Category: Crime Series

What The Dark Whispers. M.J Lee

The DI Ridpath books are right up there in my favourite reads, and are always the next-to-read, as soon as they are available to me.

Ridpath is a brilliantly conceived character. Employed by Greater Manchester Police, and posted within the MIT, he has, from the start of the series, been on secondment to the Coroners Office, allowing him a greater range of deaths to investigate.

His secondment was intended to give him an easy ride back to work following a battle with cancer, but over the years he has been involved in some serious murder investigations. He has become a single parent who is struggling to bring up his now teenage daughter, and balance his home life with work. A typical cop his work often comes first.

Now, with GMP under increasing scrutiny , and with staff shortages being exacerbated by increased crime levels the Police want more and more of Ridpath’s time.

So when he is called in by his boss (police) to look at a serious crime that another DI and his team have already wound up Ridpath is put into conflict with one of his peers.

The crime, a young girl accused of killing her mother, a seemingly open and shut case following the girls confession. But she is a minor, and the interview was not carried out well.

Did she really killer mother.

In a separate case Ridpath is tasked by the coroner to look into the death of a man who set himself on fire on a petrol station forecourt.

Suicide? Everything points to it.

But why did both victims, who died hours apart, say the same thing insinuating they are dying in order to save others.

As the investigations continue more similarities are uncovered.

Add to this another team investigating the murder of a family of four, which in isolation seems unrelated. And that’s the problem if these crimes were looked at in isolation nobody would ever get caught.

Can the connections be made.

Are there more deaths to come.

The pace of the book is none stop. M.J Lee’s cadence in his writing just keeps me hooked every time I pick one of his books up.

This one, in my opinion, is one of the best in the series.

Could it be read as a standalone, yes, there is enough mention of previous happenings to leave new readers with no doubt as to how Ridpath, and his family, have got to where they are.

Nicely, for those of us that have read the previous books there’s not too much rehashing and it certainly doesn’t detract from the story, it more reminds us of what has gone before.

But, if I was to be asked, I’d say read the series in order. It really is that good.

Pages: 351. Publisher: Canelo Crime. Release date: 03/07/2025

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

What The Dead Want. M.J Lee

DI Ridpath #10

This series is constantly one of my top two British crime thriller, police procedural, reads

M.J Lee has created a unique character. DI Tom Ridpath has two jobs. His main job is in the Major Investigation Team of Greater Manchester Police. But following treatment for cancer he was seconded to the Corner as her investigator, a job he is still doing four years later, although he is increasingly back in the fold of the police.

The uniqueness of the situation sees Ridpath investigating deaths for the Coroner that sometimes haven’t raised suspicions of the police.

In this case a high death rate at a Residential Care Home for the elderly.

At the same time Ridpath is tasked, by the police, to look at the case of a fourteen year old boy who went missing during the Covid lockdown, and was never found.

Why was the case so badly handled in the first place?

It’s a hot chalice for Ridpath, often seen as an outsider, and an ideal scapegoat, could this be somebody engineering his failure.

Covid took its toll on the police and they were slow to respond, officers went sick and the continuity of the investigation was shattered. So what can the new investigation find, without highlighting just how badly the police had messed up, without Ridpath taking the blame.

Meanwhile a serial killer is lounging in a high security hospital plotting his escape. Ex medical examiner Harold Lardner wants revenge on the people that put him in jail. That includes everybody at Greater Manchester Coroners Office.

The residential care home starts to crop up in Ridpaths missing persons case, and his inquiries for the Coroner are being thwarted by the care home management.

Surely the two cases can’t be related.

Lardner is plotting and pulling strings like a master puppeteer, but surely he can’t have been playing the long game and somehow be responsible for the disappearance of the boy four years ago.

This is a great story in a great series.

The main character, Ridpath, struggles with his work life balance. A a widowed father with a fourteen year old daughter his home life is fractious. As a cop with two jobs, which comes with often conflicting loyalties, work is also fractious.

Ridpath and the recurring characters, the background storyline running through the series, and the story within each book makes these books unmissable.

Pages:394. Publisher Canelo Crime

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

A Random Kill. Andrew Barrett

Billed as the start of a new series, I can only hope it turns out to be a long one

I like my main characters to have a bit of grit. Detective Sergeant Regan Carter has a whole quarry.

A fiery red head, who has just been transferred to her nightmare job by the husband she’s just divorced, Regan hates dead bodies. She hates the smells, the body fluids, the injuries, the fact that they fart and belch when the trapped gases get released, in fact there is nothing about them she can get along with.

So as a piece of revenge, the worst thing that her nearly ex-husband could do, would be to get her transferred to one of the busiest murder teams in the country.

Just to put the icing on the cake she is replacing a woman that was dearly loved by her team and who died in a freak accident, with everybody presuming that one of the existing DCs on the team would get her post.

Regan Carter, yes she is named after the two main characters in the 1970s TV series The Sweeney, has a mouth that would match Gene Hunt, from another famous series and has an attitude to match, so making friends is not at the top of her list when she arrives at the new team.

Neither is getting involved with a complicated murder based around the drug scene in Leeds.

What follows is one of the best introductions to a new series I’ve read in a very long time.

A seemingly random shooting of a woman, her child taken in his pram, is Carters introduction to her new job.

But is it as random as it seems. Carter is the epitome of a “Dog with a Bone” and in her brash manner manages to annoy both her bosses, her peers, and the local villains.

In the real world she would undoubtedly be sacked, but in the none woke world of crime fiction, she is a breath of fresh air.

A bit like real world policing there are times in this book when a wry grin cannot be avoided. It’s the only way to deal with the horrors the detectives, and the readers, encounter, and in this book there is one very imaginative, and gory, way of killing.

I really hope this series is a long runner, because there is some entertaining mileage in Regan Carter.

Publisher: The Ink Foundry. Pages: 415. Available now

Her Last Walk Home. Patricia Gibney

Every time I read a book in this series I know it’s going to be frighteningly realistic. The crimes, the characters, the lot, all add up to stories that have me hooked, and this one is no exception.

Walking home at night you should be safe, but everyone knows it’s increasingly risky. So when one young woman doesn’t complete the journey and is found dead, on a bit of grass, a murder investigation is got underway.

As a mother, with children about the same age, Detective Lottie Parker is always going to give the investigation her all, she always does.

The team soon identify the girl and find that she had been on an innocent date the night she disappeared.

Or at least on the face of it she had.

When another girl is found dead in similar circumstances the victims begin to look a little less “innocent”

Two things you are Guaranteed with Patricia Gibney books. Firstly they are written from the heart. Every emotion, of every character is carefully crafted and plays out wonderfully on the pages. Secondly the plot is always original, surprising, and most importantly realistic.

I can’t write too much about the plot, the victims, and the person, or persons responsible for the crimes without including huge spoilers.

In a vague way I will say that the young women that are killed are just being young women, and that nobody deserves to be murdered.

But in modern society what is innocent.

It’s a question this book ponders. When does moralistically wrong become illegally wrong.

When does a person cross the line from having fun, to needing the fruits of having fun.

At what point does the empathy of the reader, or the bystander, become negatively judgmental, a luxury a Police Investigator cannot afford to let cloud their investigation.

All of these things Patricia Gibney handles better than most writers.

Lottie Parker has had it rough, her family have put her through the wringer, but no matter what she is still a supportive mother, grandmother, and daughter, faced with all the trials and tribulations of being the “responsible adult” to all of the generations.

The Parker family story is central to these books and although this, and the others, could be read as a standalone, I would highly recommend reading the series to get the full impact.

Print length: 500 pages. Publisher: Bookouture. Audiobook length: 13 hours. Narrator: Michele Moran

Body Language, Life Sentence, Case Sensitive and Dead Fall by A.K Turner

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a new series this much.

One of the best things about reading is finding a new author with an established series, and binge reading it.

That’s exactly what happened to me with this series. I picked up Body Language just over a week ago and have just put down Dead Fall having read all four books.

There are two main characters in these books Cassie Raven and Phyllida Flyte, and they couldn’t be more at opposite ends of the social scale.

Cassie is a runaway school drop out who once lived, and took class A drugs, in squats around Camden Town, whilst embracing the Goth life style. Now she’s still a Goth, but she’s got herself together, and in her mid twenties she’s working as a Senior Morgue Technician, still in Camden Town.

Phyllida is a very prim-and-proper, Police Detective, who is suffering the culture shock of moving from a relatively safe shire constabulary to a high pressure, machismo fuelled , Major Crimes department in Londons Met.

Cassie doesn’t look the part, with her Goth haircut, tattoos and piercings but she’s good at her job.

She thinks the dead sometimes talk to her, but what is actually happening is her intuition is kicking in. She’s seen something on the body that isn’t right, or contradicts the initial findings, or the Police’s hypothesis of how a person has died.

She knows that instinct has highlighted something, and she is like a dog with a bone until she’s worked out what it is.

Meanwhile Phyllida battles the male dominated rough talking London Officers, she is not just there to make their tea, and although often given the menial tasks, her detective work soon gets to be seen for what it is, brilliant.

When Phyllida first encounters Cassie it’s fair to say she doesn’t like her, and it’s also fair to say the feeling is mutual. These two are everything the other doesn’t like in a person.

But inevitably the trust starts to build, they both recognise each others strengths and intuitions on a professional basis, but find each other immensely irritating on a personal level.

The series follows both of their personal lives, and as both of them have great back stories, and become reluctant friends , it makes great reading.

Each book contains one main crime, starting with a sudden or suspicious death. As in real life the investigation can be complex and convoluted, but it always stays well within the realms of possibilities.

Body Language.

When somebody Cassie knows ends up in her morgue she’s not happy with the initial findings. The Police say Accidental Death, a hypothesis the pathologist is, at first happy to support.

But Cassie’s intuition says different and she goes to great lengths to prove the death was anything but an accident.

The one person who listens to her is the “stuck-up, posh” new Police woman.

Life Sentence

Having learned something about her family, that she was blissfully unaware of ( It’s difficult to go deeper without spoiling book 1) Cassie tries to make right a wrong which has affected her family for as long as she can remember. Her unlikely ally, as this will also bring the police into disrepute is Phyllida, can Miss Strait-Laced be convinced to break the rules with the reputation of her colleagues on the line.

Case Sensitive

This time it’s Phyllida’s turn to trust her instincts. When a body turns up floating in a canal she is sure she recognises him. It’s her that doesn’t like the initial Post Mortem, and asks Cassie if her intuition had kicked in.

This time what they uncover will test both of their resolves, physically and moralistically, but will both of them come out unscathed.

Dead Fall

When a promising young singer ends up on Cassie’s slab everybody thinks it’s a tragic suicide.

Cassie knew her before she became famous and had gone to school with her.

Reflecting the life and death of one of Camdens other tragic pop stars this girl had a roller coaster life of drugs and fame, even if it was very short lived.

Cassie spots wounds on the body that she doesn’t think are consistent with her jumping from her high rise flat.

Things have moved on in Phyllida’s world ( again I can’t go into that without spoiling book 3) but when Cassie is proven right, and that this is not a suicide, Phyllida is tasked to look at how the initial police investigation got things so wrong

The series needs reading in order. The running story forms the backbone of the series and Cassie and Phyllida’s needs reading in chronological order.

Having read 4 books in 10 days I now have to join the rest of the world in waiting for book 5. And to say I’m excited to see where the series goes next is an understatement.

Stunning.