Category: Crime novel

The Secrets Of Forest Lane. Sian Morgan

The first few chapters of this book are scene setters so please don’t think you’ve stumbled across an urban romance, because that’s the last thing this book is.

This is a psychological thriller, and it’s a very good one.

Based around three families living in close proximity to each other this story could be happening on any street in the U.K.

Lily is a single mom to a young girl. Only 22 herself she is wondering what happened to her dream of a successful career and a university degree.

When her little sister Jasmin, 18, goes missing after a night out her mother spins into a panic.

Meanwhile two outwardly happy couples, both with children in the same nursery class as Lily’s girl are hiding troubled relationships.

Katherine and her controlling husband are in a destructive relationship. He’s controlling and increasingly heavy handed with her, she wants to go back to work and have her own life.

Tom and Carol appear to be the ideal couple, she’s a successful doctor and he’s a stay at home dad. So when he goes out after an argument and gets drunk and stoned it is out of character. So is the fact that he had drunken sex with an 18 year old girl in the toilet of the pub.

The problem is the girl he had sex with turns out to be the missing girl Jasmin, and he appears to be the last one to see her.

The story revolves around these three families and particularly Lily trying to find out what happened to her sister.

All the women like Tom and he’s that central overlapping part of the Venn Diagram made up of the sexual relationships between the three families.

This is a cracking story.

I can almost guarantee that you will never look at families doing the school run the same again. Yet as shocking as the murder is, the relationships and the characters are very, very believable.

Pages: 352 (paperback) Publisher: Mind Brief Publishing

The Devil’s Code. Michael Wood

The second in the Dr Olivia Winter series.

Her father is still alive and in prison but has no big part to play in this book, except that a TV series based on his killings is about to be aired on prime time television. Bringing Olivia back into the unwelcome spotlight.

The main story in this book centres on the investigation into a series of murders. Isaac McFadden is in prison for one murder. He was stopped by the police for a faulty light on his car, but they discovered a dismembered body in the boot.

Throughout his arrest and questioning he replied no comment to all questions. In court he was found guilty of one murder. But when his daughter started to clear out his house she found a note book with some coded entries, and an eclectic mix of items she’d never seen before, hidden in the bedroom.

The police now think there may have been more than one murder and turn to Olivia to help her crack the code in the book, and McFaddens code of silence.

Moving to Newcastle to help the police she has to interview the daughter, a woman that is going through what Olivia went through, finding out the father she loved is actually a killer. She tries to help her emotionally, but the spotlight from the TV series has an adverse effect.

I have to say the plot in this book is brilliant. I love the characters, the way it’s written, the story, the cadence, everything.

I think the code in the notebook is clever, and most of it I’d never have got, but the two parts the team really struggle with, for me, were the most obvious. It didn’t detract from my enjoyment, but I think most people will suss it quite quickly.

The fears at the end of my review of the first book didn’t transpire. Olivia Winter is a brilliant Forensic Psychologist, who was the only survivor when her father killed her family, the latest in a series of his killings.

My fear was that it would be another of those series where the incarcerated father would be the go too expert relied on by the law abiding daughter. Apart from the TV series he has little part to play and is hardly mentioned, but when he is ……..

The second book in a series can often be “the difficult second book” but if anything this one is even better than the first, and now I can’t wait for number three.

Pages: 477. Publisher: One More Chapter. Audiobook length: 13.48 hours. Narrator: Olivia Mace

The Chemist A.A Dhand

A massive heads up to give about a book that I think is the best crime thriller I’ve read this year.

Not set with a cop as the main character, but with a pharmacist who is just trying to do the right thing.

Idris Khan is the “Chemist” a pharmacist on a tough council estate in Leeds. His chemist shop is where the locals go for their medicine, it’s also where the local drug addicts get their daily methadone treatment.

Khan is also the only pharmacist who the local drug lord allows into the Mews, a council estate of high rise flats.

Jahangir Hosseini is the drug lord. He runs the five flats and the houses around them. Nobody gets past his gatekeepers, nobody sells drugs unless they are his. But most importantly nobody ever leaves the estate to live elsewhere, because once he has you hooked on his drugs, he doesn’t want you to taking your trade anywhere else.

The rest of Leeds underworld is run by Thomas Mead and he has always wanted to run the Mews but can’t afford the damage a gang war would do.

Meanwhile a small time pimp is running prostitutes in Heaton, one of them, a fresh face is sent out on her first night. Her client attacks her but Liam says if he wants it rough, get him to pay extra. In desperation she turns to Rebecca, a councillor who works with street girls.

In a crazy turn of events Rebecca kills the client by stabbing him in the back. The client just happens to be Thomas Meads brother who has only just been released from prison.

In a panic Rebecca calls he ex husband, Idris Khan, for help.

And that is where the story really starts.

The more Khan helps the deeper the hole he is digging himself, Rebecca, and Amy the young prostitute

This is a compelling story of a man who is trying to help people. Drug addicts, prostitutes, people generally down on their luck, living in a terrible part of the country.

When that help takes him into the mews he is protected by the drug lord, but only their terms.

He has free range to move around in places the police daren’t go.

And in the words of some actor in a film I can’t remember the name of, he has skills. Not physical, he has a brain, and he has a pharmacy in a world where drugs are a daily necessity for most people.

This is the story of bad decisions and loyalties. The story of a man just trying to get along in life by helping others. When that help leads to trouble it comes from all directions. Two drug lords, the police and the community.

A cracking read from and unusual point of view, and I loved it.

Pages: 432. Publisher: HQ. Publishing date: 22/05/2025. Audiobook length 10 hours 14, Narrator TBC

Zodiac. Conrad Jones

It’s a common name in serial killers, one factual and many fictional but this Zodiac story is a real standout. One of the fastest paced psychological thrillers I’ve read for a while, and what a story.

With a time line that dances back and forward between previous kills and the current investigation the tension is built quite quickly.

The first murder, four years ago is brilliantly written without being gratuitous, the tension of a girl walking through the woods to her death, alluding to the horrors she’s been through since she was kidnapped, and the way she is about to die, without going into the gore of a complete description.

Today, a young brother and sister leave home with no breakfast, their mom and dad still in bed sleeping of last nights alcohol and drugs excesses, witness a gang fight on a bus. Two teenagers are killed one stabbed, the other hit by a car as he runs from the scene.

Another day on the streets of Liverpool. They live in a low socioeconomic area where kids hang out around a row of shops at night, where rumours are rife that the owners of the shop are grooming young girls, but those girls don’t care because they are actually getting the attention they should be getting at home, but it comes at a cost.

One of the boys killed on the bus is the son of one of Liverpools biggest organised crime groups. A violent man who leads a violent gang.

He wants the killer of his son.

More girls go missing and eventually bodies start to turn up.

It is when all of these seemingly isolated strands start to knit together that things really start to get dangerous on the streets.

The Police are running investigations into missing persons, murders, grooming, and organised crime gangs. Some of these are linked, some are just distractions that throw red herrings in their direction, but ultimately they realise they are after one person. The Zodiac.

The problem is the head of the Gang is also running an investigation, and his interrogation techniques are not as friendly as the police’s, his crew don’t have to stay within the niceties of the law, they can use things like pliers, drills and blowtorch’s.

Who will untangle the threads of the investigation first. Will the Gangs attempts to find their bosses sons killer get in the way of the police’s attempts to find Zodiac, or is it really one person they are both after.

I loved this book, well nearly. The cadence of the story telling is wonderful. The plot is fantastically woven right up to the last page it provides shocks and twist. But……there is a but.

Why do authors go to so much trouble getting the crime and policing side of a story right and then do such a poor job of other aspects.

There are two major scenes where the Fire Service is involved in this book, and the inaccuracies and naivety of these sections of the book was in stark contrast to the rest of the story.

I know not many people would pick up on this but I’m sure a few will.

For me, if I was writing reviews with ratings, this would have dropped an easy five star to a four. If those scenes had have been at the start of the book I would have put it down, but thankfully I was fully hooked by then.

Would I recommend it yes. It does get a bit gory in places, but it’s well placed, essential to the story, and not overly graphic.

The sections where the author talks about grooming are well written and I wouldn’t really say there’s any section I would warn about for triggering.

It is one of the best UK based psychological thrillers I’ve read for a very long time.

Pages: 402. Publisher: Red Dragon Books.

Hidden. Kendra Elliott

Billed as book 1 in the Bone Secrets series, and what an opener.

Looking online there are 5 books in this series, so far, and I can’t wait to get stuck into the next one.

Forensic Odontologist Lacey Campbell is young and at the beginnings of her career. A lecturer at her local Dental School, and occasional forensic consultant, she is called to a scene where a collection of bones have been discovered.

She quickly realises she knows the victim. The last time she had seen the girl she had been taken by a serial killer, and became his last victim.

The bones are found in a building belonging to a medically retired cop, Jack Harper.

Jack had once dated another victim of the killer, and when his ex cop partner is found tortured to death, links start to fall in place. That cop had been one of the officers to catch the killer.

An uneasy alliance forms as Lacey and Jack start to work on their own theories.

Both come under suspicion by the officers investigating the current killings.

But what is the link?

Can Lacey really trust Jack?

A great story. I don’t know where the series will go next, which characters will return, but there’s enough interesting subplots in this book to open many avenues.

Lacey is young, hot, and hot blooded. Her character is a really enjoyable read.

The relationship with Jack is steamy. They are both passionate about finding this killer, and that passion boils over into a will-they-won’t-they scenario.

Jack is a business owner who owns many properties. He was a cop for a short time, until an arrest went wrong and he got injured. He had returned for a short while but found it wasn’t right for him so joined his father’s business.

Then there’s Lacey’s friend Michael, a no nonsense journalist who she once dated but is now best friends with.

Set in the coastal state Oregon there is loads of potential for crimes to investigate, big cities, isolated towns, seaports, the list could be endless

So let’s see where it goes next.

Pages: 373. Publisher: Montlake Romance (Don’t know why, it’s definitely a crime thriller)

The Collector Series. Dot Hutchison

There are four books in this series, I picked the first one up over Christmas and finished the last one on the second of January.

Yes, I was hooked.

This is a remarkable series, not just for the stories, which are superb, but for the structure and the way they are written.

The stories centre around an FBI team in the Crimes Against Children division.

Each book contains a gripping story but is told from a different team members point of view, with that character in each book being written in the first person.

In the case of the first book the first person, present tense is mainly used for one of the victims.

This, almost unique, style of writing over the series gives a great insight into the personality, emotions, and relationships in high profile investigation teams.

#1 The Butterfly Garden

Teenage girls kidnapped from the streets and held inside a secured garden. The man who takes them is only known to them as the gardener. He’s a collector, a collector of butterflies, in this case human butterflies.

Once the girl has been kidnapped the are subdued and their back is tattooed with their own unique, colourful set of butterfly wings. The girls is given a new name and released into the garden where they interact with other girls who are also being held.

The butterflies are treated well, except when the Gardener wants sex. In his mind he’s being gentle and saving them from the outside world. But they have a life span and when they reach 21 he kills them, before putting them into a glass frame in resin to display them.

But he’s not the biggest threat to the girls. His son is a monster and uses, and abuses, the girls in the worst way.

Special Agent Victor Hanoverian, and his partner Brandon Eddison, and their team investigate the latest disappearance and start to piece together a case that surprises even these veterans.

The pace of this story is frantic. Following one of the girls experience from just before she’s taken, until ……..well until the end of the book but that would be a spoiler.

#2 The Roses of May

This time Eddison is the main character with the story being written in the first person tense from his point of view.

Young women are being killed and posed with flowers on, or around the body. The type of flowers are different for each girl and seem to have a relate to her in some way.

One of the victims sisters, Priya, is receiving flowers, specifically the same type of flowers the victims were posed with, in some type of predictive countdown to another killing, but is she the target.

Eddison has a relationship with Priya, he had investigated her sisters murder and had kept in touch.

A running theme throughout the series is that the team form friendships with victims, and in some cases the bond is more like family. Often the victims become unofficial councillors, they understand the team like nobody else can, and from very different positions, share the experiences of the crimes they are involved in.

In this story the relationship, between Eddison and Priya, is the main focus of the story and it works really well.

#3 The Summer Children

Team members are introduced through the series, in this book Special Agent Mercedes Ramirez, a background character in the previous books, takes centre stage.

Blood covered children, clutching teddy bears, are being left on her doorstep.

Each time the child is told to talk to Ramirez and that she’ll look after them. They are told by a woman who’s forced the child to watch her kill their parents, telling them that they would be safe now and that she’s saving them.

Ramirez has always given the child victims of the crimes she investigates a teddy bear to help comfort them. The killer is now using this against her.

Her emotions are fraught as she tries to dig into past investigations in an attempt to find a link. The killer is described as looking like an angel, and in a really unusually spin the children are all sure it’s a woman.

#4 The Vanishing Season

One of the newest members of the team, Eliza Stirling takes the first person point of view for the final book in the series.

A young girl goes missing around Halloween time. She was walking home from school in a nice safe neighbourhood and nobody saw a thing.

The girl bears a striking resemblance to Stirling, enough for her to be moved to a desk for the investigation because her looks are to emotional for the family.

Her frustrations are shared by her partner Eddison. It’s the anniversary of his sister’s disappearance, and she was about the same age as the latest victim, and had the same blonde hair and blue eyes, and he is also sidelined because of the triggers the similarities might bring.

The detective in charge of looking for Edison’s daughter is long retired but he never stopped looking for her.

When he, and others start to link numerous disappearances over nearly 30 years, it looks like a serial kidnapper has been taking girls for generations.

The story of the investigation, in this book, is a tool to examine the relationship between Stirling and Eddison, and the extended team of FBI agents and past victims.

It’s one of the best finales to a series I’ve ever read.

Emotions run high, friendship and relationships are strained the bonds are tight but not indestructible.

This is a short but brilliant series. I had not heard of Dot Hutchison before but these books have been available for some time. Why she’s flown below my radar I have no idea. But she is firmly on it now.

Publisher Thomas & Mercer

The Dark Arches. Andrew Barrett

This is the second book in the DS Regan Carter series, and as brilliant as it is, it come with a but…….you have to read book 1 A Random Kill first.

It’s not often I say a book can’t be read as a standalone but this really does feel like a continuation of the last, and without reading Random Kill you would be thoroughly confused.

That said, this is a fantastic story. Carter has not only annoyed a deranged gang leader, Bradshaw, she has identified his mole in the Police, or at least one of them.

So with Bradshaw still missing a significant drug package, and a good few thousand pounds, he is really miffed with Carter.

His crew has a loose cannon that’s too unpredictable, unreliable, and utterly violent, who is fixated on Carter. So the best thing Bradshaw can do is set him out to get her and fix his biggest problem.

Meanwhile Bradshaw has come up with a plan to get rich quick, the way he does it is not original, but the scale of the effect it has is massive, and also totally realistic and believable.

Carter is heading-up one avenue of the investigation, whilst her boss starts looking at the person Carter identified as the leak.

What follows is an intriguing story. Carter is out for Bradshaw. Bradshaw knows this and sets psycho Eric after her.

However Eric proves to be a burden and Bradshaw decides he’s too much of a risk and sets him up to fail.

The dance that follows is as good as anything on Strictly.

The suspense contained in the chapters is palpable. At times I had to tell myself to breath

The end of the book, just like the first, leaves the door, not only wide open, but knocked off its hinges, for the continuation in book three.

I really wish I hadn’t found this series until it was complete. I only had a couple of weeks wait between finishing A Random Kill before this one was published. Now I’ll have to wait months for the next instalment.

It would have been a massive book, if it’s only a trilogy, but Galbraith (Rowling) gets away with 1000 page books, so I think this would have been an epic, but brilliant, one book story.

Pages: 328. Publisher: The Ink Foundry

36 Hours. Angela Marsons

Wow. In fact several wows

Wow 1 How is this book 21 of the series. I know time flies but it only seems like yesterday I was enthralled by Silent Scream.

Wow 2 The fact that the series just goes from strength to strength

Wow 3. What a brilliant story.

Kim Stone and her team are back, but at first not officially.

When Stones not so favourite journalist turns up on her doorstep with a half baked story Kim should not be giving it any credence, but there is something about the message that Frost brings her that impacts and makes her take it seriously enough to text her team, on their day off.

So what exactly is it that grips Stone. Frost has been given a deadline. If she doesn’t follow the clues she’s going to be sent, and solve the puzzle within 36 hours, somebody is going to die.

Not everybody, including Stone’s boss take it seriously and the team are given the opportunity to bail out, or help Kim with the investigation on a voluntary basis.

To make matters more complex Stone includes Frost in the team and gives her a seat in the office.

Even those that decide to stay find this a step to far and the tension in the office is palpable.

The first clue leads them to a box, amongst the contents is an audio file in which a person can be heard screaming.

As each clue is discovered the contents get more horrifying.

I’m running out of superlatives to describe Angela Marsons books. Amongst all of the things she’s always good at, characters, plot, settings, this one added a rhythm to story that only the really best authors seem to get right.

Any author can add pace but this story pulses. The anxiety of a new clue and the rush to find it, the lull and anticipation when the team, back in the office, are waiting to hear what Kim and Bryant have found whilst out in the field.

As a Black Country lad I always look forward to seeing where the plot will be set, in this case they race across many locations that are absolutely perfect for hiding clues.

Pace, suspense and a terrific story meant that I read this book in as close to one sitting as it is possible whilst carrying on with a normal life.

Can it be read as a standalone, yes.

Should you read the rest of the series in order, I would, but then again I’m lucky enough to have been in from the start.

Pages. 362. Publisher. Bookouture. Audiobook length. 8 hours 3 minutes. Narrator Jan Cramer

The Silent Watcher. Victor Methos

The crimes, two horrendously bloody murder scenes several years apart, the latest in Las Vegas close to the city.

The detective, Lazarus Holloway. He was part of the first investigation and he never got over the scene, or the fact that he couldn’t catch the killer.

The survivor. Sophie Grace, 15 escaped the latest murder scene, but why was she allowed to survive.

Piper Danes, the Gaurdian, a legal representative who looks after the interest of Sophie during the investigation and any court proceedings. Young and inexperienced but with a moralistic compass that makes her a fearsome advocate and protector.

The investigation into the crimes is a gritty story, but to my surprise an arrest is made just over halfway into the story.

Enter a defence attorney that is one of the most aggravating characters I have come across in a book, but I loved her. Russo Blanchi only cares for one thing, winning. She doesn’t care who she defends, who the victims are, or weather her client is guilty or innocent, she just wants to win.

The first half of the book was really good, but the second half goes up another gear.

Victor Methos is another new author to me, and I’m not sure how widely known he is here in the U.K.

I found this book as an Amazon recommendation after I read a US Courtroom thriller, otherwise I think I’d still be in the dark about Methos’ work.

His writing style is fast paced and easy to read, but to keep me as enthralled, as this book did, it has to have a great story.

What I liked was the realism and the fact that at no time could I predict what was coming next. That meant that none of the characters were, in my mind, safe. This added a real suspense to the story.

For me, this is one of my finds of the year.

Pages: 306. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer.

Her Deadly Game. Robert Dugoni

It’s inevitable that every American, legal, courtroom, thriller , I read gets measured against John Grisham. Few get an equal billing but this book is right up there with any of his.

Keera Duggan is an attorney in Seattle. Formerly she worked for the state prosecutor’s office, which she left after a short but ill advised affair with her boss.

Now she’s back working in the family law firm trying to salvage its reputation. Her father, Patsy, was once a fearsome defence attorney, but over the years he has became more dependent on booze and is ruining his own fearsome reputation as well as his firms.

When Vince LaRussa, a rich investment fund manager returns home to find his disabled wife shot dead in their kitchen, the Police do what Police do and instantly suspect the husband.

He is aware of Patsy’s reputation off old, and hires his firm. He doesn’t get Patsy who is recovering from his latest bender, he gets Keera, who is yet to defend at a murder trial.

The case is a strange one. It’s a locked room mystery that LaRussa seems to have an airtight alibi for. But Keera’s ex-boss and lover, wants to get it to trial quick, he wants to use the case to humiliate her.

What follows is an excellent courtroom drama.

As is usual in American courts Keera’s defence is that somebody else, unknown, killed LaRussa’s wife.

There are at least two suspects but why would either of them want Anne LaRussa dead.

There are twists in this story that leaves the final verdict in question all the way up till the end, and even then there is a vicious sting in the tail.

I like books which are fast paced, with a bit of grit, and that are totally realistic. This story ticks all of those boxes.

There is no spurious writing. Every page holds meaning to the story.

Although Keera’s relationship with her father is an important part of the story it doesn’t get over relied on in the plot, a mistake I’m finding more and more writers make these days.

This is book one in a three book series.

I have a big to-be-read pile, and it speaks volumes that they have all gone on hold whilst I download and read the other two in this series first.

Pages: 396. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Audiobook length 11 hours Saskia Maarleveld