May 2023 – nigeladamsbookworm

Book 18 of my favourite series is yet another one which raises the bar.

I have been with this series since book one, and the way Angela Marsons keeps the series fresh and relevant has amazed me.

It can’t be easy to be original in such a crowded genre, but somehow she manages to do it.

On top of that she has me reaching for Google on more than one occasion. This time it was to delve into the world of Psychics and Mediums, and not in a fanciful way.

The use of Barnum Phrases made so much sense when I found out what they are.

Murders happen in all sorts of communities and effect all sorts of people.

People who say they can contact the dead will always be controversial. But it’s not just sceptics, there’s a snobbery amongst the people with the “gift”

Mix religious beliefs in with that and there are numerous reasons to Murder.

The publishers blurb

The woman’s bright blonde hair floats in the breeze. She almost looks like she could be resting on the soft green grass. But her brown eyes stare unblinking up at the sky, and the final cut across her mouth is dark with blood. Her words silenced forever…

Late one evening, as the final church bell rings out, Sandra Deakin’s cold and lifeless body is found in the overgrown graveyard with multiple stab wounds. When Detective Kim Stone rushes to the scene, the violence of the attack convinces her that this murder was deeply personal. What could have caused such hate?

As the team dig into Sandra’s life, they discover she believed she could communicate with the dead. Was that why she was targeted? The last people to see her alive were a group of women who had a session with her the night before she was killed, and as Kim and her team pay them a visit, they soon learn each of the women is lying about why they wanted Sandra’s help…

Kim realises she must dig deep and open her mind to every avenue if she’s going to stand a chance at solving this case. And when she learns that Sandra was banned from the church grounds and had been receiving death threats too, she’s ever more certain that Sandra’s gifts are at the heart of everything.

But just when she thinks she’s found a lead, the broken body of a nineteen-year-old boy is found outside a call centre – a single slash across his mouth just like Sandra’s. Kim knows they are now racing against time to understand what triggered these attacks, and to stop a twisted killer.

But they might be too late. Just as Kim sits down at a local psychic show she discovers something that makes her blood run cold. Both Sandra and the call centre were named in an article about frauds. And this show stars the next name on the list. She looks around the audience with a feeling of utter dread, certain the killer is among them…

What I thought

I’ve run out of words to use in praise of the books in this series, brilliant, fantastic, excellent and any other word I could find in a thesaurus to match, and yes this book is at least as good as all of the rest.

Would I recommend it to friends. I think they’re all fed up of me saying “you need to read the latest Angela Marsons” but they’re all going to hear it again about Deadly Fate.

Another brilliant addition to the best crime fiction series on the shelves

Amz: https://geni.us/B0BWS4G1V5cover

Apple: http://ow.ly/Arq550N3kI9

Kobo: http://ow.ly/lVaF50N3kHk

Google: http://ow.ly/6sjR50N3kFY

Books seven and eight in the Dorset Crime series, which in itself is a spin off from the Birmingham Crime Series, both of which have interwoven themes, running storylines and shared characters

Although these books can be read as standalone stories I would really suggest, and highly recommend, that the reader invested in the books that come before, because this is a brilliant continuing story, that will have fans of the TV series Line of Duty salivating.

DCI Lesley Clarke moved from the West Midlands to Dorset as a form of recovery following an injury during a terrorist attack. There were a few of things she didn’t expect.

Firstly that Dorset was going to be the scene of so many murders.

Secondly that she would be dealing with major crime lords

Thirdly, and most significantly that she would fall into a situation that would involve her investigating the death of her predecessor, a death formally recorded as suicide, but which is beginning to look more and more suspicious.

Her investigations into the death of retired DCI Mackie seems to be inextricably linked to her current investigations and, because she doesn’t know who she can trust, she turns to a selective few of her new colleagues, one of her old ones and surprisingly a local journalist.

That is the running theme throughout this series and it’s addictive

Book 7 The Blue Pool Murders, sees Lesley and her team investigating the death of a Local Crime Boss.

His body is found floating in an isolated pool in a nature reserve. The one piece of evidence at the scene points to somebody very close to her. Should she hide it, there’s already enough duplicity and underhand behaviour in the force, does she need to add to it. Or is somebody trying to discredit her, or have her removed from the Major Investigation Team by having her credibility as a neutral investigator brought into question.

As the bodies mount, and Clarke and her team get closer to the truth, the links to Mackie also start to add up.

Book 8 The Lighthouse Murder starts with a body discovered in Portland Bill Lighthouse. The victim is linked to Lesley. Her team in Birmingham put him away just before she moved south.

He should still be in prison but his escape was rigged when he was being transferred from one of the Dorset Prisons.

The big question is why was he killed within hours of escaping.

Again the bodies mount up but Clarke is without one of her team. A major player, her DS has been arrested and suspended.

She feels like it’s getting harder to keep investigations on the right track.

When Police Officers start “running interference” on her investigations, in apparent careless but innocent ways her paranoia of who to trust deepens.

She returns to Birmingham as part of the investigation and starts to interact with her old DI Zoe Finch, the one copper she knows she can trust.

These two books almost finish off the running story.

Book 9, The Ghost Village is out this summer and according to the publicity material it is the book in which the story concludes

I quickly became hooked on Rachel McLeans books when I read the first of the Zoe Finch books set in Birmingham. Now her works is amongst my favourite Crime Fiction being written today.

As her books are published they go straight to the top of my reading pile, and never get relegated.

Brilliant.