HarperCollins – nigeladamsbookworm

Black Dog. Stephen Booth

Every now and then a TV series will hit the screens stating it’s based on the books of a best selling author.

If the series looks good I’ll try to read the book before watching the program, especially if I’ve never heard of the book series.

This was the case with the Copper and Fry series that recently started on Channel 5 (UK November 2025). The previews looked really good so I looked up the books. I was surprised I’d never heard of Stephen Booths books, there’s 18 in the series, and it’s my favourite genre.

Black Dog introduces DCs Ben Cooper and Diane Fry. Who police the Peak District.

Cooper is a local man. He is well respected and thought highly of by his peers and bosses, and is favourite to be promoted into the upcoming vacancy for a DS.

Fry is a fast track graduate who has just transferred from the West Midlands Police.

They are polar opposites in their professional approach, private lives, and attitudes.

Cooper is very much the local lad cop, he knows everybody and everybody knows him, the problem is many civilians only know him as his father’s son, a well respected Police Officer who died on duty.

And that really annoys him.

He has problems at home, his mother is suffering severe mental illness, and it’s taking its toll on him and his extended family, all of who live on the family farm.

Fry is battling her own problems, her and her sister had been in care since she was very young, her sister, already a drug addict, hasn’t been seen since she was sixteen.

Then there’s the reason she left the WMP, a dark secret she is desperate to keep from her new colleagues.

Set in 1999 the police are still plagued by old attitudes, especially towards fast tracked graduates, who have come from a Met force, and just happen to be young attractive females.

The story of the murder which is investigated in the book almost seems secondary to the setting the scenes of the two main characters and preparing the reader for what is to come.

For what it’s worth the murder is that of a young girl. The daughter of a couple that moved into a large house in the peaks. Rumours abound that orgies and sex parties are regular occurrences at the house.

Three old men, World War Two veterans are at the centre of the investigation. Arrogant doesn’t begin to describe these characters and they quickly become frustrations to the police, and the reader.

Fry and Cooper work together as DCs and in a way there is a begrudging respect beneath a simmering contempt. Expected a will they, won’t they, thread in the series.

I enjoyed the story and the characters, but, and for me it’s a big but, there is way too much spurious writing. As an example Fry leaves the Police Station after one of her first shifts, and goes straight home to her flat. That journey takes eight pages and contributes nothing to the story, and there are a lot of examples of that throughout the book.

There were times I found myself speed reading through five or six pages that held no relevant content.

Will I read more of the series. Yes, it will be one of those I dip into occasionally but it won’t be one I binge read.

Pages: 537. Publisher: Harper Collins

Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher. Max Allan Collins. A. Brad Schwartz

An impulse buy on a quick trip to Waterstones ended up with me reading this true crime book which reads like a crime novel

The subtitle on the cover, Hunting a serial killer at the dawn of modern criminology, understates the impact that Ness had on crime fighting.

Eliot Ness is more famously known for his involvement in cracking the Chicago gangs during prohibition, and his pursuing of Al Capone.

In this book the authors look at what happens to Ness after Capone was jailed for tax evasion.

Ness moved to Cleveland and was appointed Safety Director where he took on corrupt police officers and unionists in equal measure.

He introduced the precinct concept of policing and started to utilise radio cars in the first known patrol area scheme.

He drove down the increasingly dangerous amount of drink drive incidents which had seen the first real surge in traffic accident road deaths.

But for all the praise he was getting there was one crime that was being used as a stick to beat him.

Just before Ness arrived in Cleveland body parts, of unidentified murder victims, started to be found in a run down area.

Although Ness was not a cop, he was responsible for the Police department, and people wanted him to turn his attentions to what was to be one of the first serial killers identified in the USA.

The victims all appeared to be from the homeless communities of an area called Kingsbury Run.

Over the following years numerous bodies, or parts of them were found, all appeared to have been killed by beheading, before being cut apart. Often the body would be found over several days or weeks, sometimes not all of the body was found.

The detective in charge of the case thought he had found the killer, but he was wrong, on more than one occasion.

Secretly Ness was working the case. He had employed his tactics from Chicago and put a team of unknowns together.

The Unknowns were made up of recruits who went straight undercover. They infiltrated everywhere the killer was thought to be hanging out.

Ness identified the man he thought was the killer. An alcoholic, failed doctor and pieced together the case against him.

A case that was never to get to court.

A case that Ness, near the end of his life, stated he had solved.

He also mentioned that there is more than one way to get justice.

The killings did stop whilst Ness was in position as Cleveland’s Safety Director.

Did he get his man.

The case is laid out in this book.

Publisher Harper Collins. Paperback print length 559 pages*

*395 pages are the main text. The remaining pages are lists of references and afterwords*

Anna O. Matthew Blake

I’ve read a few books with really original plots recently but I think this one stand out.

Anna O is an infamous young lady who was found lying between two people who had stabbed to death. She was asleep, and four years later she still is.

The judiciary wants to put her on trial, but first they need to get her into a fit enough condition to stand trial.

They have her moved to the Abbey sleep clinic on Harley Street and place her under the treatment of Dr Benedict Prince, who has recently published a paper on Resignation Syndrome. (That had me reaching for Google and spending a good hour reading about the syndrome)

From there the plot splits between several characters.

Benedict himself.

His ex wife, who was the first Police Officer on the scene of the murder.

Anna O’s Mom, an ex Shadow Minister, now Vicar , who was, and is, more interested in saving her own reputation than that of her daughter.

Anna’s Dad, a Banker who has little in common with his wife or daughter.

Lola, a blogger and armchair detective that is linked to Anna, and possibly the murders. Her online persona is @Suspect8. Insinuating she was at the scene.

The plot is brilliantly woven from the outlook of each of these characters.

It’s a battle for the truth. Is Anna O a murderer, or a convenient scapegoat.

Can Benedict rouse her from her sleep and have her sufficiently compos mantis enough to tell her story.

The Publishers Gumph

What if your nightmares weren’t really nightmares at all?

We spend an average of 33 years of our lives asleep. But what really happens, and what are we capable of, when we sleep?

Anna Ogilvy was a budding twenty-five-year-old writer with a bright future. Then, one night, she stabbed two people to death with no apparent motive–and hasn’t woken up since. Dubbed “Sleeping Beauty” by the tabloids, Anna’s condition is a rare psychosomatic disorder known to neurologists as “resignation syndrome.”

Dr. Benedict Prince is a forensic psychologist and an expert in the field of sleep-related homicides. His methods are the last hope of solving the infamous “Anna O'”case and waking Anna up so she can stand trial. But he must be careful treating such a high-profile suspect–he’s got career secrets and a complicated personal life of his own.

As Anna shows the first signs of stirring, Benedict must determine what really happened and whether Anna should be held responsible for her crimes.

Only Anna knows the truth about that night, but only Benedict knows how to discover it. And they’re both in danger from what they find out.

What I thought

It’s a real page turner of a book. I’d never heard of Resignation Syndrome before, and I’ve found out that it’s a relatively newly diagnosed condition, but I can see many more authors using it as the spine of a plot.

The plot itself is really good and with one exception I didn’t second guess where the story was going.

At 448 pages it’s a bit long but not a page is wasted.

I can’t wait to see what Matthew Blake writes next.

Inside Job. Dr Rebecca Myers

One of the things that fascinates me is the way the mid works.

This book gives a great insight into the criminal mind, but also the mind of the person that has to deal with those people.

Dr Rebecca Myers is a Forensic Psychologist who has worked with some of the highest profile offenders in the country. This is her memoir of the first few years of her career.

From day one, when she walked into Graymoor Prison as a young, new graduate, to be told she was going to be the Psychologist leading group therapy for some serious sex offenders; to the end of this part of her life where she took part in a disturbing hostage crisis.

She takes us into the sessions and we hear about some disturbing crimes, but it also shows us the thought process of the criminals, and their lack of empathy to the victims.

The sessions are designed to introduce empathy, and start the prisoner on the road to rehabilitation. Frustrating in most cases, and depending on your point of view, either a waste of time, or a valid attempt to put right a deviant mind.

The offenders are only given first names in the book, but I have a feeling I identified at least one by the description of his crimes, and I suspect a bit of research would also identify some of the others.

The book lays out the hierarchy of offenders in the institutions they are locked up in. The contempt shown to offenders by people who have carried out similar crimes, which in their opinion is worse than the crime they carried out.

Most telling is the effect it has on the prison staff. When Myers first went into Graymoor it wasn’t just the inmates who looked at her as a “piece of meat” Even in the early 2000’s she fought sexism and crudity’s from the overwhelmingly male staff.

As she starts to deal with the inmates in the group sessions it has an effect on the way she thinks and acts.

She is honest in the fact that she entered into an adulterous relationship with a colleague, before recognising his controlling behaviour as being similar to that of the inmates they are trying to counsel.

But what I find most telling, is that from the start of the book, all the way up to the last event she covers, she doubts her own ability to be doing the job. Imposter Syndrome.

She is good at her job, but like a lot of people, she considers herself to have almost stumbled from one thing to another, university, to a job in a prison, to leading group sessions, and ultimately being recalled to duty to deal with a hostage situation.

You don’t end up doing the things she’s done by not being good, it’s no coincidence that she’s called in, yet even after a “successful” outcome she still doubts herself.

I really hope there’s a part two to these memoirs. I’ve looked her up and I think she has a lot more to tell.

Trigger warning. This book is a blunt look at sex offenders and their behaviour through group sessions. There are elements of every chapter that could act as a trigger to anybody who has been subject to any form of sexual abuse.

Pages: 313. Audio Book Length: 7.58. Narrator Emma Wilkes. Publisher: Harper Collins. Available now

Dead Mercy. Noelle Holten

Right at the back of this book is an insight into why this story, and the series, is so good.

A modest Eleven lines under the title About the Author.

In those lines it relates Noelle Holten’s qualifications and experience.

A Senior Probation Officer for 18 years covering Domestic Violence and Abuse cases.

3 BA (Hons) degrees, Philosophy, Sociology (Crime and Deviance) and Community Justice, and to top it of a Masters in Criminology.

So Noelle is one of those rare breeds, a person that has experience to back her qualifications, and that really stands out and puts her way ahead of many authors.

The story sees DC Maggie Jamieson and the Staffordshire Police Major Organised Crime welcoming back Dr Kate Maloney to the team, and her Psychologist insights are going to be priceless.

When Maggie is called to the first murder scene she finds the victim has been bound, assaulted, and set alight.

Why would anybody do that to a person, is the fire part of the killers method of killing or is it an attempt to destroy evidence.

When a second body turns up under similar circumstances the phrase serial killer gets banded about but Maggie is quick to point out that you need three deaths before you can use that category. She spoke too soon.

As the body count mounts the team work their way through the investigation, building working hypothesis as they go. As in a real investigation suspects come to the fore, and hypothesis are built around the reasons for the killing; and as in a real investigation it takes time to get it right.

Although the reader gains an insight into the killers motives, through the occasional chapter written from their point of view, the Police are frustratingly chipping away at the edges without quite nailing it, until they inevitably put the pieces together, but how many people are going to die first.

They say never judge a book by its cover, and I would usually agree, but this book has a stunning cover and the story is every bit as good.

I mentioned Noelle’s qualifications and experience. She’s walked the walk, she has all of the t-shirts, and now she’s writing books about the things she knows.

If you want your crime fiction realistic, if you want the crimes, criminals, victims, and Police Officers to be truly reflective of the real thing, this book, and this series are what you are looking for.

Pages: 400. Publisher: One More Chapter, Harper Collins

The House of Killers. Samantha Lee Howe

Every now and then a book comes along and ticks all my boxes. This is one of those books.

Espionage and Crime Thrillers are my favourite genres of books, tick, tick

Robert Ludlum’s Bourne trilogy and Stig Larsons Millennium trilogy, are two of my favourite series with two of my favourite characters. Neva in The House Of Killers is an amalgamation of Bourne and Salander, Tick, tick

A cracking, believable story that keeps me hooked from start to finish. Tick, tick, tick.

Neva is a Bourne in reverse. She’s an accomplished assassin who feels no empathy for her victims, in fact she is void of any emotions, just like Larson’s Salander. But, something is happening to her, flashback memories to when she was a child. Flashbacks to being abused and trained in a merciless brutal way start to enter her mind, along with the occasional memory of innocent times before she was taken to “The House” to be trained by The Network

Meanwhile Michael Kensington is an MI5 agent who works for a shadowy department that is officially called the Archive Taskforce. A team that on the surface looks at cold cases, but whose main duty is to investigate murders that could be politically motivated assassinations.

Michael has been building a case against one assassin that he is convinced is responsible for a lot of the murders that he has in his system. A clinical killer that specialises in using a very sharp blade. But in recent kills the killer has uncharacteristically got a bit careless, has he found a chink, can he identify the killer.

When Neva kills, “retires” another assassin who works for the “Network” it triggers something inside her, when will it be her turn?

When she cracks and kills another member of The Network, of her own volition, she has to disappear, and she knows she needs help.

A chance meeting between Neva and Michael puts him on her track, but why doesn’t he tell the Archieve team everything, and why does he let her under his skin.

What follows is a very unlikely, but thoroughly believable hook up of the two main characters, but what a dance. Neither fully trusts the other, contact is lost and established at Neva’s behest, but still he trusts her, and in doing so puts his career on the line

This book is stunning. It’s that nugget of gold you spend hour panning a river for, the one that comes along every now and then. The last time I was this excited about finding a new author it was Tom Clancy.

The book had me hooked from the start. The characters are great, Neva is believable, but even in her coldest murderous moments there is something that attracts me to her as a character.

Michael is a typical security service Investigator, more Morse than Bond, reserved, lives alone, does his job, goes home. Just your everyday person doing a police job for a government agency. The perfect foil for Neva’s vicious uncaring character.

This story flew by. The plot runs at a prolific speed and the ending is one I just did not see coming. Usually this would mean the author had thrown in something that would be unrealistic in the plot, but not in this case. There’s a slow build up to it that is cleverly hidden in the plot, and when it manifested itself in the last couple of chapters I could see where it had come from, and I loved the fact that I had been caught by surprise by a brilliant twist.

2021 has given me some of the best books I’ve read for years, and this one is right at the top of the list.

Pages: 432. Publisher: One More Chapter Publishing Date 24th June 2021

Cemetery Road Greg Iles

Greg Iles is without doubt my favourite American author. His Penn Cage series, which included the Natchez Burning Trilogy, are some of the best books I’ve ever read.

So when I picked up Cemetery Road, I was expecting a good read, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Marshall (Goose) McEwan is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist working in Washington DC. But he returns to his hometown of Bienville, on the banks of the Mississippi, to run his ailing father’s newspaper.

Whilst he’s there he renews his “acquaintance” with a local attorney, who just happens to be married to the sun of one of the Beinville Poker Club. An Old Deep South Club that owns and runs everything in the town.

The poker club have also been instrumental in bringing Chinese investment to the town, in the form of a paper mill, money that will resurrect a dying economy.

The problem is they want to build the mill on ground that is thought to be of significant historical interest. One of McEwan’s friends, the historian-archaeologist Buck Ferris is murdered the night before the ground breaking ceremony.

Ferris had been like a surrogate father to McEwan, who’s drunken father had largely ignored him for over 30 years, and against much of the towns wish starts to investigate his friends murder.

What follows is a story of duplicity, in which the Poker Club try everything to stop McEwan, and his few ally’s, from finding the truth. With tens of millions of dollars at stake, as well as the freedom of the members of the club if the authorities ever find out the long list of laws they have broken, they are prepared to do anything to stop him.

This is a brilliant story from a master storyteller, and I love his books; but I should warn some of you that some people may find his writing a bit near-the-knuckle. There is sex and violence in this book, as there is in all of his books. But it’s there for a reason, it’s in context, it adds to the story. In fact the story wouldn’t work without it.

I have described Iles in previous blogs as being John Grisham without filters, and in my opinion that is why he is better than Grisham, and I love Grisham’s books.

Pages: 618

Publisher: UK, Harper Collins

Available now

The Huntress. Kate Quinn

This is conundrum of a story, but don’t let that put you off.

Four stories in one, all set in different time periods, all integral to the main story, and all charging to a brilliant conclusion.

During the war.

The Huntress. A killer, a woman working for, or in sympathy, with the German SS during World War Two. A woman who has escaped the war crimes hearings in Nuremberg.

Nina Markov. A Russian woman with a passion for flying. One of Stalin’s famous Night Witches. A woman with a very good reason for finding the Huntress.

After the war

Ian and Tony, two men who specialise in finding war criminals and bringing them to trial, but one woman is right at the top of Ian’s list. The Huntress was responsible for killing his brother, and he wants to see her face her crimes.

Jordan McBride. A young woman in America dreaming of becoming a photographer covering wars around the world. Her father, a widow has a new woman in his life, Anneliese, a woman that Jordan is convinced is a not telling the truth about her past.

This story is magnificent in the way it is told. The storylines of all of the main characters interweave from start to finish. The way the author establishes the crimes committed by the Huntress during the war is clever.

Introducing Nina as one of the famous Night Witches of the Soviet Aviation Group 122 is perfect for the story. I thought I was good on my Second World War history, but I’d never heard of this group. A quick Google search led me down an internet wormhole that lasted for hours whilst I read about this extraordinary group of woman.

Tony’s story, and the story about the tracking down of the illusive Huntress after the war, is the main backbone of the book and it is one of those tales which has you reading well into the night.

But will you guess the end of the story? Is everybody who they appear to be? Are the allegiances that are formed all they seem to be. Will the Huntress get caught?

There’s only one way to find out. Read the book, and I have to say it’s up there in my best books read this year.

Pages: 560

Publisher: Harper Collins

Available now.

The Dinner Party R.J. Parker

Should secrets remain secret. When friends meet up in their couples for a dinner party one of the women suggests a game. A game of non-disclosed confessions, followed by unconditional forgiveness.

At first the game doesn’t seem that sinister but by sunrise next day one person from the party will be dead, and nobody else’s life will ever be the same.

The book is written with the host of the party being the main character. Ted is married to Juliet and they have a small circle of friends. All married couples, all about the same age, all with their own stories, all with their own secret.

This is a crime novel from a different point of view. The main character is caught up in the middle of the crime and the subsequent investigation. Only getting information from the Police as he is questioned and as he talks to other people who were at the party.

For three days his life is turned upside down. He and Juliet are as confused about the happenings as everybody else; and it soon becomes apparent to Ted that everybody is keeping secrets.

The story is brilliant.

The unusual point of view it is written from gives a completely different aspect to a crime.

The grief Ted feels in finding out about the murder of one of his closest friends is completely believable.

The frustration he feels at being questioned by the police, the realisation that people around him are not letting him in on secrets, lead him into an emotional rollercoaster, that I could not help but empathise with.

The pace of the book is breath taking. I read it in one sitting.

A captivating, compulsive stand-alone novel.

Publishers: One More Chapter (Harper Collins digital)

Available now.

THE STING Kimberley Chambers

This is my first, but certainly not my last, Kimberley Chambers book.

The Sting is a glorious read for everybody, but especially for people who had their teenage years in the 1970’s.

The story follows the life of a young lad Tommy Boyle and picks him up as a 12 year old. To say he has a hard upbringing is an understatement. His father is a bullying wife beater who works on the oil rigs and makes family life a misery when he’s at home.

As the story progresses Tom ends up in a children’s home for reasons beyond his control.

The friendships he forms there should last for life, but again life takes a cruel twist.

The story follows him through his family life, through to his life in care, and sees him change from an innocent lad to the fearsome teenager, and ultimately into a violent man.

When his time in care comes to an end on his 16^thbirthday Tom has already been spotted by a criminal family and they soon take him into their inner circle.

Tom has had a hard time, but the new family mean everything to him, and so begins a life in organised crime.

Lurking in the shadows throughout the story are secrets. Secrets that will inevitably come to the surface and lead the book to a fantastic end.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. My usual read is crime fiction, which this falls well and truly into, but it’s from a completely different perspective to what I’m used to.

This is all about a boy gone bad, a boy whose transition to manhood is guided by the actions of the people who should have loved and protected him.

Having grown up on a council estate in Birmingham in the 70’s I can recognise so many of the characters in this book. The nostalgia for that era is reflected in the music that is mentioned throughout the book and which had me calling out to “Alexa” on numerous occasions.

A cracking read.

Pages: 448

Publishers: Harper Collins

Available now