August 2018 – nigeladamsbookworm

In The Silence. M.R. Mackenzie

Zoe is a Dr of Psychology who specialises in crimes against women. She lives and works in Rome, but spent much of her youth in Glasgow.

Returning for a friends party she does not realise she is about to bump into an old acquaintance at the party. She also doesn’t know that that acquaintance is going to end up dying in her arms in a park in the very early hours of the morning.

At first Zoe is a suspect, in fact she’s a suspect all the way through the book, but she decides to keep some information from the police and try to investigate the killing herself.

Doing this she discovers some nasty truths about some of the people she used to know, she also allows a supressed memory to surface.

The question is not just who is the killer, but why, and how many other people are they going to kill. The Police seem clueless. Zoe is beginning to make headway but is also putting herself in danger.

The story is good, the characters are good but there was one thing in this book that really got on my nerves.

Zoe comes home to visit party girl Anna, and M.R Mackenzie has written her dialog in phonetic Scottish. I’ve seen this work in books before but for some reason this just seems a bit OTT in this book.

If you can get past the way Anna speaks this book has a great story.

I like the crime book which concentrates on people outside of the Police Force. People who are affected by crimes; the witnesses, the families, people caught up in an event.

Mackenzie has found a great way to unravel a crime mystery using this technique. It makes the book feel a bit more like “that could be me”, and that’s what makes it such a good thriller.

Publishers: Bloodhound Books

Never Say Goodbye. Richard Parker

Never-Say-Goodbye-Kindle

There’s a serial killer on the streets of London, and the investigation is not going well.

When the SIO dies suddenly the investigation is handed to DI Tom Fabian, and his team are tasked to take over after 4t victim is discovered.

The only thing to connect the victims is the way the face is mutilated during the killing. With no links between the victims the initial team have struggled to identify any potential suspects, so how are Fabian and his team going to have any success where their predecessors failed.

When the penny drops, and the link is found, it is almost so tenuous that it seems like a coincidence. But the more the team look at it the more it makes sense.

The problem is, by following the pattern, they can identify any number of potential victims. So how do they prioritise, can they protect the next victim without starting wide spread panic.

Once they’ve identified the pattern it should be easy to identify who is doing the killings. Shouldn’t it?

Richard Parker was a TV script writer, script editor and producer and has written some excellent stand-alone thrillers.

With his pedigree it’s not surprising that this is one of the best books I’ve read, and that’s mainly because of its plot. So many books these days struggle for originality; but I can honestly say that the way the victims are chosen in this book is something I’ve never come across before.

Never Say Goodbye is billed as being the first in a series. All good series need good characters to make you want to find out what happens to them next.

Parker has penned a great little team that it was easy to engage with.

DI Tom Fabian is in his mid-forties, he’s recently divorced and has a teenage daughter. He is what he is, a dedicated Police Officer whose family life has suffered because of the job.

DS Natasha Banner is in her late thirties, she’s married with a son, and is an intensely private person for somebody in the Police

DC Finch, “he’s never going to make DI but he’s good at what he does”

This little team start to develop throughout the book and each one has a story that gets the reader hooked.

But for one of them, there is about to be a very nasty shock.

In a book that kept me turning page after page, until I had read it all in one sitting, the very last paragraph took my breath away. This book leaves one hell of a cliff hanger.

I can honestly say that the last hundred words of this book made the hairs on my arms stand up.

Mr Parker, please hurry up and write the next instalment.

Pages: 246

Publishers: Bookouture

Available now

She Lies In Wait. Gytha Lodge

The discovery of the body of a young girl, who has been missing for 30 years, leads to the investigation of a cold that was a missing person but now is a murder

A cold case that is locked room mystery in a camp site full of teenage angst and jealousy.

The close-knit group of friends who were in their teenage years were experimenting in drugs, alcohol, and sex, are now in middle age and are scattered across the country having found various degrees of success in their lives

The promiscuity of one the older girls, Topez, leads to the camp becoming fragmented, but when the group get back together the next morning they find her young sister Aurora is missing.

30 years later DCI Jonah Sheens and his team are called in when the body is found. Sheens was a young uniform cop when the girl went missing and was at school with most of the people in the camp, so her remembers the case well.

But has he got more to hide? The girls in the group had been very promiscuous at school, and there is no doubt he knows at least one of them very well. So why is he keeping it a secret from his team. And can he keep it a secret without jeopardising the case.

Can you imagine being asked questions about what you were doing on a certain night 30 years ago. I suppose if it was on the night of such a traumatic event of a young friend going missing the answer would probably be yes.

But what if you had something to hide that night and had told lies, even if it wasn’t connected to the missing girl. Could you remember the lies?

This is the pretext of the plot, and Gytha Lodge uses is beautifully to spin a real labyrinth of a story.

It is a gripping story as Sheens tries to work out who is telling half-truths to cover for something innocuous after 30 years, and who is telling full blown lies, to hide the fact they are a murderer.

This is not a blood and guts thriller of a book. It is a slow burning cerebral book that gets the reader thinking.

It is not until the very end that all is revealed and what a reveal it is.

A thoroughly entertaining read that kept me hooked from start to finish.

Pages: 368

Publisher: Random House

Publish Date: 8^thJanuary 2019

The Mosul Legacy. Christopher Lowery

A more timely book I have never read.

Karl is an ISL leader fighting in the City of Mosul. Realising that defeat is inevitable he sends two jihadists into Europe to wreak havoc.

Meanwhile the Christian Al-Douri family, who have been struggling to survive in the bombed out, war-torn City, are trying to escape to Europe

Another bomber adopts the identity of his dead brother after he is killed accidentally setting of a bomb intended for a busy German City.

Hot on the trail of the terrorists is Police Senior Commissioner Major Max Kellerman.

The contradictions between the ease with which the terrorists move around their elaborate network of helpers, compared to the frantic attempts the Al-Duri’s make to find an illicit path to freedom could not be more stark.

Kellerman’s attempts to find the bombers before they can carry out an attack are frustrating, as he is always several steps behind in the maze of trails organised by their sympathisers.

Will he find them before all hell breaks loose.? You’ll have to read the book.

This story is so topical its frightening.

As with previous stories by Cristopher Lowery the devil is in the detail. Every page paints a picture which can only be the result of hours of research.

Everybody who watches the news will recognise this story for its reality.

What a great read.

Pages: 441

Publisher: Urbane

Publishing Date: 27^th September 2018

Kiss of Death. Paul Finch

When I reviewed Ashes to Ashes, a previous book in this series, I declared it to be my guilty secret. I like my books to be as realistic as possible but I found DS Mark “Heck” Heckenburg to be a little bit too gung-ho. However I did like him.

In this book Heck is back, and is just as gung-ho.

The SCU is under threat. The austerity measures are taking effect and as a specialist team, looking a niche crimes, they are seen as an extravagance that the Police can’t afford.

To try to raise their profile they have taken on an almost impossible task. Split into teams of two they are tasked to hunt down and arrest England and Wales’s 20 most wanted criminals.

Heck is teamed with new DC Gail Honeyford and sent to track a vicious armed robber who is thought to be responsible for a number a robberies where people were killed in the most horrific manner.

Eddie Creeley is a psychopath. Even his one-time associates want nothing to do with him. But what Heck doesn’t know is Eddie has gone missing. That is until his sister gets a video showing what has happened to him.

Heck is now on the hunt for a psychopath who is in danger.

The story concentrates on Hecks investigations, and in typical Paul Finch style this is a real high speed rollercoaster of a story.

These books are more Mission Impossible than Morse on a scale of reality. But for some reason I love them.

If you like your fiction adrenaline fuelled, and on the edge of reality then you will love these books as much as me.

I recommended the Heck series to a friend who is into the Jack Reacher books by Lee Childs, and who would wouldn’t usually read UK Crime fiction. He enjoyed them as much as me.

Paul Finch is managing something most authors don’t. He is crossing two genres, action and crime, and actually coming out well in both camps.

Pages: 464

Publisher: Avon

Publishing Date: 9^th August 2018.

Ashes to Ashes review https://nigeladamsbookworm.com/2017/02/19/ashes-to-ashes-paulfinch/

Truth and Lies. Caroline Mitchell

Straight off, I loved this book.

Take a sprinkling of Fred and Rose West and add a pinch of Myra Hindley and there you have the main villain in this book.

Lillian Grimes is in prison for being one half of a husband and wife team that went from swinging to killing. Carrying out deprived sex attacks and killing their victims after luring them into their home. The victims were buried in the garden, under the cellar floor, and in the walls.

Lillian’s husband killed himself in prison but had already told police there were three other victims. He named them but didn’t say where they were buried.

Now Lillian is using that to her advantage. She wants to drip the information to detectives, but she has a price.

DI Amy Winter is a pocket rocket of a detective. At 5”2 she is not very tall but don’t ever underestimate her.

Amy’s dad was one of the cops who put Lillian in prison, his recent death has left a hole, but she is determined to carry on.

When Lillian gets in touch and says she will only deal with Amy, and will take her to the first burial site, Amy has no idea of the effect it’s going to have on her.

As Lillian plays her mind games a young girl is kidnapped. Amy and her team should be concentrating on the kidnapping, but Amy’s head is with the missing bodies and the revelations Lillian keeps making.

This book is tremendous. I can’t remember a book ever having me hooked so quickly, and kept me hooked so thoroughly until the very last page.

Caroline Mitchell is an ex-Detective and her experience always shines through in the reality of her books; but this book has taken it to another level.

The tension is brilliant. The inter-weaving of the plot lines make the story play out wonderfully.

The reference to Fred and Rose, and Myra Hindley, at the beginning of this blog are not waffle. The crimes Lillian has been convicted of are Fred and Rose’s crimes, or bloody close to them. The fact that Hindley also tried to curry favour by taking the police to the moors to show where the bodies of some of the victims were buried, is also very reminiscent of Lillian’s behaviour.

But there was something else that Rose West and Myra Hindley had in common, and so has Lillian.

What an utterly compelling read. One that had me doing my own research to see if my thoughts were right. Just my kind of book.

Oh, and there’s a twist right at the end. Please let there be a sequel. I want to know what happens next.

Pages: 348

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Publishing Date: 30^th August 2018.