May 2026 – nigeladamsbookworm

Connie. Charlotte Duckworth

A simple cast of characters, a relatively simple plot, but a brilliant and absorbing story.

The characters, and there’s only really two, Connie and Olivia. Connie the serial killer and Olivia the middle aged mother of two twins.

But there’s much more to both characters.

From the start there is no doubt that Connie is a killer, in fact shes in prison serving a life sentence for killing seven people. She shows no remorse, and throughout the investigation, and still whilst in prison, she has never given any reason as to why she killed those seven random people.

Olivia is an ex detective. She took maternity leave when she had her twin boys, and never went back. Now, 18 years later, they have gone to university and she is bored. There is an emptiness in her life she tries putting down to empty nesting, or rather her husband puts does.

He’s a successful business man who earns enough for her to stay at home. But she has a bee in her bonnet, and it’s Connie Cross, the infamous killer.

Why?

Not only is she intrigued by the fact that Connie has never given a reason for the killings, but she also had dealings with her when Connie was a very young girl.

Olivia was the Family Liaison Officer assigned to Connie when her baby sister died suddenly at home.

The police would be involved in any sudden death but when Connie let it slip to a neighbour that she thought her Dad dad killed her the Police arrest him.

What had always been a bad relationship between father and daughter, as well as his abusive behaviour towards Connie’s Mom, make him an ideal suspect. But he is innocent and the relationships get even worse.

Olivia meets with an ex colleague, who is now a Detective Inspector and was part of the team that arrested Connie when her crimes came to light, and tells him shes thinking of writing a book about Connie. He tries to convince her to return to policing but helps her get access, as a visitor, to Connie.

What follows is Then-and-Now chapters as Connie’s story is told.

How she became a killer, why she killed the people she killed.

All the time Olivia is realising that her home life is not what she wants anymore.

But is that her choice, or is Connie manipulating her.

Because at the end of the day Connie just like to mete out justice in her own way.

You always hear the phrase on TV talent and reality shows. If you are going to do “simple” it has to be perfect.

This is the epitome of that.

It’s a simple story but it is written so well it is stunning.

It unfolds slowly, without being boring.

There are no shocks or twists that make it unlikely.

It is simply one of the best books I’ve read for some time.

Pages: 464. Publisher: Quercus. Audiobook length: 10h 7m Narrator: Susie Riddell

Dissection of a Murder. Jo Murray

I want to start this review with two quotes, of quotes, from the book.

Are we just to accept you’re either the victim or the killer, and there’s nothing in between

And

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer

Two paragraphs from early in the book that sum up this story.

There are twist and turns, there are hidden clues, some of which were so obvious, but only with the benefit of hindsight, and there is one hell of an ending

Leila is a Barrister and she is about to defend her client, Jack Millman.

There are a few things that make this a tense situation.

It’s Leila’s first murder trial.

The Victim was a well loved Judge

Perhaps the worst, her Husband is the prosecution Barrister.

Oh, and there’s one other thing. Millman pleads innocent but he won’t give any information to help build his defence.

He was arrested at the scene and has gone given no comment as his answer to every question the police has asked him.

A tactic he continues when he has his first meeting with Leila.

She has defended him before, on an assault case. He was innocent but found guilty.

Why?

Because he gave the police information about the girl he was protecting during the alleged assault. She was going to be his key witness, but she was got at by some powerful people and never gave her evidence in court. Worse still he was labelled a grass for accusing a gang member of assaulting the girl.

This time he’s giving nobody a chance to interfere with what he hopes will be a fair trial.

That is the main thread of the story, but there is also the nice in house soap opera that is the Chambers Laila and her husband work out of.

It’s a hard working law chambers where politics and “relationships” drive the narrative.

I like legs thrillers. The American ones are usually top of the best sellers but the British Legal system is so full of traditions and history; nepotism and old school ties, sex and scandal, that it makes for fascinating reading.

This is one of the best, in this genre, that I’ve read for a long time.

Pages: 416. Publisher: Macmillian. Audiobook Length 11 hours 40 mins. Narrator Joanne Froggart

Bookworm. K.L Griffiths

It’s been a long time since I read a book like this.

A crime fiction, psychological thriller is the best way to describe it but it’s so much more than that. Stephen King is mentioned numerous times in this book, and the story sits right in with some of his work.

It’s dark, and it plays with your head.

Lyn Darrow is a literature teacher. She is also is a young widow, and since the death of her husband has become a reclusive bookworm, losing herself in books rather than facing reality. Although she still works in a local school she spends all of her down time in her isolate country home.

Her life derails even further when she reads a passage in a book which is an accurate account of her experience on the day her husband was killed in a hit and run close to their home.

This is quickly followed by her discovering a body with a hornets nest on its head in her rear yard. But when the police attend there is no body. Just footprints leading to and from her house from the woods.

The hornets nest is another sign. Something she’d rather not remember from her past.

Although most people seem to think she’s over exaggerating, telling her it’s just teenage pranksters, there are a few who believe and support her.

The school principle, the library assistant who keeps her supplied with a TBR of books her husband read, the one sympathetic police officer, and an unlikely student.

The trouble is surely one of these people must be responsible for messing with her head. They are the only ones close enough to her, and who have access to her house, to make the things that are happening to her happen.

What follows is a trail of chaos that is aimed at mentally destroying Lyn, but it goes much further and people start to go missing, or worse, get murdered.

At times reading this book was like watching one of those TV thrillers, or horror movies, when you just want to shout “turn a light on” or “don’t go in there”

At 327 pages it’s not a short book but it is a quick read. Once I started it I couldn’t stop and this was the first book, in a long time, that I’ve read in a day.

The end comes quickly, and when it did I let out one of those long sighs. Did I get the right suspect?

Eventually.

Was it obvious?

No!

Will I read any other books by K.L Griffiths?

YES

Pages: 327. Publisher: Cottonwood Fire LLC Audiobook: 8 hours 12 minutes. Narrator: Joshua Katchnycz

The Family Secret. Patricia Gibney

This series is a must read for all crime fiction fans, and The Family Secret, book 16, is no exception.

The title gives the plot away, you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. The family showing a happy face to the public can be hugely different in the isolation of their own home.

It’s not the only isolation in the story. Detective Inspector Lottie Parker is newly single following a break up with one of her team, Boyd, and her mother’s dementia is getting worse, and her children and grandchild are always giving her worries.

One of the endearing things about this series is the soap opera that is Lottie’s life, and it plays a major part in this book.

As well as investigating murders and a potential kidnapping, she is being drained physically, and mentally, by things in her private life.

But the main focus is the crime.

A family murdered following a child’s Birthday party.

Twelve year old Freya is dead in her home, the day after her birthday party, and so are her mother and father. It’s a gruesome scene and all of the attending police officers are affected by what they see.

Kneeling at Freya’s side Lottie promises her that she will find the killer.

One key witness is Lily, Freya’s best friend who was supposed to sleep over after the party but changed her mind.

A luck escape, or an insight by somebody.

Before Lily can be interviewed properly she goes missing with her mother saying she had been “stolen” from her own home.

And so it begins. The hunt for a person who has murdered a family, and in all likelihood has kidnapped a child.

What are the secrets hidden behind the closed doors of both girls homes.

Are the parents really as they present themselves, or are there some dark secrets.

Patricia Gibney writes one of the most realistic crime fiction series there is on the shelves right now.

There will be people who have worked crime scenes that will make links to what she has written. In this book she tapped into the one thing that always plagued me.

The normality after the crime.

When she describes the first murder scene, following the birthday party, it was like she was inside my head.

Devastation in one part of the house and total normality in the rest of the premises. The detritus of the party, waiting to be cleaned up. A party dress that should never be part of this type of scene.

I know a few people that hated that normality as much as me, and in a few paragraphs Gibney captures it perfectly.

This story has real pace and is emotionally charged.

As far as fiction goes, it’s as good as it gets, and better than most.

Pages: 503. Publisher: Bookouture. Available now. Audiobook length: 13 hours 24 minutes. Narrator: Michele Moran

The Quiet Kill. Robert Bryndza

London 1987 and Detective Constable Jamie Day arrives in London as a transferee from a uniform post in rural Norfolk.

On his way into the station, the day before he is supposed to start, he is sent to a murder scene. A young cop from the sticks he isn’t expecting his first incident to be a body chopped up and dumped in bags, but that’s what he gets.

Unfortunately for him this is just the first in a line of gruesome discoveries that lead Jamie, and his new team, to start investigating the gay scene where it is becoming obvious that a serial killer is active.

Jamie is keen to impress and his boss DCI Harry Dean is impressed, as is one of his colleges, WPC Tracy Steel.

But there’s always that one person in a team that has his nose put out by the newcomer, and in this case its ex vice copper DC Liam Cole, who takes an instant dislike to Jamie.

The serial killer investigation overlaps an internal police investigation which is looking at a senior officer who is deeply involved in the seedier, and more violent side of the gay sex scene, and police politics soon starts to make things awkward, especially for Jamie who is as naive to the politics as he is to the types of crime he is now investigating.

This is not a complex story. There is no “shark infested Custard” scenarios. Everything just slowly unwinds. In a very captivating manner.

Set in London, in the mid 1980s, it is set in the time when being gay was just about becoming acceptable, people were acknowledging that a gay life style existed, and that not all gay men were perverts. But it was also when AIDs was at its height as an incurable death sentence.

The police investigation in this story highlights the fear that was present both in the gay community, and also a largely ignorant general population.

It makes the investigation more sensitive and difficult.

It also shows the Met Police at a turning point. Female Constables were common place but they were still in uniform, which included a bowler type hat, a skirt, a woolly tights.

It amazed me that in the book, and in real life, even the female constables working with the plain clothes CID officers were still in uniform.

I was in the Fire Service during these times and I clearly remember female police officers turning up at incidents in these uniforms.

I also remember how scary the AIDs disease was, and the precautions we had to take when dealing with casualties at scenes.

Because I was there in those days I can vouch for how realistic the background in this book is. It brought back many memories of the way we dealt with incidents, and how the gay community was treated by the rest of us so called straight people.

The story also contains scenes which include gay sexual assault. The scenes are not gratuitous, and are completely within context of the story, but some readers should be aware that they are graphic enough to be triggering if you are affected by that type of thing.

Would I recommend this book. Yes I would, and as a bonus there’s a short story at the end.

I hope this isn’t a standalone story. I would really like to read more of Jamie and his career in the Met getting on for 40 years ago.

It wasn’t that long ago but reading this book it reminds me of what a completely different world we were living in back then.

Pages: 337. Publisher: Raven Street Publishing. UK Publishing date: 9th July 2026

Rough Justice & Unlikely Saviour. Biba Pearce

The first two books in the Shrap Nelson series set in current day London.

There are going to be the inevitable comparisons with Lee Childs and Jack Reacher made by people who read these books.

For me, they are much better, but that may be because I’m not a fan of the Reacher series.

The main character, Shrap Nelson, is an ex-military police officer suffering PTSD, and in the first book she is living rough on the streets of London.

In Rough Justice the closest thing she has to a best friend, a fellow vet living on the streets, is being sought by the police who believe he has killed a woman.

Shrap doesn’t believe it, but before she can talk to him he is found dead in the street, a burning corpse.

Again Shrap doesn’t believe he either died by accidentally setting himself on fire, or committing suicide, which appears to be the way the police investigation is going.

One Officer is also doubtful of the veterans involvement in the murder of a young woman, and of his accidental death.

Detective Gareth Trevelyan is a recent transferee into the Criminal Investigation Team and is a bit weary of raising his concerns.

But when he starts to bump into Shrap during his own investigations he sees the benefit of having her as a very unofficial part of the investigation.

Living the homeless lifestyle makes Shrap almost invisible, she can get close to places and remain invisible by just sleeping in a doorway. Who ever takes any notice of anybody sleeping rough.

The murdered girl was a sex worker, only she wasn’t. The Police are happy that she’s just another street walking prostitute, so are happy to close the case quickly.

The girl worked as an erotic dancer at a club run by and Eastern European but that was all she did.

The investigation opens up a real can of worms. The Eastern European is running drugs and most of the girls working at his club are on the game.

He has small time local hoodies running the drugs for him and they present as big a danger as the boss himself.

The story in this book is really fast paced and makes an excellent read. Shrap and Trevelyan make a great partnership.

The plot is very realistic and brings the dangers of living on the street to every chapter, what it also brings to the fore is the community amongst the homeless and how they look out for their own.

Book 2, Unlikely Saviour, follows on quickly from the first book but now finds Shrap living in a hostel.

The son of one of the hostel workers is a graffiti artist and when he and a friend witness a body being dumped in the Thames they make a run for it. Unfortunately his friend doesn’t make it home.

The police are again reluctant to take the disappearance seriously.

But when a body turns up, just where the youth said he’d seen a body being dumped it starts a race to find the missing teenager.

The dumped body turns out to be another ex military veteran who runs his own investigations agency.

He has three current cases on the go and any of them may have thrown up somebody who wanted him dead.

But which one is most likely to have killed at least one person, and whats happened to the missing teenager.

Shrap uses her investigative skill and the skills she has learnt living on the street to help Trevelyan carry out the investigations.

Other police officers are beginning to appreciate Shraps skills and the value she can bring to an investigation, including Trevelyan’s boss, and she is given a bit more access and a lot more leeway.

This is another cracking story, and this time its got a surprisingly different ending I didn’t see coming.

The clues were there all the way through the book but they were cleverly disguised.

Two brilliant books in what I hope is going to be a long series.

Pages: Rough Justice, 360. Unlikely Saviour, 310. Publisher Mortlake Press. Audiobook length, Rough Justice, 9 hours Narrator Caroline Fantozzi. Unlikely Saviour not available.

Both books available on Kindleunlimited in the U.K.