August 2019 – nigeladamsbookworm

CHILDS PLAY Kia Abdullah

711z7NSxRzL._AC_UL436_

A month ago I reviewed the new book by Kia Abdullah, Take it Back, a dark story based around a rape accusation. When I read that book, I noticed that Kia had written another, Childs Play, and decided to give it a go, and I’m glad I did.

Here’s the “but” that usually follows a statement like that, it’s a tough read on a tough subject, and Kia holds no punches, its explicit where it needs to be and that makes the story really good, but it’s not going to be to everybody’s taste.

Allegra seems to have it all, her dream job in a small graphic design company, a nice home, and a successful boyfriend that thinks she’s amazing.

Then one day her boss announces he’s sold the company and that the small workforce has no place in the new multi-national business that has taken it over.

Days before this Allegra had been approached by Michael who wanted to recruit her to a specialist agency working for the government, but it’s not her graphic design skills he thinks will make her a good agent. It’s her childish looks.

The agency specialises in catching paedophiles by baiting them with legal age women, and men, that look underage.

Allegra can pass as a sixteen year old at the best of times and is always getting ID’d at pubs, this team can make her look 13, and they have a very specific target that they want her to go after.

There are subplots running throughout this story, all of which revolve around Allegra, and the most compulsive for me, was the way she changes during her training, going from being horrified at what she sees, to becoming totally desensitised.

The cover of this book says “If James Paterson wrote 50 Shades of Grey”. I couldn’t disagree more, Kia Abdullah is a much better writer than Paterson, and the book is more like a domestic version of Red Sparrow.

If you like gritty, thought provoking crime drama, this book is right up your street, but if you are put off by graphic scenes, maybe it’s not for you, but you’re missing out on a great book.

Pages: 250

Publishers: Amazon media and Revenge Ink

Available now

Her Silent Cry, Lisa Regan, Blog Tour

Her Silent Cry is the 6^thBook in the Josie Quinn series written by Lisa Regan.

I have been lucky enough to have been on board with this series from the start, and I’ve loved every book. So could this one live up to my expectations. Definitely.

The main character Josie Quinn has had a rough ride, from childhood to Detective, and that story alone would be worthy of its own book, but you won’t be left behind if you read this as a stand-alone.

Lisa Regan has a way of writing that I rarely come across. She manages to make the read comfortable, whilst covering the most horrific of crimes. This is never “cosy-crime”, but the stories always slide by really quickly.

Her characters are amazing, Quinn is feisty, pretty, stubborn, and a hell of a good cop.

Her partner Noah is a bit of a mystery to those that don’t know him, and there’s a good reason for that, but Quinn knows him, and they spark together brilliantly

The victims suffer, and boy do some of them suffer, at the hands of some of the best criminals in fiction at the moment.

The setting is perfect Denton, a small town in the US surrounded by forests and mountains means Regan can set just about any crime she wants in a realistic surrounding, but the best part is the isolation she finds in scenes set in the wilds. If it was a film I’d be watching from behind the sofa

So here’s my review of Her Silent Cry, book six in my favourite American Crime series

Her Silent Cry Lisa Regan

For once Detective Josie Quinn is having some time off and has taken a friends young son to the park for a day out. The piece is soon shattered when a 7 year old girl goes missing, right from under her parents noses, in the same park.

Off duty or not Josie is soon directing operations to try to find the girl. Joined by her team, and a good proportion of the local community the search proves fruitless.

Against her boss’s best wishes Quinn calls in a specialist FBI team that specialise in investigating the abduction of children.

The FBI and Quinn’s team are at a loss to identify the abductor, until a phone call to the parents strikes fear to everybody’s hearts. Their demand, or lack of it, is chilling, and would be every parent’s nightmare.

Quinn has formed a good relationship with the family and the FBI begin to rely on this, but is she getting all the information she needs from them.

This is a cracking story.

One simple crime, an abduction, strikes fear into the community, but things start to get worse.

Lisa Regan has built a strong community of characters in this series. She uses their emotions and feelings to permutate through the story and build up the suspense.

Unlike most series any of these books can be read as a stand-alone. The reader will learn bits of the back stories of the main characters, without being left wondering what is going on.

The setting is perfect. A small City with plenty of isolated rural areas, which allows Regan to set parts of the book in a built up area, whilst having all the suspense of settings in remote country areas.

This book, and this series, ideal for fans of crime series written by the likes of Angela Marsons, Patricia Gibney, Carol Wyer and Graham Smith.

Publishing Date: 14^thAugust

Publishers: Bookouture

TAKEN TO THE GRAVE M.M Chouinard

Jo Fournier has relinquished her Lieutenants role and reverted back to Detective. She didn’t like the politics of the role and hated not being on the streets.

Back with her partner Detective Bob Arnett she is sent to investigate the killing of a professor at the local university.

And so, it begins, Professor Michael Whorton is universally hated, students, peers, his wife, and a long list of women who he’s had adulterous affairs with, all seem to have just reason to want this man dead.

The list may be long but realistically who would murder a man, in his own office, in the middle of a busy university.

Jo and Arnett start to unravel the professor’s life, then another body connected to the university is found, and another.

This book is about University Politics, and relationships, and how the unchecked behaviour of one person can send ripples that ruin a lot of people’s lives.

Once the university starts to receive adverse publicity, they start to put pressure on the Police Department, and once again Jo is caught up in Department politics as she is put under pressure to make an arrest.

I liked this book. Just like the first one in the series it’s a good mix between a full on crime thriller and a cosy-crime mystery.

The characters are good, and I really engage with both Jo and Arnett. It is written in a way that it is never fanciful, everything that happens is logical, and there is no “shark-infested-custard” type scenarios or revelations.

The best recommendation I can give this book is it enthralled me to the point where I could have been reading a true-crime story.

Pages: 330

Publisher: Bookouture

Publishing Date: 19^thSeptember 2019

THE ESSENCE OF EVIL Rob Sinclair

I loved this book, not because its set in my home city of Birmingham, not even because the main character is wonderfully flawed, or because the story is brilliant, even though all of those are true. I loved this book because it is at least three stories in one, all wonderfully woven together to make a story that will stay with me for quite a while.

DI Dani Stephens, what a character, is returning to work in the Homicide Team of the West Midlands Police after two years off following an injury.

Dani is returning after being attacked by a killer, who nearly took her life, and worse still it was her twin brother.

As she returns she is immediately involved in a murder investigation, one of the strands of the story, but she is teamed up with a friend as joint SIO. Is this part of her rehabilitation into the team, or is she just not trusted?

Talking about rehabilitation, that’s the second thread of the story. In flash-back chapters we find out how she was injured, and are taken through her two years of rehab, the first six months of which were in hospital as she recovered from a Traumatic Brain Injury.

The third strand of the story is how she received the injury, the relationship she now has with her twin brother who is serving a life sentence for murders he committed.

Dani is a great character, fiercely independent to the point of pushing everybody away. Paranoid to the point of hysteria, and mucked up in the head by the medication she is still taking, even though she should be cutting back.

So when she develops a theory about the murder she’s investigating it’s not surprising that nobody takes her seriously.

As Dani carries on her investigation she starts to doubt herself, has the brain injury robbed her of the one thing she loves in life, the ability to do her job; or has she got it all right, and should everybody else actually be listening to her instead of doubting her.

This is a belter of a book.

I love complex, dark stories, that could all so easily be real, and this book sits firmly in that category.

Pages: 394

Publishers: Canelo Hera

Release date: 12^thSeptember 2019

THE STING Kimberley Chambers

This is my first, but certainly not my last, Kimberley Chambers book.

The Sting is a glorious read for everybody, but especially for people who had their teenage years in the 1970’s.

The story follows the life of a young lad Tommy Boyle and picks him up as a 12 year old. To say he has a hard upbringing is an understatement. His father is a bullying wife beater who works on the oil rigs and makes family life a misery when he’s at home.

As the story progresses Tom ends up in a children’s home for reasons beyond his control.

The friendships he forms there should last for life, but again life takes a cruel twist.

The story follows him through his family life, through to his life in care, and sees him change from an innocent lad to the fearsome teenager, and ultimately into a violent man.

When his time in care comes to an end on his 16^thbirthday Tom has already been spotted by a criminal family and they soon take him into their inner circle.

Tom has had a hard time, but the new family mean everything to him, and so begins a life in organised crime.

Lurking in the shadows throughout the story are secrets. Secrets that will inevitably come to the surface and lead the book to a fantastic end.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. My usual read is crime fiction, which this falls well and truly into, but it’s from a completely different perspective to what I’m used to.

This is all about a boy gone bad, a boy whose transition to manhood is guided by the actions of the people who should have loved and protected him.

Having grown up on a council estate in Birmingham in the 70’s I can recognise so many of the characters in this book. The nostalgia for that era is reflected in the music that is mentioned throughout the book and which had me calling out to “Alexa” on numerous occasions.

A cracking read.

Pages: 448

Publishers: Harper Collins

Available now