American Crime – nigeladamsbookworm

All The Sinners Bleed. S.A Cosby

Titus Crown is a newly elected Sheriff in a small town in Southern Virginia, and he’s about to have a very bad day.

When a young black boy walks into a high school and kills a popular white teacher Crown and his small team rush to the scene.

The boy is coming out, holding a gun, when they arrive and he is shot dead on the school steps.

That alone is enough to rile the white minority in the community but what Titus discovers during the early stages of the investigation is going to send the town into meltdown.

Spearman, the teacher, was not as good a man as most people seem to think. Disturbing images on his computer show him to be part of a trio that has been abusing, and killing young, black, early teenage boys and girls.

Was Latrell, the shooter, a victim, a willing participant of the trio, or something in between. He is implicated, but him and Spearman are dead, and the one part of the trio that is still alive is an absolute monster.

With the town divided along racial lines, the whites not believing that Spearman was guilty, but the blacks too scared to talk to the police, the investigation is tough.

I’m a big fan of John Grisham and Greg Iles, and now that I’ve found S.A Cosby he’s joined the list.

There is something disturbing about the fact there is still a big divide between some communities, along racial lines, in some states in America.

The fact that this book, like the ones penned by Grisham and Iles, bring it to life, and highlight the issue with such believable realism, belies the issues but makes for great stories.

There seem some graphic scenes in this book, especially around the description of disposition scenes, but nothing that should put the reader off.

The story is brilliant, though provoking, and definitely worth reading.

The characters are well written and it’s great to see an author showing the frustrations of investigating a crime, and the mental and emotional effects the scenes, and the investigation have on the Sheriff.

Pages: 353. Publisher: Headline. Audiobook length: 13.05 hours. Narrator: Alex Lazarre-White

Crimson Thaw.

Bruce Robert Coffin

I think I may have found my new favourite American Crime Fiction series

This is book one of four so far published in the Detective Brock Justice series, and the good news for those that have it, its on kindleunlimited.

Set in a small rural community in the north of the state of Maine, close to the Canadian border, the story uses the countryside and lakes to produce a different type of suspense to that where the story is set in a city.

The isolation of each location, the small town everybody-knows-everybody community. The outdoor activities, including hunting and the use of all terrain vehicles, all add to the tension.

The investigation even starts with the recovery of a man, from beneath a remote site on a frozen lake, who had been handcuffed to a snowmobile.

The characters are just as good. The main protagonist is Detective Brock Justice. Once a city detective he has returned home under a cloud. Transferred from the city to his backwater home town force following a dubious shooting of a criminal during an arrest.

It wasn’t him that was accused of the bad shoot, but he was there, and it was partially his fault for not waiting for backup. But he committed the ultimate crime by testifying against his partner who did fire the fatal shot.

That reputation precedes him to his new post and he is never going to be the most popular man in the small team.

Because of his experience he is appointed lead detective on the case of the body recovered from the lake, and is partnered up with a brand new detective recently promoted from uniform. Chloe Wright may be a rookie detective but she has a brain on her, and despite Brock’s reputation she is keen to learn from him.

There may sound like there’s a lot of cliche character traits here but believe me the story, and the characters, are so well written that that is soon overlooked.

I’d describe this book as a cross between Michael Connelly’s Bosch books and C.J Box’s Joe Picket books.

A great I can highly recommend

Pages: 378. Publisher: Severn River Publishing

The Detective’s Wife. Mary Stone

I was convinced I had predicted the end of this book in the first few pages.

I was wrong, until I wasn’t.

How does that make sense? Well I had a hypothesis in my head within the first few chapters, but the more I read, the more I was convinced my first assumption was wrong.

It wasn’t, but how the book gets from start to finish is an amazing read, an amazing story that unfolds through two peoples eyes.

My sympathies and empathies must have changed half a dozen times as I read this book, and not just with the two main characters.

The story is told in the first person but through two peoples eyes.

The first half(ish) of the book is told through the eyes of Jo, a Psychologist working in an institute that looks after troubled women, most of which are dangerous, and spend much of their life highly sedated.

Jo has recently married Conor, a Police Detective whose first wife disappeared 18 months ago.

It’s a Honey Trap, Jo is convinced her husband knows exactly what happened to his first wife, and she wants to use the marriage to find out what.

The problem is Honey Traps are not supposed to result in loving relationships. This one does, and its causing major problems.

About halfway through the book the story switches and is looked at through the eyes of Amanda, a patient at the hospital where Jo works.

Her story is as compelling as Jo’s and is brilliantly written.

The conclusion of the story is epic, but not as epic as the route to it.

As I said at the start of this blog, I had the scenario worked out from the start, as will most people who read the book. But it’s not about the beginning and the end. It’s about the other 80% of the book. The story of how everything comes about.

It’s about what goes on behind closed doors.

It’s about issues within families that not even family members are completely tuned into.

It’s about loyalties, and the way that they are formed, and tested.

It’s about manipulation, and distorted truths.

It is a great story.

Publisher: Bookouture. Pages 404. Publishing Date 24th September 2026

We Begin At The End. Chris Whitaker

This is one of those rare books that will stay with me for a long time.

The characters are incredibly well written with one in particular who managed to strike chord in me that no literary character ever has.

The story is set in a sleepy American town where, thirty years ago, a young girl was killed.

A youth, Vincent King, is tried as an adult, and given thirty years in prison, a term which is close to coming to an end.

The victim was the little sister of a girl he was in a relationship with. Her name is Star Radley and she is now a single mother with two children of her own.

It’s one of these children Duchess, a 13 years old girl who lives her life by the rules of the old Wild West outlaws that got to me. Quoting the outlaws way of life and history’s is the way she manages to put on a brave face, and boy does she need to.

Her mother is one of life’s victims, she drinks too much and has a bad taste in men, which often sees her returning home battered and bruised.

Duchess has a younger brother, and he is her world. She looks after him like his mother should.

Vincent Kings best friend growing up was “Walk” Walker, who is now Chief of the local police. He has always thought Vincent was hard done by, and that 30 years for murder was a harsh sentence for what was a drink drive hit and run.

But is he seeing things through rose tinted glasses. Was Vincent the kind youth that Walk remembers. Others certainly have a different opinion of him.

The sleepy little town hides a few secrets, and all of them seem to revolve around Star and Vincent.

Vincent still owns his childhood home, inherited after his incarceration. It may be run down but it sits on prime land. Land that a local businessman, Darke, is trying to develop.

Darke and Star have history.

When Star returns home one night having suffered another battering Duchess puts two and two together and seeks revenge on Darke.

From there on her life turns into a nightmare.

She tries to look out for her little brother but her revenge on Darke is coming back to bite her.

Meanwhile King is arrested for another murder shortly after his release from his thirty years in prison.

All the characters are good but there is something about Duchess that resonates with me. She is a captivating character who really pulls on the heart strings.

Again Walk is convinced of his innocence but he is the only one.

The story winds up to a fantastic end.

It’s a story of misguided loyalties, and misunderstandings, secrets and lies, and it is brilliant.

The entire story is good enough to recommend this book as one of the best I’ve read this year.

But Duchess’s story, within the book, is one that will stay with me.

Pages: 386. Publisher: Zaffre. Available Now. Audiobook Length 10 hours 29 minutes. Narrator: George Newbern

Nash Falls & Hope Rising. David Baldacci

Two books one review

I’m going to start this review by saying how good the story in these two books is, before I go onto what I unfortunately is a bit of negativity.

The story.

At its foundation this story is about a good guy, with the perfect life, a wife, a teenage daughter, and a highly successful career, who is approached by the FBI to help them build a case against his employer.

Unsurprisingly this goes wrong and his world is torn apart.

The rest of the story is about his efforts to get justice.

Nash Falls

Walter Nash is a tall, wimpy highly intelligent man. At the start of the story he attends his dad’s funeral, a Vietnam Veteran who had little time for the son who sought to play Tennis instead of NFL style football.

His distain for his son is so deep he even has another vet’ bad mouth him at the funeral.

The case is built from the very beginning of the book that Nash is a physically weak, but highly intelligent man, who does anything to avoid physical excess or any form of danger.

The company he works for is run by Burton Temple and his son Rhett. Both men are typical modern day lotharios who treat people with contempt. Although they embrace Nash because he brings in more money than anybody else.

So when the FBI approach Nash to help them uncover the illicit side of the Bartons business he is slow to say yes but eventually does.

The Bartons are only mid-level operators. The big fish that the FBI are after is Victoria Steel, and her ultimate boss

Steel is half English half Chinese and is a ruthless drug runner using the Temples to launder money.

Nash’s world falls apart as his cover work is exposed, no spoilers from here on except he has to change his identity and becomes Dillon Hope

Hope Rises

Part two of the story with Nash established as Dillon Hope and working undercover to gain revenge by exposing Victoria Steer and the Rhett Barton.

His new looks, and persona couldn’t be further from his old identity.

The story crosses Asia and America.

Hope/Nash’s ethos and his beliefs are tested to the limit.

The mild man that is, or was Nash, wants the ultimate justice, whilst the new Dillon Hope is beginning to have empathy for some of the criminals.

When the time comes which ego, Nash or Hope, will rise to the surface.

This is a really compelling story but there’s one thing in this book that really had me struggling to set aside.

Nash’s transformation into Hope takes over a year, and there are some physical changes, but for me it’s a bit like Clark Kent taking off his glasses and nobody noticing that he is Superman.

For me its just too much of a stretch to think that nobody notices its him.

The other thing that troubled me is this should not have been two books.

There is no getting away from the fact that Nash Falls just stops. There is no conclusion. No Cliffhanger. It just stops. The last chapter in that book is just the end of another chapter, like any other in the book.

The first chapter in Hope Rises is the next chapter of the previous book.

If you were to read either as a standalone it wouldn’t work.

There is no finish to one and no start to the other.

The end of the story is really good but I couldn’t help thinking that there were two or three chapters in the second book that weren’t needed.

As much as I enjoyed the books, and I am a massive fan of the author, I really couldn’t shake the feeling that he had a good story in mind, and when he wrote it he realised it was too long for one book. So he looked for a continent place to end the first and realised the second wasn’t long enough so threw in a few more chapters.

I did enjoy the books but I felt almost conned at the end of the first one. The lack of an ending made it a bit weak.

Although I said the first book didn’t end on a cliff hanger, and it didn’t, I still wanted to know what happened next, purely to get a conclusion to the story.

All that being said would i recommend the books. Yes and No.

Yes if you are a Baldacci fan.

Yes if you start book one knowing you are going to have to go straight to book two.

But as stand alone’s, or if its your first by David Baldcacci NO.

Nash Falls Pages: 611. Hope Rises Pages: 433

Publisher: MacMillan

Both Books available now.

The Bone Stalker. Victor Methos

Book 3 of the Vegas Shadows series

A deprived serial killer is trying to get into the head of Detective Lazarus, but why.

There is a hierarchy of people that have reasons.

The white supremacist Phineas (Deadeye) Walsh.

Judge Hope Dawson, who is running for the Senate

Police Assistant Chief Harold Dubbs, a career desk jokey who has no courage and can’t stand up for himself.

All of these people, and many others have reason to take down Lazarus, but they also have reason to bring down each other. It’s a type of vicious circle that is spiralling around the detective.

His friend Piper Danes is inevitably caught up in his manic investigation, and along with helping him investigate, she is also trying to nurse him.

Still suffering from serious injuries sustained in a previous investigation. Lazarus is also going cold turkey from the lack of alcohol.

He wouldn’t class himself as an alcoholic, but he is a typical hard drinking cop, and with trauma damage to his liver, and the medications he is on he has to stop drinking, and its taking an effect.

His judgment is questioned and when the murders start to connect back to him Dubbs bans him from the investigation.

The trilogy of suspects are all connected, and all of them have reason to get to Lazarus.

So when his estranged daughter decides she wants to know her Dad, it just another worry for him, another distraction.

Distractions are something he can’t afford. This killer is different. He doesn’t make mistakes, he leaves subtle clues only Lazarus seems to be able to pick up on. He kills in a ruthless manner.

For fans of the series you might have expected me to mention Piper Danes a bit more. But to be honest, with the exception of a side story about her family, and the fact that she is nursing Lazarus, she doesn’t have much impact on this story.

If you haven’t read the previous two books, The Silent Watcher and The Night Collector, I would highly recommend reading those first.

This book would not read well as a standalone and relates back to both the previous ones.

My reviews are in the links below.

The Silent Watcher

https://nigeladamsbookworm.com/2024/12/01/the-silent-watcher-victor-methos/

The Night Collector

https://nigeladamsbookworm.com/2025/09/25/the-night-collector-victor-methos/

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

City of Dreams and City in Ruins. Don Winslow

My last blog was a review of City on Fire by Don Winslow, I was that enthralled by that book I went on to finish the series by reading the next two books back to back.

I can’t remember the last time I read a trilogy back to back, and that is a testimony to how good these books are.

The first book saw the end of a peaceful period where the two main gangs in Province, Rhode Island, lived in relative peace.

The gangs, the Irish and the Italians have the docks and surrounding areas sewn up with Unions rules, extortion rackets, prostitution and drugs, and neither gang encroaches onto the others business.

That was until one of the Irish gang got inappropriate with the girlfriend of one of the Italian gang.

What followed was a bloody war in which both sides lost people, money, territory and business, with the power swinging between both gangs.

The Italians called in Mafia families from across America, while the Irish called on the help of the IRA.

The explosive end to that book was not a cliff hanger but it did leave me wanting to know what happened to the main character, Danny Ryan.

City of Dreams

In City of Dreams Danny is on the run in the aftermath of events at the end of the previous book the Irish gang is in disarray. Danny is being hunted by the Italians and the FBI

I don’t really want to say why one particular high ranking FBI agent is determined to hunt Ryan down, because it would give a huge spoiler for the first book, but needless to say she has a real bee in her bonnet and won’t rest until he’s either dead or behind bars, preferably dead.

Staying low profile should be his priority but he finds himself in LA, amongst the film industry.

Some of his crew have travelled with him and using their new found wealth, again no spoilers, set about causing havoc in the film industry.

Danny almost manages to go into legitimate business but his past is quickly catching up on him.

Where Danny was a bit player in the gangs at the start of the first book he is seen to be the Head of the Irish in this one and although he is trying to keep out of trouble it manages to find him at every turn.

Of the three books this one is the weakest but I still found it enthralling.

City In Ruins

Las Vegas and the casinos had to make an appearances in these books. Danny has started to build a legitimate empire amongst the big boys on the strip.

His visions for a new style hotel and gaming facility are revolutionary.

His past is still catching up with him.

His money for his investments has largely come from his mother’s fortune, a great side story which runs through the trilogy, but he also has some dirty money of his own invested.

One of the older Vegas crowd is determined to run Danny out of the city and ruin him in the process.

Gang allegiances are just as prevalent in Vegas as they were in Provence and soon Danny and his foe are reaching out to elders of their respective gangs brotherhoods to finance their businesses.

Meat while Province in a mosh pit of crime and people on the Irish side are calling for Danny to come home and sort it out.

The end of the book brings everything to a timely end, maybe not a happy ending, but a line is drawn that ends the story nicely.

The Series

The series is fast paced and very gritty.

It examines not just gang allegiances but family ties. Most dramatically it looks at how the family ties and gang allegiances can conflict, and the aftermath that leaves.

There are violent scenes and some sexual scenes which a quiet graphic, but they are always in context and never gratuitous.

If I’m honest I wouldn’t have read the others if City of Dreams was the first. I found it a bit tame compared to the other two, but it has to be read to put all of the story in to context.

I wound highly recommend the series, and for those people that look for a good long read on their holidays treat yourself and read this as one long story. It’s epic, but it’s great.

City On Fire. Don Winslow

Set in the mid to late 1980’s in and around Providence, Rhode Island this is an epic mafia story.

Mainly looked at from Danny Ryans prospective the story looks at the relationships within families and factions of gangs.

The Murphy family are Irish, they run the docks and they are old school.

Danny has married into the family, marrying the daughter of the top man John, but he’s never had a proper seat at the table. He’s never really been part of the decision making process. He’s has responsibilities within the “firm” but they are minor in comparison to Johns sons.

There has been a peace amongst the main family’s who run Providence for years.

The Italians and the Irish had been at war for years until the two heads of the families had decided to divide the area equally and live in peace, and it was working until one of Johns sons, Liam, let his dick get in the way of his brain.

A summer cook out, on the beach, members of all the leading families having a party.

Then a hot, beautiful woman appears on the sand. Danny instantly thinks shes going to cause problems, and he’s right.

Pam, the hot woman, is with Paul Moretti, one of the sons of the main man in the Italian mafia in the area.

Liam touches her inappropriately and gets a beating from the Italians, and those are the sparks that lead to a bloody battle which will last for years.

The book looks at the battle from all sides, the tit-for-tat attacks that escalate with beatings moving on to murders and full on executions.

It looks at the ways former friends are pitted against each other, but although some of them want to bring peace back to the streets, there are others who are hell bent on full on war.

The Italians have other mafia families from across New York to bring into the fray, The Irish have the ”Boys” back home to bring over.

The conflict gets bloody, really bloody.

The corrupt cops try to keep the peace but are so far in the pocket of the gangs they only add to the problem.

The politics of the gangs is fascinating. The leader, the elders, having old school attitudes which almost makes them look like gentlemen compared to their younger siblings.

Danny is one of those trying to keep the peace at first. But as the casualties mount, and as Liam spirals deeper into drugs and alcohol abuse he finds himself close to the leadership of the Irish.

Does he continue trying to find a way to peace, or has it gone too far now. Does he need to use the full force of the Irish gangs to finish off the Italians.

This is the first book in a trilogy. It isn’t often I will read a book and go straight to the next, but I am this time.

There is no cliffhanger ending, but I am desperate to see what happens next.

Trigger warnings for this book include violence, it’s not gratuitous, and it is very much in context, in fact the book would not be as good without it, but it’s there.

There’s also a bit of spice but again it’s in context and adds to the story.

So not only is Don Winslow a new author to me, but having read one book he has me hooked into at least another two.

Pages: 356. Publisher: Harper Collins

Her Cold Justice. Robert Dugoni

Dugoni is at leat the equal of Grisham in the world of courtroom and legal thrillers.
For me this is the best American Courtroom Thriller series on the bookshelves at the moment.

As I’ve said in a previous review about a book in this series, every legal thriller coming out of America is always going to be compared to John Grisham, and just like the previous two books in this series, this book more than holds its own in the company of Grisham books.

Defence Attorney Keera Duggan has stepped out from her father’s shadow and is building a fierce reputation as a Defence Attorney.

But shes not cheap. So when a relative of her chief investigator is arrested for murder there’s no way he can afford her services.

Keera, her father, and her sisters run their own law firm and decide to register as a pro bono firm to take on his case, and in doing so take on the most formidable public prosecutor in Seattle.

Anh Tran, whose nickname is Batwoman because shes trying to clean up the city, is a power house both in, and out, of the courtroom.

As a child she hid under a bed and watched as her parents were executed in a robbery in their small shop. Since then she has sworn to bring justice and has dedicated her life to convicting murderers.

Michael is accused of murdering his work colleague and his colleagues girlfriend. The colleague was shot in his garage and his girlfriend was battered to death in her bed.

The only thing that brings Michael into the frame is the fact that the work colleague gave him a lift home shortly before the murder.

Tran is quickly on the scene and starts to issue search warrants instantly targeting Michael, on very little evidence.

But more incriminating evidence is found during the search of his home. Although all of the evidence is circumstantial, and there is no solid evidence to suggest his involvement, Tan arrests Michael and fast tracks him trough court.

Keera quickly becomes suspicious of how Michael was arrested but the problem is she is very friendly with one of the lead detectives. Could Detective Frank Rossi and his partner really be part of a bad arrest.

Meanwhile Rossi and his partner are feeling railroaded and although they think they have the right man for the murders, they don’t like how the investigation, arrest, and trial were conducted.

As with the other two books in this series the crime takes part early on in the book with a good 2/3s of the book being about the pre-trial work and the actual trial itself.

Robert Dugoni is really good at building up the tension.

The court room scenes are brilliantly written. The examination and cross examination of the witnesses is so well written it’s like actually being in court.

Keera is a top class chess player, and she uses all of her tactical skills in the court room, but in this case she’s up against a woman who is willing to push the boundaries right up to the breaking point.

That, plus the fact that there is no love lost between the Judge and Keera’s father, who was also a formidable defence attorney, make for a very tense trial.

If you haven’t read the previous books in the series, Her Deadly Game and Beyond Reasonable Doubt, I would recommend that you do. Not because this book can’t be read as a standalone, it can, but because they are brilliant stories and will only enhance your enjoyment of this one.

Bring on book 4, I can’t wait.

Pages: 369. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Available now. Audiobook Length: 10 hours 28 minutes. Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld.