February 2020 – nigeladamsbookworm

Where The Innocent Die M.J Lee

This is the latest in a really good Crime Fiction Series. DI Thomas Ridpath is not your stereotypical fictional cop. He is a family man who is really good at what he does and is well liked amongst his peers. Where he is different is that he is a cancer patient in remission. With Senior Officers in the Police worried about his health when he returned to work, he has been temporarily deployed to Manchester’s Coroner as a Coroner’s Investigator.

This has given M.J Lee lots of leeway to put Ridpath into situations not usually encountered by Police Officers as he investigates how people have died. However in this book the streams are crossed and Ridpath finds himself right at the front of a murder investigation, and this time he will not be Mr Popular.

The death of a Chinese woman in a detention centre, the day before she is due to be deported, is found to be a case of suicide by the Police Officer who carries out the investigation.

The Coroner is not convinced. It’s the latest in a line of deaths in detention centres across the country, most of which have been recorded as suicide. This one has happened in Manchester, and there is no way the Coroner is going to let it slip by without proper investigation, and she tasks Ridpath with taking a second look at the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death.

Ridpath soon finds out that the Police Investigation was slipshod at best. Unfortunately, for him, it was carried out by a popular Detective Sergeant who is 3 months from retirement and stands to lose his pension if Ridpath is correct in his theory that the woman was murdered.

The discovery of another body only adds credibility to Ridpath’s hypothesis and he is “invited” to lead the investigations into both deaths as part of the MIT.

The Coroner has made it impossible to carry out a deep investigation as she refuses to put back the date of the inquest, giving Ridpath less than a week to gather the evidence he needs to establish the woman was murdered and, if so identify the killer.

Meanwhile, understandably, Ridpath is working every hour available and his family are worried about the effects on his health.

This is a great book. In effect it starts as a “locked-room-mystery” but soon develops into something much more sinister.

At the end of the book Ridpath is left with a decision to make. I, for one, can’t wait to read the next book to see what he has decided.

Pages: 352

Publisher: Canelo

Publishing Date: 7^th May 2020

Boots in the Ashes. Cynthia Beebe

A few weeks ago I saw a post on twitter announcing the publication date of a book, Boots in Ashes. Given my 30 years in the Fire Service this caught my attention straight away. When I dug around a bit and found that it was a memoir of an ATF Special Agent, who specialised in Fire and Explosion investigation, the discipline I specialised in for the last 12 of those 30 years, I knew it was a book I wanted to read.

Thankfully I managed to contact the author, Cynthia Beebe, and she helped me get my hands on a copy. That in itself must have been brave, after all she was going to let a subject matter expert review her book. Well I’m glad she did because this is a fantastic read.

Cynthia plots the course of her career by looking at some of the landmark cases she worked on, and some of the experiences she had whilst serving as a Special Agent in the ATF

The cases include the bombing of two Judges homes, targeted “Hits”, and her pursuit of Hells Angel type biker gangs. The book took me longer than usual to read because every time she mentioned a case I reached for Google and got lost in a worm hole of reports and witness accounts. This added a depth to the book, and in fairness each of these stories could have been a true crime book on its own. I hope that there will be another book where we get to hear about some more of her work.

It’s not just the cases though, it’s the way she describes the scenes. That first time she attended a Fire Scene and the confusion she felt at the destruction of the building which had been ravaged by fire. The determination she had to ensure that justice was done and that the culprit was found and taken to court.

The frustrations of working with, what a times were bigoted old men, makes Cynthia’s achievements even more impressive. When I teach University students one of the most often asked questions, by the young women in the class, is can women make good firefighters. My answer is always the same. Some of the best firefighters I ever served with were women. All of the worst firefighters I ever served with were men. Hopefully the question will stop one day but until then I’m going to point those who ask it in the direction of this book.

This book will be a great read for anybody who is into true crime, but I think there will be a lot of Fire Investigators and Crime Scene Investigators in the UK that will be looking for a copy, and they are going to love it

Published in the UK on 25the February 2020 and available on Amazon

POISON Jacqui Rose

This “Gangland” genre of fiction is getting more popular, so I thought I’d give it a go. Poison is not the first of the type I’ve read but it’s certainly the best.

Franny is in Prison on remand, she’s a hard woman who’s used to being the boss, but in prison she’s just another inmate who gets targeted by the hard knocks. There’s a hierarchy and as the book starts Franny is far from the top of it.

As the story unfolds we find out why Franny’s in prison. Not just the crime she’s alleged to have committed, but also the duplicity that has taken place to put her behind bars.

Meanwhile outside, the prison, the triangular relationship between a 16 year old drug addict who is trying to straighten out her life, a young drug addict father who is trying to pay back massive debts, and a Criminal who is a friend of both and is trying to look after them, is putting everybody in danger, including Franny.

Throw into the mix a very crocked Police Officer and this is one hell of a story.

Misplaced loyalties within the criminal fraternity provide some great twists and turns but all of the strands of the story run together in a very neat plot.

For crime fiction lovers this story is a diversion from the usual cop-hunts-criminal type of tale. It still holds intrigue, and poses dilemma’s, but from a completely different side of life.

The things that most people would think are wrong, drug taking, drug dealing, prostitution, abuse, money sharking, are all part of day to day life for the characters in this book. It’s hard to find anybody in the book to actually class as the ultimate victim, as all the characters are victims of some type. For me that means that although I have no sympathy, or empathy for any of them, I can understand and tolerate their behaviour.

That made the book easy for me to read. I loved it.

Pages: 403

Publishers: Avon

Publishing Date: Available now

Silent Scream. Five years anniversary

Five years ago today the first DI Km Stone book was published. I read that first book a few months later and immediately read the second.

I haven’t stopped reading them since, with book 12, Killing Mind, out soon I thought I’d look back at my first review which looked at both Silent Scream, book 1, and Evil Games, book 2

Silent Scream & Evil Games Angela Marsons

Two books one blog. There’s a reason for that. I read the last page of Silent Scream and immediately opened the first page of Evil Games.

I don’t like giving plots away so I’m not going to talk too much about the story line of each of these, I’ll just talk about the writing and main character.

I enjoyed these books more than most others I’ve read over the last few years. Angela Marsons has created a brilliantly complex character in Detective Inspector Kim Stone and hopefully we’ll have a few more outings with her and her team in the future.

Silent Scream introduces DI Stone in a tale centred on child abuse at a Local Authority Home. Are current day murders linked with abuse at the home? In todays society we are becoming more aware of these abuse cases and it makes the book relevant and up to date.

Stones own history mirrors that of the children who stayed at the home, and her back-story is slowly revealed as the book moves on.

The conclusion of the book is not as easy to predict as some stories of the same genre, and with twists and turn to the very end this book is a great read.

Evil Games follows on, but can be read separately, from Evil Games.

In this book Stone identifies the link between several serious crimes, including a murder. More of Stones back-story is revealed and the reader is given a greater insight into her psyche.

Along the way Stone comes into contact with her nemesis and an intellectual and psychological battle takes place that kept me enthralled right to the end of the book.

Twists and turns throughout show that Angela Marsons has a knack for complex plots without resorting to fanciful and unbelievable stories.

Angela Marsons has set these books close to where I live. Her descriptions of the places and people are perfect. It is a testament to her that at one time in the Evil Games I shouted out loud that she had something wrong, only to realise she was inventing a shop in which a suspect child abuser was working, maybe it is best to use a fictional premises in that case.

Further testament to her research skills is found in the derelict children’s home she uses in Silent Scream. It used to exist, it had a bad reputation amongst the locals, and it had a fire. I know this because I investigated it when I was still in the Fire Service.

I have a feeling that, like many other authors, Angela Marsons is only published locally.

One of the great things about e-books and companies like Amazon is it has allowed me to read books by people I would never have had access to by simply walking into my local shop.

So wherever you are in the world, get a copy of these books. Sit back and enjoy

Oh How I’ve Changed

In July 2014 I decided to try writing a blog. I’ve been reading books since as early as I can remember, and have I to be the very definition of a bookworm. I can remember times in my life by what books I was reading, or what author or genre was my favourite. So I decided to share my thoughts on what I read.

That first blog was titled My Life In Books, and I used it as an introduction to show people who I was, and what I was reading at different points in my life.

I read that blog back recently and realised how much my views on reading have changed since I wrote it, and how my reading habits have changed.

So it’s about time for an update

One of the biggest things that stood out for me was how I said that I liked authors that only published every 18 months or so. I even said that authors who were publishing 2 or more books a year couldn’t be writing anything good.

HOW WRONG could I have been. My favourite author at the moment is Angela Marsons. Angela is a woman that has been writing for years, but like many, was having trouble getting published. Bookouture stood up and took a chance on her, and I was lucky enough to read the first DI Kim Stone book, Silent Scream, as soon as it was published in 2015. It was about a ballsy young woman who had had a terrible childhood. Her mother was abusive, her brother was killed, and she ended up being passed around foster families and children’s homes. As a young woman she joined the Police and now investigates major crimes across the Black Country. I have read and loved every book in this series and number eleven was published late last year. Yes that’s right, about 3 a year, and they are all brilliant. It just goes to show how wrong I was. Oh, and she’s just sold her 4 millionth copy, so I’m not the only one that likes them.

I mentioned, in that first blog, about how a Kindle let me find books by authors I had never heard of. Well writing this blog has taken that to a new level. In that first blog I said how much I enjoyed the Harry Potter books, but that I just couldn’t face reading anything that J.K Rowling had written under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith. A woman called Sophie at The Crime Vault read this and sent me a copy of The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first in the Cormaran Strike books. I loved it and my second blog was a review of that book.

That is how it started, now I’ve reviewed well over 300 books, a lot of which have been sent to me by publishers as ARC’s or Advanced Readers Copy. I’m lucky to get books a couple of months before they’re published so that my review can be used as part of the publicity drive, if it gets a favourable review, and believe me not all of them do.

My work life has changed. I now lecture to people all over the UK and occasionally abroad. The increase in travel time has led me to listening to audio books when I travel, most of these books are factual accounts of events or biographies. The best of these, so far, has been Colin Sutton’s account of the investigation he lead into the arrest and conviction of Levi Bellfield. I’d seen the TV adaption and decided to listen to the actual book, Manhunt. It is stunning.

Another excellent audiobook is

Unnatural Causes by Dr Richard Shepard. An autobiographical account of a Home Office Pathologist and his work, which has included some of the most horrific murders, and disasters of the recent years. It pulled no punches in the way it described the scenes, but more significantly, it pulled no punches in describing the effects it had on Dr Shepard’s mental health, and the way it affected his family. These are two books that all crime fiction addicts should read, or listen to, to show the real consequences carried by the people who are involved in real world incidents and investigations.

My blog has also introduced me to a lot of authors, some I’ve built up a friendship with, even if it is only in the modern day way of social media. Some have come to me for advice when they’re writing scenes which include fires, and I’ve been in quite a few acknowledgements at the end of books.

The other thing the blog is helping me with is remembering what I’m reading. I love my Kindle but it opens to the page I’m on. I never see book covers anymore. So when somebody says what are you reading, I very often can’t remember the title, the author yes, the title no. The screen shot of the cover I put on the blog is my link to the book, and the way I remember it after I’ve read it. Kindle please show the book cover when I wake my device, then go to the last page I read.

The other thing that has changed is that I am getting ARCs from publishers for new authors who have written their debut book. It’s not often that a book has the impact that Noelle Holten’s Dead Inside did last year. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was written so well, with such a deep understanding and empathy of the crimes involved. It was my book of the year last year. I’ve just read the next in the series Dead Wrong, and it left me literally breathless at the end. It’s published soon so watch out for the review.

So in the last 5 years my reading habits have changed to include audiobooks, which I now wouldn’t travel without. I have come to understand authors better and lost my prejudice against authors that publish multiple titles a year. I’m on publishers lists to send advanced copies to, and post reviews that are read by people all around the world. I have authors contacting me for advice, I still can’t believe that, and love the fact that I help in a little way to bring a story to life.

The best thing though, the best thing by far, is this blog has taken my enjoyment of reading to another level. Books were never boring but I did have difficulty finding titles I wanted to read, because I was set in my ways. Now my horizons have been broadened and I am reading some great books I never would have even heard of before.