Angela Marsons – Page 4 – nigeladamsbookworm

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Play Dead Angela Marsons

This book firmly places Angela Marsons right at the top of the Police Crime Thriller writers.

Detective Chief Inspector Kim Stone and her team are back in another Black Country crime thriller, and just like the 3 previous books this one is stunning.

Having just broken up a paedophile ring Stone and her team are sent to Westerly, a new research facility in Wall Heath. Its location and purpose have been kept a secret from the public for good reason. The West Midlands has a Body Farm.

The trip to the Body Farm is going well until Stone manages to find a body that should not be there. A woman has been killed in a horrific manner and left amongst the other corpses.

As Stones team start to investigate the murder another victim is found at the farm but this one has miraculously survived.

What links the victims and why are they being dumped at the Body Farm.

As the investigations continue one of Kates nemesis, the local reporter Tracy Frost, approaches Stone in an attempt to solve a cold case, a murder that has happened a few years before in the neighbouring area of Brierley Hill. The fingerless dead man recovered from a local reservoir has never been identified, nor has his murder been solved.

Why should Stone get involved in a case that’s not her own, why would she help Frost with anything at all, and why is Frost so interested in it. However; the case gets under Stones skin and as she concentrates on the murders at the farm she also looks into the murdered man in the reservoir.

When Stone cannot contact Frost she begins to worry. Is Frost deliberately avoiding her or has she become a victim.

Play Dead is a brilliant book. Once I started reading it I literally could not put it down.

Angela Marsons creates characters that are so real you cannot help but engage with them.

Each character in this book is there for a reason and has a some bearing on the story, although not as obvious as you might first think.

I have a feeling that Marsons has a file for each character and if we could ever read them we’d find a whole story for each.

The recurring characters of her team fit in excellently with Stones personality. The occasional characters which appear in more than one book are just as good. It seems right that a SIO should have a local reporter that is always trying to get one jump ahead and in Tracy Frost Marsons depicts this brilliantly.

Stones past is no secret. She was in the never ending circle of Social Service Children’s Homes and Foster parents. The story of her past is slowly being revealed in each book, but it doesn’t distract from the story, in fact it adds to it.

Another occasional character in the books makes a return in this one. Dr Daniel Bate is a Forensic Osteo-archeologist. He makes no bones, sorry no pun intended, of the fact he likes Stone. The awkwardness of her reaction is so realistic it almost made me blush.

Another recurring character is Dr A. This woman needs her own books. I don’t know if I’m supposed to chuckle every time she opens her mouth but I do.

One of the big stars is The Black Country. I live there. Stones Police Station is about a mile from my house. The way Angela Marsons describes the locations she uses in these books is so good I know exactly where she is talking about.

So I’m off to Find Westerley-The Body Farm, it has to be there Angela Marsons wrote about it.

I don’t do a 5 star ranking system but if I did this book would get 6.

Just in case you haven’t read the first 3 books in the series I’ve attached links to my reviews below.

Play Dead isn’t published till mid May so you have plenty of time to get your hands on the back catalogue and pre order Play Dead on Amazon

https://nigeladamsbookworm.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/silent-scream-evil-games-angela-marsons/

https://nigeladamsbookworm.wordpress.com/2015/11/15/lost-girls-angela-marsons/

Lost Girls Angela Marsons

This is the latest instalment in the excellent DCI Kim Stone series. All of the previous books have been 10/10 thrillers. This is no exception as Angela Marsons ramps up the tension in her best book yet.

The story starts with a kidnapping, but this is a kidnapping where the ransom will raise moral dilemmas.

Stone is given the task of conducting the investigation into the disappearance of the two young girls who have been taken. The mother of one of the girls is Karen. Karen spent her childhood in care, moved between council run homes and foster parents. As did Stone, and they have met but have very different recollections of their previous encounters. Will this hinder the investigation?

The missing girls are good friends and so are the families. The two families are brought together in one home to wait for news, but secrets in the families are bubbling just below the surface introducing an interesting dynamic that affects both the families and the investigating team.

As the hunt for the girls gets under way it becomes apparent that whoever has the girls has carried out at least one other kidnapping, and that they like to play games.

With the arrival of a text, sent to both families, the game begins.

It is a horrible game. I thought that been the parent of a kidnapped child would be a terrible experience. It is one of the things every parent dreads every time their child leaves the house. But this game will turn each family against the other and the police. It will also turn family members against family members. This is a parent’s worst nightmare.

Can Stone and her team bring the girls home? It doesn’t help that a reporter from a local newspaper is in the middle of a feud with Stone, and seems to be on to the fact that two girls are missing, despite a press blackout.

The race against time that is a kidnap becomes accelerated by the race to solve the crime before the journalist publishes the news of the missing girls.

Marson’s main character, Stone, is backed up by her small team, each of who is a character in their own right. Although this book can be read as a stand alone to get the best out of it, get to know these characters from the start by reading the previous books in the series.

As well as her usual team Stone is given two specialist officers to help, Alison the behaviour analyst and Matt Ward the negotiator. Hopefully we will get to see more of these two characters in future books.

Stone is a Detective Inspector based in Halesowen in the West Midlands. Marsons describes the places and the people of the area brilliantly.

I loved the part of the book where Stone politely explains why she is not a Brummie. This will not mean much to most but it will endear the readers from the Black Country.

Another brilliant book from what I am proud to say, to me, is a local Author.