Crime Series – Page 6 – nigeladamsbookworm

Devils Chimney. Adam Lyndon

Billed as book one of the Detective Rutherford Barnes series, and hopefully it’s going to be a long series.

Two uniform PC’s are out at night looking for the person responsible for a series of burglaries. They come across a home which has been broken into and chase down the man they see outside.

The home belongs to one of the officers, Harriet Holden, a message scrawled on the wall is a direct threat.

The man is taken into custody and yells another threat “I know who you’re f….ing. No one’s going to miss you. You can jump into the fire but you’ll never be free..

Whilst the burglaries suspect is in custody Holden goes missing, and is later found murdered and mutilated.

Her partner on the night, the arresting officer, a young PC, Rutherford Barnes, is drafted into CID to help with the case, and is soon embroiled in a case that has many twist and turns.

The story is set in 2001 and it’s the perfect time period to start this series.

Technology is starting to race ahead but the era still has DNA in its earliest use, mobile phone tech at it’s basics, and policing still suffering some of the biases the police suffered before forces started to address them in the 90’s

Barnes is a strong character with a firm moral compass, and he needs it for this case.

Set on the south coast a criminal is forging his own “empire”. People come under his influence, people who should know better.

Barnes trusts people, but that naïvety soon gets eroded and a stronger willed copper develops

This is a great story. At over 450 pages is a long read by todays standards but, as they say, time flies when you’re enjoying yourself, and this book seemed to fly by when I was reading it.

Pages: 451. Published by: Joffe Books. Publishing date: 23/6/2022

Trick of the Night. Joy Ellis

It wasn’t until I looked the author up that I realised I was reading the fifth book in the series. Not that it mattered because it was reading well as a standalone novel.

I loved the story. At last, it wasn’t the dog walker finding the body. In this case a young student, studying photography at university, is out taking nighttime urban scenes.

When he gets back to his flat and uploads his images he realises that he can see a face in a window. A window in an old, void building, and she looks terrified.

Along with a friend they go to have a look at the building and find no sign of life. But when they return to the flat his computer has been taken and a threatening note left behind.

What follows is an intriguing crime story that covers a lucrative small town crime scene. The old gang, of “honest rouges” is facing a new threat to its territory, a new twist on old crimes, and they can’t keep up.

Retired Police Officers Matt Ballard and Liz Haynes find themselves on the edge of the ongoing turf and trade wars. They have been approached by a grieving mother who is convinced her son and his friend were killed, and didn’t die accidentally as the police investigation found.

It really is a good story.

Yes, there is a but coming.

The but is, the style of writing. It’s all to polite and almost gentrified.

I felt like I was reading a story written today by a person from the thirties or forties. Imagine Agatha Christie writing in her own style but in todays settings.

Another but.

But I really, really enjoyed it.

Publisher: Joffe. Pages: 381. Publishing date: 16th June 2022

The Binding Room. Nadine Matheson

This book is so much more than a crime novel.

Nadine Matheson has taken a cracking crime story and wrapped a clever plot full of politics around it.

The politics of race, family feuds, political interference and so much more.

A Pastor is murdered in his Church.

The SIO, DI Anjeclica Henley is looking around the scene when she finds a small locked room with the body of a young, white, man bound to a bed. Everybody thinks he’s dead until the Pathologist arrives and finds he’s alive.

The family of the Pastor have an overinflated view of his importance, and perceived celebrity.

The young man is unidentified.

The Pastors wife is infuriated by the fact that the Police appear to be putting more effort into identifying the man from the locked room, than into the murder of her “celebrity” husband.

The wife involves the local MP who sees an opportunity to attack the already stretched Police force, accusing them of racism.

What she doesn’t realise is that DI Henley is SIO and that she is Black. In fact by “rattling the cage” and insisting on a press conference she has the opposite effect.

Suddenly the Pastor has gone from murder victim to possible abuser, with is past life being dragged up by police and press.

All the time another person is being held captive, their bones are being broken, they are being denied food and drink. Is it too late for her to be saved.

A great read, as much for the personal and professional struggles some of the characters go through, as for the crime itself.

Pages: 512. Publisher: HQ Release date: 7th July 2022

When The Night Ends. M.J Lee

As a Coroner’s Officer DI Ridpath has different legal powers under the Coroners legislation.

In remission from Cancer, and on what some people see as light-duties, Ridpath is still attached to one of Greater Manchester Police’s Major Investigation Teams, whilst working for the Coroner.

So when an Inquiry is formed to look into a death in a custody cell everybody, including the Coroner thinks Ridpath might want to take a back seat, but he’s happy there is no conflict of interest and insists on carrying out investigations in preparation for the inquest .

But then the questions start. Why was the Post Mortem carried out so quickly, why was the body cremated before the toxicology results came back. Why were so many important witnesses ignored by the investigation carried out by the IPC, and why are some of those witnesses dying.

The Custody Sergeant on the night of the death was a good man, every copper liked him. He’s been cleared by two internal investigations of any wrong doing.

It’s a step too far for most of Ridpath’s colleagues in the MIT, another investigation of a good cop who has been left festering at a desk for three years.

I don’t know why this series flies under so many peoples radar. I often get asked who my favourite authors are and M.J Lee is always one of those I mention, which is usually followed by the answer, “Oh, I’ll look him up”

This is a great series. Ridpath is one of the great fictional Police Officers being written today.

His ongoing story, the moralistic conflicts he finds himself in are great reads

The fact he works to different legislation whilst also having a Police Warrant Card, gives murder and suspicious death investigations a different angle from most Police procedurals.

This is a great addition to a great series.

Pages: 403. Publisher: Canelo Crime. Publishing date: 9th June 2022

Six Graves. Angela Marsons

In the blink of an eye we’re at book 16

You would think that by now the series would be running out of steam, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The prologue hooked me in a way no other start to a book ever has.

In places the story had me holding my breath till I was turning blue.

And the last page left me Gob Smacked and reaching for a glass of Jack Daniels.

A family dead. Mom, Dad, and two children all shot and the mother is still holding the gun.

Surely this is a straight forward murder suicide.

DI Kim Stone’s not sure. As she starts to dig into the family history she starts to uncover secrets. Helen, the mother has history of depression., but is that enough to tip her over the edge.

The team dig deeper and the clues start to surface, but it’s not just clues which are surfacing, so is a face from Kim’s past.

She receives a threat to her life. Typically she shrugs it of but this one’s serious and it has her rattled. Rattled enough to send Barney away on a holiday for his safety.

As she continues to lead the team looking at the death of the family a psychopath that is getting close, metaphorically and physically.

I challenge anybody not to read this in one sitting. It’s a book that brings a new meaning to the word tense, there was no way I could put it down

Angela Marsons has a way of writing that has always engaged with me. One of the things that her writing has is a realism that I can associate with.

It’s not just that her stories are based where I live, it’s not just the fact the characters are so realistic. It’s the empathy I have with Kim Stone.

That empathy really hit home in this book.

In all the crime scenes I attended, in all the fires I investigate, there has only ever been one thing that got to me. It was the normality of the scene. The rooms that hadn’t been affected. The rooms where it looked like the people who lived there were about to walk in and start their day.

In this book Angela Marsons captures that through Kim Stone better than anybody has captured it before.

The bar just got raised again.

Pages: 425. Audio book length: 8:33. Publisher: Bookouture Available now.

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The Lighthouse Girls. B.R Spangler

Detective Casey White is called when the body of a girl is found close to a lighthouse on the outer banks.

A family report their daughter missing from a nearby town.

When Casey goes to give the unfortunate family the bad news she’s in for a shock. It is their daughter thats dead, but it’s not the one they reported missing.

And that opens the door to one of the most original plots I’ve read for quite a while.

I read a lot of crime fiction so it’s not often I come across a story that lets me sit back and think, “I’ve not come across that before”

Casey and her team are brilliant. The ongoing stories and recurring characters that sit of the peripheries are great, but what really steals the show in these books is the setting.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina is fascinating. I’ve spent hours on Google Earth looking at the area.

One of the pleasures in reading is that the book can take you to places you’ve never heard of. Now I’ve found one I really want to visit.

A massive area of linked islands forming a false coast on the Atlantic Coast of America. Some island inhabited, some deserted, some overgrown wildernesses. Small towns, on the mainland side of the lagoon that’s formed by the islands, with the usual mix of rich, poor and eccentric characters.

For U.K. readers this is a bit like Midsummer, on the coast, and on steroids.

White is a brilliant character, she’s made enemies, and friends. The small town attitude means that whenever anything goes wrong the newcomer gets the blame. But things have got as bad as they’re going to get and the town is now on the rebound. It’s making its way back.

Will Casey get the credit and recognition she deserves, I doubt it.

Will she solve the riddle that is the two sisters, one dead, the other missing.

The key to it is embedded in the small town community, this small town just happens to be fragmented over a few islands and inlets.

A great story, a great series. I can’t wait till we find out what happens next on the Outer Banks.

Publisher: Bookouture. Print Length: 283 pages. Audio book: 8hrs 25 minutes. Available now

The Fossil Beach Murders. Rachel McClean

DCI Lesley Clarke is back for her 6th outing in the Dorset Crime Series.

An earth slip on the coast near Lyme Regis uncovers two bodies. They could have been there for days, weeks, years, even centuries. When the forensic teams start the examination it reveals they’ve been there about ten years, and that they were murdered.

What starts off as a routine investigation, into what appears to be a decade old crime, quickly starts to have ramifications today.

There has been a story winding through this series. The story of a Police Officers suicide, that Clarke is becoming convinced was anything but a suicide. The story of a local businessman who is anything but the straight and narrow pillar of the community they like to portray.

The exposure of the bodies during the landslide leads to an investigation that starts to bring the story to a head.

It’s a tense, unputdownable story. Clarke is carrying out the investigation in the shadow of veiled threats from her boss, and a possible parallel investigation into the suicide of her predecessor by a journalist.

Why is her boss being so cagey.

Political issues start to raise their head as a neighbouring force refuses to release information on the current case unless they are involved.

Why won’t they share their information with Dorset MIT

This is a six-out-of-five story. Utterly compelling and a must read for any crime fiction fan

Rachel McClean came in my radar last year and is now firmly one of my favourite authors

When I read a book I keep notes for my reviews, just a list of characters and a simple outline of the plot. It helps me with these reviews, and lets me go back and remember stories later on in a series.

It is a testament to this story that I wrote the title at the top of the page, then got so engrossed that I forgot to write another word.

Print length: 338 pages. Published by: Ackroyd Publishing. Available now. Search Dorset Crime on Amazon for the series and offer prices.

The Corpse Flower. Anne Mette Hancock

2016, a man is butchered in his home. A woman walks out of the house and stands, covered in his blood, looking into a CCTV camera. Her name is Anna, she walks away and is never found.

2019, Anna starts to send letters to journalist Heloise Kaldan. Cryptic notes that have the journalist confused, a claim of a link between her and Anna.

At the same time a woman walks into a police station in Copenhagen and claims she has seen Anna in France. Detective Sergeant Eric Schafer, the Chief Investigator for the murder, doesn’t really believe her until, she shows him the picture she took of the woman

Anna contacts Eric and the two start separate investigations.

What they uncover is chilling, a history of abuse of the worst kind. An apparently untouchable criminal hiding in the mist of being a respectful and powerful business man.

But what is the connection to Anna.

Who is pulling the strings. Both Anna and Eric work separately but remain in touch. One of them is being played.

This is a belter of a story. Like most scandi- noir it has a bit of over description, but like most of scandi-noir it seems more in tune with the story than it does in any other form of crime fiction.

The pace of the story occasionally wallows but it gives the reader a chance to take stock.

I believe this is the first book by Anne Mette Hancock, and that a second featuring Eric and Heloise is due to be published in November 2022. If this is right I will be looking for it on the bloggers review sites in the hope of getting an early copy. If I can’t get it there I will be preordering and waiting anxiously for it to land in my Kindle in November.

Print Length: 331. Publisher: Swift Press. Available now

The Box Hill Killer & The South Bank Murders. Biba Pearce

The on going police series has now reached book 5. As I only discovered this series very recently I have been binge reading it. It’s a testament to how good these books are that I am gutted that I’ve got to wait until publication day for the next one.

The lead character, DCI Rob Miller is one of those lovely rarities, a cop with no issues. A happy family man. No vices, no irritations, just a man doing his job.

His team is ever evolving with a strong core of three or four , but with others rotating in and out of his team. Every one of them is well written and just right for the role they play in the Police, and in the story.

The villains and victims are also perfectly written and evoke just the right level of anger and empathy.

In these two books the team are on the tracks of more vicious killers, but one investigation is really personal.

The Box Hill Killer.

12 years ago four people were killed by, who the press dubbed, The Pentagram Killer. When a current murder investigation throws doubt on the original investigation, of the four murders, Millers team have the headache of a current, and a historic crime being linked highlighting a miscarriage of justice.

What they don’t expect is to find a body dump, but when a cadaver dog starts to indicate possible burials in a remote area of a park, that is exactly what they find.

A great story.

The South Bank Murders

Possibly the best book in the series, and it starts with a bang.

3 men are killed in a shooting in a restaurant. One of them as a retired Police Officer who was very close to Rob and his team. In fact he’d phoned Rob on the day he was killed and asked him out for a drink.

The team find themselves involved in an investigation that involves County Line Drugs dealings centred on a rough Council Estate.

The realism of the writing in this book is brilliant. The way young immigrants are exploited to run drugs and carry out burglaries. The way the gangs Cuckoo people on the estate. People who want nothing to do with crime having to be involved because they’re to scared not to be.

Trying to work out who is lying because they are guilty, and those who are lying because they are too scared to tell the truth.

Who can the team trust. The quandary of the modern day police where estates are run by gangs who hold more fear than the authorities.

This is not just the best book in the series, it’s one of the best books I’ve read. Stunning.

Publisher Joffe Books. Pages: 332 and 298. Available now.

A Life For A Life. Carol Wyer

Carol Wyer is one of those authors who I look for. When her books are out up for review I grab them as soon as possible.

There’s a reason for this. She ticks all of my boxes when it comes to crime fiction.

Great characters, great settings, realistic stories, gritty, and no guarantee of a happy ending.

The Kate Young series has been her best so far, and A Life For A Life just takes it to another level.

Kate is made SIO when a seemingly innocent, if somewhat irritating, young man is found dead on a train station platform. He’s been shot in the head with a stun bolt, like those used to kill animals in abattoirs.

But he’s only the first victim, there will be others.

Meanwhile Kate is still trying to expose the bent Senior Police Officer she believes is responsible for the murder of her husband.

Her husband was a journalist who had been investigating a story involving high profile men abusing underage youths, of both sexes, in a sex club.

One of the underage youths had been killed by an over zealous customer whilst The Senior Police Officer was abusing a young girl in the neighbouring room. Now that girl is on the run and Kate knows she’s the only person who will have information to help her nail the dirty cop.

How far will Kate go in her attempts to avenge her husband, and how much will it affect her ability to perform as a normal day-to-day SIO.

The continuing story of Kates attempt to get justice for her husband runs nicely in parallel to the core story of this book, the investigation into the murders.

There’s another parallel that binds Kate and the Killer, but I really can’t mention it without giving a big spoiler. However when you read the book you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about, and just how clever Carol Wyer has been to use it.

This is crime fiction at its very best. It also shows why U.K. Crime Fiction is so popular and successful right now.

Fast paced, realistic crime, that just grips the reader and takes them on one hell of a ride.

A brilliant read.

Print length: 363 pages. Audio Book: 10 hours 5 minutes. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer