April 2023 – nigeladamsbookworm

A teenage girl is the only survivor when her family are gunned down in the middle of the night.

A TV crew are at the house when she’s led out of the house in handcuffs.

The reporter, a young up and comer who is desperate to make her name, looks at her and says to the camera. Her eyes are empty.

Charged with the murder she spends two months in juvenile prison before the case is dropped. But the damage is done. The world knows Alexandra Quinlan as the girl with empty eyes, and with nobody else charged with the murder her guilt is assumed by nearly everyone

That leads to her life being made a misery by the “True-Crime-Junkies” who live their lives as armchair detectives.

Driven to change her name and move abroad she becomes Alex Armstrong and joins the armchair detective brigade as she tries to find out who killed her family.

This story looks at the problems caused by over zealous reporting hanging tags on people before guilt is proven, with the struggle to find the real murderer the only way of ever having peace.

Whilst looking into the death of her parents Alex uncovers some crimes which run parallel to her investigations.

Eerily similar to Jeffery Epstein and his celebrity sex rings there is an undercurrent of abuse that reaches high levels.

This s a cracking story.

It is realistic in every way. U.K. crime fans will be more aware of the problems that have besieged some innocent people in the States since the Nicola Bulley debacle.

This forms the spine of this story, which spreads over 10 years.

The transformation from Alexandra Quinlan to Alex Armstrong is mesmerising.

The interactions she has along the way, friendships formed, allegiances made and characters met are compelling.

I’ve been struggling of late to stick with a book. Most readers go through these phases and it only takes one good book to kick you back into the reading habit.

Those Empty Eyes was that book for me. It’s the first book I’ve picked up for months that I’ve read in one go, cover to cover, and enjoyed every page.

Pages: 384. Publisher: Canelo Crime. Publishing Date 4th May 2023

When I was browsing through Amazon looking for a new author to read I came across this introductory paragraph

“An Alcoholic, sex addicted detective finds herself fighting her superiors in a bid to bring down a local crime boss”

It caught my attention but for the wrong reasons. My initial thought was “another one”. But something about the cover, or the description in the rest of the gumph, peaked my interest and I downloaded it.

Thank God I did

What a book. The Detective is DS Esther Penman. In her immediate bosses words “the best police officer he’s ever worked with” but it comes at a cost.

She has a brilliant analytical mind, when it’s not rugged with vodka.

She puts in hours of work but is often late.

In her words she’s woke up under too many strange ceilings, not knowing how she got there, again because of the vodka.

Her attitude toward people can at best be described as sketchy.

Her general admin is awful but, when it counts, when files are sent to the CPS, or Court Files need preparing, she is brilliant.

Esther as a character is superbly written.

Flynn understands the psychology of the functioning alcoholic. The sex addiction is just another form of self harm. The conflict between knowing what she is doing is wrong, and actually stopping is a fight played out in her head, and on the pages of the book.

I enjoyed every page and was happy to see there’s going to be another featuring Esther Penman released sometime late 2023.

The Publishers Gumph

Detective Sergeant Esther Penman is a mess. She drinks too much. She sleeps around. And now her chief inspector is threatening to kick her out of CID and send her back to uniform because he doesn’t like her attitude.

Luckily for Esther, if there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s solving cases…

When a woman is killed in one of Belfield’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, Esther quickly realises that it’s no straightforward homicide. The husband has an alibi, but he’s hiding something, and Esther is determined to find out what.

A few days later a man is found hanging in nearby woodland, and her suspicions of a deeper conspiracy begin to grow.

It isn’t long before Esther’s discoveries set her on the trail of forces far more sinister than she imagined…

And put her on a collision course with the man they call the Art Merchant…

Pages: 285. Publisher: Chingola Publishing