated by the rest of us so called straight people.

The story also contains scenes which include gay sexual assault. The scenes are not gratuitous, and are completely within context of the story, but some readers should be aware that they are graphic enough to be triggering if you are affected by that type of thing.

Would I recommend this book. Yes I would, and as a bonus there’s a short story at the end.

I hope this isn’t a standalone story. I would really like to read more of Jamie and his career in the Met getting on for 40 years ago.

It wasn’t that long ago but reading this book it reminds me of what a completely different world we were living in back then.

Pages: 337. Publisher: Raven Street Publishing. UK Publishing date: 9th July 2026

Rough Justice & Unlikely Saviour. Biba Pearce

The first two books in the Shrap Nelson series set in current day London.

There are going to be the inevitable comparisons with Lee Childs and Jack Reacher made by people who read these books.

For me, they are much better, but that may be because I’m not a fan of the Reacher series.

The main character, Shrap Nelson, is an ex-military police officer suffering PTSD, and in the first book she is living rough on the streets of London.

In Rough Justice the closest thing she has to a best friend, a fellow vet living on the streets, is being sought by the police who believe he has killed a woman.

Shrap doesn’t believe it, but before she can talk to him he is found dead in the street, a burning corpse.

Again Shrap doesn’t believe he either died by accidentally setting himself on fire, or committing suicide, which appears to be the way the police investigation is going.

One Officer is also doubtful of the veterans involvement in the murder of a young woman, and of his accidental death.

Detective Gareth Trevelyan is a recent transferee into the Criminal Investigation Team and is a bit weary of raising his concerns.

But when he starts to bump into Shrap during his own investigations he sees the benefit of having her as a very unofficial part of the investigation.

Living the homeless lifestyle makes Shrap almost invisible, she can get close to places and remain invisible by just sleeping in a doorway. Who ever takes any notice of anybody sleeping rough.

The murdered girl was a sex worker, only she wasn’t. The Police are happy that she’s just another street walking prostitute, so are happy to close the case quickly.

The girl worked as an erotic dancer at a club run by and Eastern European but that was all she did.

The investigation opens up a real can of worms. The Eastern European is running drugs and most of the girls working at his club are on the game.

He has small time local hoodies running the drugs for him and they present as big a danger as the boss himself.

The story in this book is really fast paced and makes an excellent read. Shrap and Trevelyan make a great partnership.

The plot is very realistic and brings the dangers of living on the street to every chapter, what it also brings to the fore is the community amongst the homeless and how they look out for their own.

Book 2, Unlikely Saviour, follows on quickly from the first book but now finds Shrap living in a hostel.

The son of one of the hostel workers is a graffiti artist and when he and a friend witness a body being dumped in the Thames they make a run for it. Unfortunately his friend doesn’t make it home.

The police are again reluctant to take the disappearance seriously.

But when a body turns up, just where the youth said he’d seen a body being dumped it starts a race to find the missing teenager.

The dumped body turns out to be another ex military veteran who runs his own investigations agency.

He has three current cases on the go and any of them may have thrown up somebody who wanted him dead.

But which one is most likely to have killed at least one person, and whats happened to the missing teenager.

Shrap uses her investigative skill and the skills she has learnt living on the street to help Trevelyan carry out the investigations.

Other police officers are beginning to appreciate Shraps skills and the value she can bring to an investigation, including Trevelyan’s boss, and she is given a bit more access and a lot more leeway.

This is another cracking story, and this time its got a surprisingly different ending I didn’t see coming.

The clues were there all the way through the book but they were cleverly disguised.

Two brilliant books in what I hope is going to be a long series.

Pages: Rough Justice, 360. Unlikely Saviour, 310. Publisher Mortlake Press. Audiobook length, Rough Justice, 9 hours Narrator Caroline Fantozzi. Unlikely Saviour not available.

Both books available on Kindleunlimited in the U.K.

The Gold Coast Quartet books 1-3. Iain Ryan

The Strip, The Dream, The Casino

A review of the first three books because the fourth is yet to be published.

I recently reviewed a book series set in the Ganglands of London over several decades, and Amazon being Amazon decided to show me books that I might like having read them.

Well Amazon hit the spot with this series, it is an addictive read from the first chapter of the first book, The Strip, into the second The Dream and right up to the last chapter of the third The Casino.

The series is set on the Gold Coast of Australia in the 1980s its a real old school crime noir.

Back then The Gold Coast was an up and coming place which bore more than a passing resemblance to Londons Soho of the 60s and 70s.

Run by corrupt politicians and small time gangsters who are gaining notoriety and strength.

The Police are corrupt beyond belief and a racket they nearly all take part in, known colloquially as “The Joke” , is making them very comfortable.

What makes it worse still is that most of the police are not only on the take, but they are lazy and unambitious when it comes to solving crime. Why would they want to lock people up who are lining their pockets.

The Queen of crime in the area is Colleen Vinson. A Madam extraordinaire and an extortionist. She has used her brothels to take pictures and films of all of her more powerful clients and she basically has everyone of any importance in her pocket. From street cops to judges, from local business men to the highest politicians, she has something on all of them.

Anybody who steps out of line with Colleen can expect to be the victim of, at best, some very physical violence, at worse they just disappear.

But there are some people trying to make their way legitimately. Trying desperately to clean up the area from within the Police, and elsewhere.

The Strip

The scene setting book that contains a cracking story and introduces most of the main players in the series, but don’t get to engaged with any of them, because nobody is safe and not all of them will make it to book two.

Initially there are six murders, which the local police are desperate to lump into one case blaming a serial killer.

Detective Lana Cohen has been leant to the task force looking for the killer. Her boss in Brisbane also wants her to keep an eye on the local cops because the rumours of their inefficiency and corrupt practices have reached the leaders of the state.

She’s convinced that there is more than one killer, why would one killer strangle their first victims then completely switch methods and start shooting the later victims.

She’s teamed up with Henry Loch an Officer whose career is already in tatters and has no real interest in solving the case.

She does find a cop who is willing to help and wants to get the Gold Coast clean. Detective Bruno Karras is as close to a clean Officer as she can find, but can she trust him, and what is the secret he is harbouring.

The story climaxes in the last few chapters and as with all of these books it can be read as a standalone but it sets the scene for book two.

The Dream

The Gold Coast has its very own version of Disney World, or it will have if its owner ever finishes the build. And that is the problem there are a lot of powerful people that want the project finished, and some that don’t There is a lot of money invested in and around the project. Clean and dirty money.

Mark Nichols is a fixer who works for politicians and he’s sent to make sure that Fantasy Land is opened on the latest deadline. What he finds is a dysfunctional family business being worked by corrupt officials.

Far from solving the issues Nichols becomes part of the problem, getting entwined in the drugs and prostitution surrounding the project and inevitably becoming one of Colleen Vinson’s victims.

Bruno Karras is still on the force and he is on the hunt for a missing family, but he’s not the only one. Private Investigator Amy Owens is also carrying out an investigation that brings her close to Karras. They might want the same outcome but it’s for completely different reasons.

How does the missing family tie in with Fantasy Land. Well on the Gold Coast everything seems to revolve around drugs and prostitution. Surprisingly that means that Colleen Vinson is involved.

Karras and Owen both need to be on their guard.

The Casino

This story is like the splintered glass of a broken window, every crack leads to a single point. There is not one word in this book that is wasted in the weaving of a brilliant story.

The last few chapters bring it all together in a perfectly understandable conclusion.

A severed hand found on a beach brings Detective Lana Cohen back to the fore of the ongoing story.

She’s back on the Gold Coast in a dead end job, punishment for her involvement in solving the crimes in the first book.

She is still trying desperately to compile enough information on the corruption in the police force to bring the Joke down and clean up the force, but she has to do that in her own time, between mundane police tasks.

She starts to work with Vince Walter’s, and Internal Investigations Officer once known as Miami Vince because of his wild life style he claimed was all part of bringing under cover. But he’s an addict and his addictions are not as under control as he tries to make out.

Ewan Hayes is a private investigator who is hired to find a missing person. This person is also part of Cohen and Walter’s investigation.

Everything leads to, and revolves around the newly completed super Casino Complex, the first on the Gold Coast and Colleen Vinsons Dream, but is it hers, no spoilers allowed and it would spoil the previous book.

What I can say is Colleen’s not happy and she is looking for some missing people herself.

As I said earlier this is a complex story and at times, as enthralling as it is, I wondered how it would all tie in but it does, and out of a brilliant three book series, so far, this is the best of the three.

I can’t wait for book four to be published to see how this is all going to end.

I was interested that in the acknowledgements at the end of the book Iain Ryan thanks authors he has read who have influenced him. One name stands out for me as being really relevant. James Ellroy. The writing style is not the same but the complexity of the stories, the way one book naturally acts as a stepping stone into the next, the way no character is safe, the way that a chapter in book one somehow has relevance in another chapter in later books, all make this series an equal to Ellroy’s trilogies and quartets.

For those with Kindleunlimited the first two books are available free in the U.K.

Pages: The Strip 438, The Dream 448, The Casino 444 Publisher: Lamb House

Wicked Women. Angela Marsons

It must be every Police Officers nightmare case. A completely random murder of a woman who has no enemies. She has done nothing wrong, or has she.

When the first body is discovered that is what Kim Stone is faced with, but everybody has secrets, nobody can have gone through life without upsetting somebody. Can they?

Then a second body, again seemingly random, again no enemies.

But when the teams start digging, are they going to find connections between these two innocent people, is there a link, maybe they are not so squeaky clean as they first seemed.

What I loved about this part of the book is the way Angela Marsons has looked at the way people look at other people. One mans innocent is another mans, or woman’s, villain.

Nobody can go through life without upsetting somebody.

Sometimes just doing your job, or going about your day-to-day business can upset the wrong person, but where is the overlap between the victims.

When a third body is found the team really do end up scratching their heads because this one really does seem totally innocent.

Meanwhile a long standing feud between two neighbouring families in a rural location is providing Kim with a side bar head ache.

Why do two neighbouring families hate each other so much, and what is it that finally trips one of them over the edge.

Angela Marsons has done it again. Without giving too much away she has managed to write a completely compelling and realistic story which has included elements of society that, although we don’t see every day, certainly exist and are probably closer to home than most of us care to admit.

The interaction between Stone and her team is brilliant, and I love the ongoing side stories of their personal lives, but it’s Stone herself I most engage with.

There is something about her personality, the way she thinks, and the actions she decides on, that make these books special for me.

I’ve been with this series from the beginning. In one of my very first blogs, before this series started, I said I didn’t like long books, or authors who published more than one book a year. Well I’m happy to say Angela Marsons has proved me wrong.

This is book 23 in the series, and they are published about every six months, and this is by far my favourite series of crime books, and it just keeps getting stronger.

Pages: 370. Publisher: Bookouture. Audiobook length: 8 hours 17 minutes. Narrator: Jan Cramer

City of Dreams and City in Ruins. Don Winslow

My last blog was a review of City on Fire by Don Winslow, I was that enthralled by that book I went on to finish the series by reading the next two books back to back.

I can’t remember the last time I read a trilogy back to back, and that is a testimony to how good these books are.

The first book saw the end of a peaceful period where the two main gangs in Province, Rhode Island, lived in relative peace.

The gangs, the Irish and the Italians have the docks and surrounding areas sewn up with Unions rules, extortion rackets, prostitution and drugs, and neither gang encroaches onto the others business.

That was until one of the Irish gang got inappropriate with the girlfriend of one of the Italian gang.

What followed was a bloody war in which both sides lost people, money, territory and business, with the power swinging between both gangs.

The Italians called in Mafia families from across America, while the Irish called on the help of the IRA.

The explosive end to that book was not a cliff hanger but it did leave me wanting to know what happened to the main character, Danny Ryan.

City of Dreams

In City of Dreams Danny is on the run in the aftermath of events at the end of the previous book the Irish gang is in disarray. Danny is being hunted by the Italians and the FBI

I don’t really want to say why one particular high ranking FBI agent is determined to hunt Ryan down, because it would give a huge spoiler for the first book, but needless to say she has a real bee in her bonnet and won’t rest until he’s either dead or behind bars, preferably dead.

Staying low profile should be his priority but he finds himself in LA, amongst the film industry.

Some of his crew have travelled with him and using their new found wealth, again no spoilers, set about causing havoc in the film industry.

Danny almost manages to go into legitimate business but his past is quickly catching up on him.

Where Danny was a bit player in the gangs at the start of the first book he is seen to be the Head of the Irish in this one and although he is trying to keep out of trouble it manages to find him at every turn.

Of the three books this one is the weakest but I still found it enthralling.

City In Ruins

Las Vegas and the casinos had to make an appearances in these books. Danny has started to build a legitimate empire amongst the big boys on the strip.

His visions for a new style hotel and gaming facility are revolutionary.

His past is still catching up with him.

His money for his investments has largely come from his mother’s fortune, a great side story which runs through the trilogy, but he also has some dirty money of his own invested.

One of the older Vegas crowd is determined to run Danny out of the city and ruin him in the process.

Gang allegiances are just as prevalent in Vegas as they were in Provence and soon Danny and his foe are reaching out to elders of their respective gangs brotherhoods to finance their businesses.

Meat while Province in a mosh pit of crime and people on the Irish side are calling for Danny to come home and sort it out.

The end of the book brings everything to a timely end, maybe not a happy ending, but a line is drawn that ends the story nicely.

The Series

The series is fast paced and very gritty.

It examines not just gang allegiances but family ties. Most dramatically it looks at how the family ties and gang allegiances can conflict, and the aftermath that leaves.

There are violent scenes and some sexual scenes which a quiet graphic, but they are always in context and never gratuitous.

If I’m honest I wouldn’t have read the others if City of Dreams was the first. I found it a bit tame compared to the other two, but it has to be read to put all of the story in to context.

I wound highly recommend the series, and for those people that look for a good long read on their holidays treat yourself and read this as one long story. It’s epic, but it’s great.

City On Fire. Don Winslow

Set in the mid to late 1980’s in and around Providence, Rhode Island this is an epic mafia story.

Mainly looked at from Danny Ryans prospective the story looks at the relationships within families and factions of gangs.

The Murphy family are Irish, they run the docks and they are old school.

Danny has married into the family, marrying the daughter of the top man John, but he’s never had a proper seat at the table. He’s never really been part of the decision making process. He’s has responsibilities within the “firm” but they are minor in comparison to Johns sons.

There has been a peace amongst the main family’s who run Providence for years.

The Italians and the Irish had been at war for years until the two heads of the families had decided to divide the area equally and live in peace, and it was working until one of Johns sons, Liam, let his dick get in the way of his brain.

A summer cook out, on the beach, members of all the leading families having a party.

Then a hot, beautiful woman appears on the sand. Danny instantly thinks shes going to cause problems, and he’s right.

Pam, the hot woman, is with Paul Moretti, one of the sons of the main man in the Italian mafia in the area.

Liam touches her inappropriately and gets a beating from the Italians, and those are the sparks that lead to a bloody battle which will last for years.

The book looks at the battle from all sides, the tit-for-tat attacks that escalate with beatings moving on to murders and full on executions.

It looks at the ways former friends are pitted against each other, but although some of them want to bring peace back to the streets, there are others who are hell bent on full on war.

The Italians have other mafia families from across New York to bring into the fray, The Irish have the ”Boys” back home to bring over.

The conflict gets bloody, really bloody.

The corrupt cops try to keep the peace but are so far in the pocket of the gangs they only add to the problem.

The politics of the gangs is fascinating. The leader, the elders, having old school attitudes which almost makes them look like gentlemen compared to their younger siblings.

Danny is one of those trying to keep the peace at first. But as the casualties mount, and as Liam spirals deeper into drugs and alcohol abuse he finds himself close to the leadership of the Irish.

Does he continue trying to find a way to peace, or has it gone too far now. Does he need to use the full force of the Irish gangs to finish off the Italians.

This is the first book in a trilogy. It isn’t often I will read a book and go straight to the next, but I am this time.

There is no cliffhanger ending, but I am desperate to see what happens next.

Trigger warnings for this book include violence, it’s not gratuitous, and it is very much in context, in fact the book would not be as good without it, but it’s there.

There’s also a bit of spice but again it’s in context and adds to the story.

So not only is Don Winslow a new author to me, but having read one book he has me hooked into at least another two.

Pages: 356. Publisher: Harper Collins

The Serial Killer Gene. Alice Hunter

I have to admit I had to look it up, and yes there is a “Serial Killer Gene”

Or actually to be more precise, there isn’t a specific Gene by that name, but it is thought that a combination of genes may make a person more susceptible to being violent, extremely violent when external triggers are brought in to play.

Lily Chapel can’t remember her father, or so she thinks. As long as she can remember it has just been her and her mother.

Although shes now living with her boyfriend something is not right. She needs to prove herself to him and his family, and to help with that she takes a DNA Geniality test. It doesn’t give her much information apart from one bonus section which looks like click bait, but she clicks it out of curiosity.

That is when she discovers she has the Serial Killer Gene, and that is when her dreams, and occasional flashbacks start to make sense.

In her troubled state she leaves her boyfriend and moves back in with mom, only to fall in lust with Margo, a slightly assertive, lesbian, Journalist who she begins a lustful relationship with.

The more adventurous and heated their relationship becomes the more Dreams and Flashbacks Lily has, and the more lucid they become.

Did her Dad simply disappear, or was there something more sinister at play.

Who passed the gene down to Lily, was it Mom or Dad.

What do the dreams mean, or are they really just memories which have been deeply buried.

The book examines relationships as much as anything else. Is Mother really the supportive single parent doing her best to raise her only child, or is she protecting her from a truth Lily couldn’t bare.

And Margo. Is he too good to be true. Turning up on her first night out after breaking up with her boyfriend. She is gentlewoman and looks after Lily. The sex with her is great, but Lily can’t shake the feeling there is something else. Is she just Margo’s next story.

The story unfolds quickly with the clever use of Past and Present sections. The back story is cleverly disguised and although I thought I knew what was happening to Lily, I really couldn’t be sure until the last few chapters.

This book is the epitome of a psychological thriller. It had me from page one and provided a rollercoaster of suspense.

Alice Hunter is now another name on my must read list.

Publisher: Avon. Release Date: 7th May 2026

Her Cold Justice. Robert Dugoni

Dugoni is at leat the equal of Grisham in the world of courtroom and legal thrillers.
For me this is the best American Courtroom Thriller series on the bookshelves at the moment.

As I’ve said in a previous review about a book in this series, every legal thriller coming out of America is always going to be compared to John Grisham, and just like the previous two books in this series, this book more than holds its own in the company of Grisham books.

Defence Attorney Keera Duggan has stepped out from her father’s shadow and is building a fierce reputation as a Defence Attorney.

But shes not cheap. So when a relative of her chief investigator is arrested for murder there’s no way he can afford her services.

Keera, her father, and her sisters run their own law firm and decide to register as a pro bono firm to take on his case, and in doing so take on the most formidable public prosecutor in Seattle.

Anh Tran, whose nickname is Batwoman because shes trying to clean up the city, is a power house both in, and out, of the courtroom.

As a child she hid under a bed and watched as her parents were executed in a robbery in their small shop. Since then she has sworn to bring justice and has dedicated her life to convicting murderers.

Michael is accused of murdering his work colleague and his colleagues girlfriend. The colleague was shot in his garage and his girlfriend was battered to death in her bed.

The only thing that brings Michael into the frame is the fact that the work colleague gave him a lift home shortly before the murder.

Tran is quickly on the scene and starts to issue search warrants instantly targeting Michael, on very little evidence.

But more incriminating evidence is found during the search of his home. Although all of the evidence is circumstantial, and there is no solid evidence to suggest his involvement, Tan arrests Michael and fast tracks him trough court.

Keera quickly becomes suspicious of how Michael was arrested but the problem is she is very friendly with one of the lead detectives. Could Detective Frank Rossi and his partner really be part of a bad arrest.

Meanwhile Rossi and his partner are feeling railroaded and although they think they have the right man for the murders, they don’t like how the investigation, arrest, and trial were conducted.

As with the other two books in this series the crime takes part early on in the book with a good 2/3s of the book being about the pre-trial work and the actual trial itself.

Robert Dugoni is really good at building up the tension.

The court room scenes are brilliantly written. The examination and cross examination of the witnesses is so well written it’s like actually being in court.

Keera is a top class chess player, and she uses all of her tactical skills in the court room, but in this case she’s up against a woman who is willing to push the boundaries right up to the breaking point.

That, plus the fact that there is no love lost between the Judge and Keera’s father, who was also a formidable defence attorney, make for a very tense trial.

If you haven’t read the previous books in the series, Her Deadly Game and Beyond Reasonable Doubt, I would recommend that you do. Not because this book can’t be read as a standalone, it can, but because they are brilliant stories and will only enhance your enjoyment of this one.

Bring on book 4, I can’t wait.

Pages: 369. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Available now. Audiobook Length: 10 hours 28 minutes. Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld.

The Octagon. C. J Merritt

There’s a massive gap in the book market for decent espionage thrillers.

This book fills that gap very nicely thank you.

My formative years of reading, when I really became a proper bookworm , was the mid to late 1970s.

Back then this type of book was a staple in all bookshops.

Writers like DeMille, Ludlum, MacLean and the likes were my favourite reads.

With the exception of the early Tom Clancy books this genre has been sadly neglected ever since.

Until now.

Merritt is right up there with those authors, and has looked at today’s international security threats and come up with a brilliant story.

Stella McRae is a former MI6 Agent runner who is now working in the private sector, having set up her own Intelligence Agency.

When a former colleague is killed after giving her a drunken, rambling, cryptic brief into a current threat she feels compelled to look into it.

Tommy Kane is an ex SAS soldier and the only person Stella trusts to help her as she tries to uncover the threat by moving through Europe.

Back home her only employee Hoss, a nerdy social media and gaming geek, is trying to unravel the cryptic clues given by Stella’s friend, and the new ones she and Tommy are uncovering.

None of this story requires the reader to suspend reality, in fact it’s frighteningly realistic.

As Stella and Tommy work their way through Scandinavia and Europe they begin to uncover a plot to destabilise Europe.

Mystery figures lurk in the back ground prying on local extremest groups and hatching a plot for a multi city terrorist attack.

The one thing Stella’s friend told her in plain, straightforward English, before he was murdered, was “don’t trust anybody. They have people everywhere”

So going it alone is the only option for Stella and Tommy.

But is that a wise move.

A ritualistic murder marks the start of the terror campaign, but is only a small event that goes largely unnoticed.

The main event is days away and the consequences will be horrific and far reaching.

Tommy and Stella push themselves to their limits but will they stop it in time.

I got invited to read the ARC of this and I’m so glad I said yes.

There is no cliffhanger ending but there is an opening for a follow up, and just the thought of that has me excited.

Pages: 400. Publisher: Michael Joseph. Realise Date: 28th May 2026

Evil In The Family Michael Wood

The third book in the Dr Olivia Winter series.

The story starts with a realistic account of two people trapped in a house fire. Every choice they make in trying to escape is thwarted by something blocking a way out.

Whilst they are in the kitchen trying to break a window they see their murderer through the glass. Begging for help they can’t believe he just looks at them and does nothing.

They don’t survive.

Dr Olivia Winter is a Forensic Psychologist, one of three people working in the newly founded Behavioural Science Administration.

She is unequally qualified and experienced as a serial killer hunter, having escaped her father, who she caught in the act of killing her mother and sister.

But she doesn’t work live crime scenes. She is happy to look at scene videos and recordings and the last thing she wants is to see a live scene for herself.

That changes when DI Amyas Foley calls her to the scene of a particularly gruesome murder in London.

The family of a retired Police Officer, her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren have been murdered, had their faces disfigured and posed as a family group in the mother and father’s bedroom. The retired officers son, the husband and father, was in New York on business and escaped the murder.

This family won’t be the last, and each scene, although similar at the core, become more gruesome.

The investigation is going nowhere, each family are seemingly randomly chosen.

This drives the team to the edge, some are finding a tipping point where they suffer mentally and physically.

This is where Michael Wood is a masterful writer. Nobody, in British Crime Fiction, writes as well a he does about the psychological effects attended serious crime scenes has on the investigators.

From the dark humour to the sleepless nights, from flashbacks to nightmares, he covers it all in the most realistic of manners.

Winters can’t handle the scene and is on a downward spiral. Foley is getting pressure not only from his senior officers to solve the case, but also some of his team who think the use of Winters is a bad idea as they see her unravel.

There are some key peripheral characters in this book and Michael Wood does a great job of subversively building a case for two or three of them being the murderer.

I was convinced I knew who it was, more than once, but the reveal at the end caught me out.

This is a great story in a magnificent series. it could be read as a stand-alone but why miss out on the previous books which are just as good.

Pages: 476. Publisher: One More Chapter. Release date: 31/03/2026