The Surgeon. Leslie Wolfe

A roller coaster of a book which brings one phrase to mind.

Bunny Boiler

If you are a fan of films like Fatal Attraction, and The Hand That Rocked The Cradle, this book will be right up your street.

The story starts with an eminent heart surgeon losing a patient during an operation. He wasn’t just any patient. He was the man that abused her sister. Did she give in too easily, could she have saved him.

Meanwhile an Assistant District Attorney is in a hotel room enjoying the delights of the future Mayor, but she’s not his wife. His wife is in hospital trying to fathom out if she could have saved the man who died on her operating table.

The ADA wants to be the woman in the future mayors life but she knows he’ll never leave his wife. So maybe she can find some way of proving she killed the man who died during his heart operation. If she can discredit her maybe her husbands political ambitions will lead him to leave her.

All that in the first few chapters. What follows is a twisting turning path to a firecracker of a finale

The characters in this book are beautifully written. Empathy swaps with sympathy, and changes to loathing as new pieces of the plot fall into place.

Nobody is who they seem to be from the start.

Written partly in the first person, and mainly in the third, this book had me on tenterhooks from the start.

I defy anybody to read this and not say they are shocked by the twists the story takes.

From the first minute the reader is made to sympathise with the Doctor, and even feel empathy for the ADA, the mistress, but things quickly change.

The story is like a tidal river changing flow, encouraging huge surges in empathy with different characters with each change of tide.

Right up until the last few chapters, then just when I thought I had it all worked out I read the very last paragraph

I really hope there’s a follow up to this book.

Pages: 290. Publisher: Bookouture.

Audio book length: 10 hours 46 minutes. Narrator: Gwendolyn Druyor

Available now.

I am not Nicholas. Podcast

When one of the most respected Police Officers I know of recommends a true crime Podcast it has to be worth having a listen. So thank you Colin Sutton, I took heed, and this is why I think it’s the best podcast I’ve listened to.

Jane MacSorely is an award winning TV Producer who worked for the BBC, but is now a freelance investigative journalist based in Scotland.

This podcast follows her investigation into the case of a man facing extradition, from the UK back to the United States, where he is wanted by the police on Rape charges.

The problem is the man in the UK has a different name, and claims he is not the man wanted by the American Police.

MacSorely wants to get to the bottom of this. Is it a case of mistaken identity by the authorities, or is the man weaving an elaborate web of lies to escape justice?

A little more about the case shortly but first a bit about how it’s presented.

As well as being a true crime investigation it’s just as much about the investigator. Jane MacSorely takes us on a ride from the start of her intrigue into the case, all the way to her conclusion.

The podcast is presented in almost a diary form. Her recordings are amazing. We hear her change her mind, we hear her frustrations, she live records her reactions to breaking news, she tells us how she feels following interviews.

It is a real eye opener for those who have never been involved in an investigation.

Me. I am a Fire Investigator, I have been involved in quiet a few criminal investigations, and I can empathise with MacSorely’s feelings throughout this podcast. And I never thought I’d say that about a journalist.

As an investigator you constantly build hypothesis. You use the “scientific method” to test the hypothesis. If it’s robust you consider it. If it isn’t you disregard it. This might take seconds in your own head, or it might take days, or weeks, of research, but it has to be done, and it will, and should, lead to you changing your mind, until you reach the right conclusion.

MacSorely does this in public, out loud, in the nine episodes of this podcast. At times she believes the man is who he says he is, and at times she thinks he’s the man the Americans say he is. What she doesn’t do is let any cognitive bias she may develop, in either belief, get in the way of her finding the truth. As much as she may want him to be Nicholas, or as much as she may want him to be Arthur, what she really wants is to know the TRUTH.

So who is Nicholas, and who is Arthur.

Nicholas is an American man. When he was young he portrayed himself as being a high achiever in the political world, working for politicians from a ridiculously young age.

He was a child placed into care, where he alleges he was abused.

He is a massive self publicist and sees himself as an important person, seeking an almost celebrity status.

Then he is accused of abusing somebody and receives a criminal conviction.

Shortly after that he announces he has advanced cancer and disappears from public view until his death is reported and his and his “wife” starts to try and arrange a public memorial service for him.

The American Police say he has faked his own death and that he has fled the Country.

Arthur is an unwell man. He has suffered badly with Covid and presents as a weak individual confined to a wheelchair and constantly wearing an oxygen mask.

The first encounter with him is following his release from prison where he was being held as a suspected American fugitive awaiting deportation. It was this trial that first attracted Jane MacSorley to the case. He’s out of incarceration but still faces a court battle to prove he is Arthur and not Nicholas.

He is short tempered and manipulative. At times I believed his story, much like MacSorley, and again just like her, I swayed the other way.

There is evidence presented in this podcast that, at first I found spurious, but which later became relevant.

At best the evidence presented in the podcast, and from what I’ve read in the actual Court Trials, is circumstantial, but there’s a lot of it.

There are obvious questions I, and most people would want to ask, which don’t get asked.

Why was no DNA test made. If they don’t have Nicholas’s on file, which I presume they would have as he has convictions in the States, they have close relatives which could have provided samples for familial comparison.

Arthur was being held for deportation before his release on licence, surely his DNA is also on record.

There are numerous images and videos of Nicholas when he was active in America, and although Arthur disguises his face with the oxygen mask and a beard, comparisons could have been made. MacSorely comes close to this with a short glimpsed observation of him without his mask, but no official image comparisons are recorded.

I don’t recall MacSorely digging into the life history of Arthur in the Podcast. Birth Certificate, School records, employment history, even social media history could all have been looked for or into.

A man cannot just appear in 2020 with no past. Yes it’s relatively easy to create a new identity, but it wouldn’t pass a proper scrutiny. Maybe it was done but either didn’t show anything up or didn’t support the narrative, but it should have been mentioned.

Having said that she does an excellent job of finding out the truth. In fact she obtains a piece of evidence that I’m not sure the law agencies dealing with the case found.

The ninth episode brings us right up to date at the time the podcast was released. With the one of the latest court hearing and it’s findings. No spoilers but I was straight on to google to research the outcome and it’s ramifications.

Jane MacSorely has taken this story as far as it could go…….so far.

Why so far? I’ve just seen a few articles that have reported Nicholas/Arthur’s latest Court appearance in mid February 2023. Safe to say this story still has legs.

Available in 9 episodes of varying length.

Available on Audible

Commissioned by the BBC

Narrated by Jane MacSorely.

What The Shadows Hide. M.J Lee

Ridpath is back for another instalment of this Police Procedural series with a twist.

Ridpath is a DI in Greater Manchesters Major Investigation Team, but following a brush with cancer he has been on secondment to the Coroner, acting as her Head Investigator.

But with staffing, and budgeting issues within the Police he is increasingly been brought back to his old team to add his expertise and experience,.

With Greater Manchester Police in Special needs, and with a follow-up inspection by the Inspectorate of Constabularies only days away, the last thing the force needs is a high profile case that has gone unsolved for over 6 months, but that’s what they’ve got.

Two bodies found bricked into a hidden room in an office block by demolition contractors.

With the original investigation team failing to identify the bodies, or make even the smallest step forward in the murder investigation, Ridpath is given the poison-chalice of solving the crime in seven days.

To make matters worse a new temporary Coroner is appointed, following an attack on sitting one, and he’s flexing his muscles in an attempt to get Ridpath to concentrate his time on working solely for the Coroner.

Ridpath, and his very small team are bolstered by a DNA and Genetic Research specialist who gives the team hope but seven days is a small time span to solve what is effectively a cold case, and most likely his Police career.

M.J Lee has created a great Detective in Ridpath, and by combining his duties as a Coroners Officer, with his Police duties has developed character that has the scope to carry out investigations in a relatively unexplored way.

The book can be read as a stand-alone story, but this is a cracking series and well worth reading from the beginning.

Pages: 382. Publisher: Canelo Crime Publishing Date 23/03/2023

Three Widows. Patricia Gibney

A group of women have formed a self help group following the loss of their husbands, either by death or them just leaving the marriage

Women who at the start of their loss are at their most vulnerable

It’s only a small group and when one of them goes missing it leaves a big hole. When a second goes it must just be a coincidence.

Mustn’t it???

The last thoughts of one of them when they are taken is how unfair it is on her children, they’ve only just lost their Dad.

When the body of the first woman to go missing turns up DI Lottie Parker and her team are given the task of investigating.

Lottie was widowed young and has been a single Mom to young children. She starts to feel the anxieties that may throw her off her “A” game.

One of the murdered women has been living reclusively, hardly leaving the house. But the rest of the group didn’t know that, in fact what did they know about the young widow Éilis.

It’s not long before Parker begins to think there is more to the Grieving Woman’s group than meets the eye.

The Lottie Parker series is now at book 12 and doesn’t show any signs of losing its impact.

This story, like the others, is a hard hitting Police Procedural, wrapped up in a psychological thriller.

Parker is one of the best Police characters on todays book shelves. I’ve said it before but Patricia Gibney puts a lot of herself into these books.

You can’t write books as good as these purely based on research. The policing side, yes. The crimes, yes. But the emotions and feelings have to come from the heart

I always recommend this series to people who want to know why I get hooked on crime fiction. And it’s going from strength to strength.

Pages: 507. Publisher: Bookouture Available now.

Agent in the Shadows. Alex Gerlis

Second World War stories were the books that were my staple when I first started reading. I’d wait for my dad to finish his latest paperback before taking it to my room and reading stories the likes of Douglas Reeman.

Later when I joined the Merchant Navy Sven Hassel became a favourite.


I’ve missed those books, there’s not so many written these days. So when one comes along it’s always going on my TBR list


Agent in the Shadows did not disappoint. A cracking story of espionage amongst the resistance fighters in France and the handlers of the duplicitous double agents.


It had never crossed my mind that there was an element of the French population that actually welcomed the Nazi occupation, and that they had their own “agents” amongst the French Resistance fighters.

This story is mainly set in the hot bed of the Resistance, Lyon. Herlis describes the labyrinth of alleys and cellars, in which a war-within-a-war took place.

It shows the importance of the Resistance in enabling the opening of the second front in Europe.

It is brilliantly told story.


This book not only had me hooked as a story, but had me hitting Google to research things I should already know about.

To my shame I have to admit this is book 3 in a series I’d never heard of. That’s changed. I’m off to the Kindle store to download the first two.

Pages: 376. Publisher. Canelo. Publishing Date: 9th February 2023

A Truth For A Truth. Carol Wyer

Carol Wyer

 

Wow. Where do I start.

This has been a great series from the start and its got even better with the addition of this book.

Kate Young has been trying to break the ring of abusers she thinks is responsible for her husbands murder. The problem is the ring includes at least one Senior Police Officer.

Throughout the series she has been driven by the voice in her head, that of her husband.

But now she’s killed somebody, somebody in power, somebody who was part of the ring.

The Police, and probably her team, will be asked to investigate his death.

But first they have to find the body, at first its just a missing persons case and Kate is doing her best to carry on as if she has nothing to do with the death.

Then there’s the bigger problem. Her husbands voice of reason is being fought against, and at times replaced, by another voice. The voice of the man she murdered, and he’s ridiculing her.

As much as this is a great crime story its also the story of a woman having a breakdown, she’s functioning but her mental health is really on the edge.

Can she keep her mind long enough to escape blame.

Can she break the ring and expose everybody involved.

The very last page made me gasp out loud.

There has to be another book. It can’t end there, or can it.

Pages: 411. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Publishing Date: 4th April 2023

The Snow Killer & The Soul Killer. Ross Greenwood

I picked up Snow Killer on a recommendation, and I’m really glad I did. It was that good I went straight to book 2 The Soul Killer

Gentle Giant, and family man, DI John Barton is the main Police lead and a cracking character, but what steals the show in these books, and makes them stand out in current crime fiction, is the main criminals.

Greenwood dedicates as much time to the criminal and their activities, as he does to the Police and their investigations.

The criminals sections are written in the first person, with the investigation side written in the third person.

This allows Ross to get right into the criminal mind and explore the psyche the murderers.

The Snow Killer

In this book the killer is out for revenge. 50 years ago her family were murdered in a Gangland killing. She escapes badly injured, with the killers thinking she had died.

It took her a few years but she got revenge. Now a he’s killing again, but why.

An old Lady annoyed at the way the youth have no respect. The way the neighbourhood is run by silly, arrogant, tooth sucking teens.

Barton really has his work cut out. The old cases don’t even come on his horizon until a retired officer comes under suspicion for an unrelated issue.

Who would suspect an old lady. But then again we were all young once, and why would our attitude change just because our body isn’t as strong.

A gun is a great leveller, so is a well placed knife in skilled hands

Soul Killer

Following on from the aftermath of the shocking end to the Snow Killer

This time the killer is very close to home.

Again revenge is at the heart of the crimes. This time the killer is young, clever and calculated. But what Greenwood does brilliantly is show the escalating downward spiral of their mental health as they start to make mistakes.

One killing has to lead to another, just to cover up their tracks, the more killings the more chance of a mistake. The cold calculated killer starts to turn into a panicked psychopath.

One of Barton’s team is a new and very blunt young DC. The team find him hard to get on with but Barton sees something in him and lets him have his head. He hits the nail on the head quickly but is largely ignored, after all how could the person he thinks is a serial killer be responsible, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Both of these books had me hooked. I’ve not come across any other stories that give the killer so much time in a story, and have them writes so well.

Greenwood gives a real gravitas to the mind of the killer. He looks at their history, in both stories the issues the killers have started years ago and have festered in their minds.

He looks at the planning and consequences. The average person these days think they are Forensically aware, and know that a mistake will almost inevitably lead to their capture. So when killers start to make mistakes, even the coolest start to panic. The more they panic the more mistakes they make.

Barton’s team are good at what they do. There are some great characters amongst them, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but everybody knows their worth, what they are good at, and how to support each other.

At the end of the second book, in the acknowledgments, yes some people do read them and I’m one of them, Greenwood states he didn’t realise, when he was writing the first book, that it would turn into a trilogy.

Well it must really have come as a surprise to him that it went beyond book three. In fact according to Amazon there’s five books in the series.

How good are the first two. I’ve just finished Soul Killer and immediately downloaded the rest of the series.

The books are also available as Audiobooks, narrated by David Thorpe

Publisher Boldwood Books. Available now on Amazon.

Rich Blood. Robert Bailey

A great book for readers who like authors like John Grisham and Greg Iles, and American legal thrillers.

An ambulance chasing, personal injury lawyer, Jason Rich, has just been released from 90 days in rehab. He has turned to booze once to often and rehab was one of the conditions of him being allowed to carry on practicing.

But his troubles are nothing compared to his sister. They don’t get on, since childhood they have had a tumultuous relationship which has worsened since the death of their father.

So when he finds out she is desperate for his help he’s unsure what he will do.

Why does she need help? She’s being held in prison after being arrested for the murder of her husband.

Jana, the sister, is not easy to warm to. She’s an alcoholic, who also uses hard drugs. She’s had more than one affair and it’s alleged she withdrew $15000 dollars from her, and her husbands, joint account to pay a man to kill him.

She’s in debt to the local drug Lord and is paying him off in “favours” in lieu of the interest in the $50000 she owes him.

So as well as being in prison accused of murder, she is under threat from the drug Lord not to implement him, or trade information on him, for a lower sentence. With her in prison it’s her two young daughters that will pay if she goes against him.

So how will the alcohol dependent brother, who has never tried anything other than compensation cases, defend the alcoholic drug taking sister with no morals, against a murder charge.

This book was a bit of a bolt from the blue. I love this type of story, and I thought I was on top of the current authors writing this genre. How wrong was I. As soon as I finished this I downloaded Robert Baileys back catalogue.

U.K. Publisher Thomas & Mercer. Pages 379. Available now

Don’t You Dare. Jessica Hamilton

As far as dark psychological thrillers go, this is one of the best I’ve read for years.

A totally believable story. A main character that is both engaging, and at times, frustrating. A touch of “spice” but totally in context and not gratuitous. An ending that I just didn’t see coming.

Three friends spend their college years in a tight little group. They are a introverted group playing an ever increasingly dangerous game of dare and forfeit. But who is the manipulator, who is the one really stirring the pot

Years on Hannah is married with two girls, but she still hankers after her best friends Scarlett, who moved to the other side of the world, and Thomas who was her first love, and who she hasn’t seen since college.

Then Thomas returns and initiates a game of dare between just the two of them.

That is when things start to go wrong.

Hannah is the narrator of the story. She’s a functioning alcoholic, even if she won’t admit it. Her husband is at the end of his tether and their relationship is purely functional, for the girls sake.

When Thomas returns the old flame is ignited and she finds a new purpose.

Like before the dares get more dangerous.

Somebody is spying on Hannah and Thomas.

There is a prowler in her neighbourhood and somebody is sending her husband information about her relationship with Thomas.

Can she keep her marriage together, does she even want to.

More importantly can she survive an ever increasingly dangerous situation.

This book drips the story at a constantly steady pace. The tension builds from the first chapter like a dripping tap filling a sink to the point that it’s overflowing without you noticing one specific thing that’s raised the level.

It’s not often these days that a book holds me enough to read it in a day, but this one did. A genuine “I read it in a day” and I loved every page of it.

Pages: TBC. Publishing Date: 16th May 2023 Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

The Deptford Murder. Jez Pinfold

Detective Chief Inspector Bec Pope. A new Police Officer on the book shelves, and hopefully one here to stay.

The Deptford Murder introduces Pope in spectacular fashion.

The first body is found posed in a church, with a personal message to Pope, in the form of a formal invitation, placed neatly on the body.

The second body appears within hours, another message to Pope.

This is the beginning of a cracking story that had me turning the pages well into the night.

Pope is a great character. Typical of a Police Officer her job takes president over her family, even she admits it.

She works late, drinks when she gets home, has trouble sleeping. She lives with her husband and his kids, but it’s not an easy relationship.

As another attack takes place more pressure is put on Pope’s team, mainly born of her own professionalism, but they crack on and work long hours to find the killer before there are more victims.

Inevitable there is strain on family relations, and almost as inevitably there is a close bond between Pope and one of her colleagues. But will “that” line ever be crossed.

As the investigation, and the book, fly along, surprising connections start to be made and the final twist is a real surprise, without being out-of-the-blue, or unrealistic.

This is hopefully the first of a series. Pope, and her team in Londons Met, are really well conceived. As individuals there is great promise, as a team the scope for the stories to come is wide and I can’t wait to read whatever is to come

Print length: 302 pages. Publisher: Joffe. Published: 3rd December 2022.