HQ Stories – nigeladamsbookworm

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

Playing With Fire. Mary Burton (Novella)

Where do I start with this review.

I loved the book, it kept me hooked, but a big part of me was irritated.

I’m a retired Fire Officer, in fact I was, and still am Fire Investigator, and for that reason I was able to spot the technical inaccuracies in this book.

That would usually put me off but the story just kept me hooked.

The two main characters, Darcy the journalist, and Gannon, the Fire Investigator who had retired following the “death” of his nemesis Nero in a fire in the big City.

Gannon was never convinced the body that had been found was the man who had started the fires, and killed the people. He was too intelligent and too neat to have been killed by one of his own fires.

Gannon quit his job after that fire and retired to a quiet town to run a motorcycle repair shop.

A year after Nero’s reported death Darcy receives a tip off that he wasn’t the body found in the fire, and that an innocent man has been framed for his crimes.

She’s got enough evidence to convince her editor to have a second look, but she is going to need to talk to Gannon, a man who is notorious for his hatred of the press.

Coincidentally Gannon has moved to Darcy’s home town and she goes to work in the family bar as she goes undercover in an attempt to get close to him.

Meanwhile the town has started to suffer a series of fires which are reminiscent of Neros. Is it him, or is there a copy cat. Either way they’re goading Gannon.

What follows the story of Darcy and Gannon learning to like each other and investigate the fires that are taking place now. But Darcy keeps getting a crisis of confidence. The one man who fits all the tags to be Nero is Gannon.

Is she thinking straight, in fact is she thinking with the right part of her anatomy when it comes to him.

Honestly the story is so good it outweighs the inaccuracies.

Print length 205 pages. Publisher: HQ Digital. Available now.

Next of Kin Kia Abdullah

This is the third book I’ve read by Kia Abdullah and I think I might have to admit to a bit of an obsession.

Her books come from a completely different perspective to everybody else’s

She looks at multiple layers, giving characters equal weight, each developing their own prospective on what is happening through the story.

In this book two sisters Leila and Yasmin are close, both geographically and emotionally.

Leila is a successful Architect, a busy woman, who has had trouble starting a family and is living apart from her partner.

Yasmin is a happy family woman with a 3 year old son.

That is until one day Yasmins husband asks Laila to drop the boy off at day care because he’s had an urgent phone call from work.

The problem is, on the way to day care, Leila also gets an urgent phone call, and with the little boy asleep in a car seat behind her, she forgets he’s there, parks the car, and runs into the office.

It’s the hottest day of the year.

When Yasmin’s husband gets a welfare phone call asking why his son hasn’t been dropped off at day care he phones Laila immediately. Then she remembers the little boy is still in the car.

What follows is a compulsive story that looks at the family dynamics between the two sisters and their partners.

It looks at the blame, and guilt, it explores peoples hidden feelings, emotions, empathies, and guilts, or lack of.

Add into the mix a tenacious Detective Sergeant who just keeps digging and chipping away at everybody’s story and you have one hell of a book.

Is this a tragic accident caused by a busy lifestyle, or is it something more sinister.

Should somebody be officially blamed, and charged with the boys death.

Does anybody blame themselves, or more to the fact is there anybody who doesn’t.

The best thing about Kia Abdullah’s writing is the way it plays with your mind. This book like the previous two I’ve read had me changing allegiances time and time again.

The one thing that is also certain about her books is it ain’t over, till it’s over.

Pages: 384. Publisher: HQ Release Date: 2nd September 2021

Previous reviews of Kia Abdullah Books

Child’s play. https://nigeladamsbookworm.com/2019/08/19/childs-play-kia-abdullah/

Take it Back. https://nigeladamsbookworm.com/2019/07/07/take-it-back-kia-abdullah/

TAKE IT BACK KIA ABDULLAH

I cannot remember who recommended this book, but whoever it was thank you.

The story is based around two main characters, Zara Kaleel, a gifted woman who finished top of Law School and landed a top job in good Chambers in London. Her life was mapped out for her, an arranged marriage, and a good job. Until she got rid of both the husband and the job, and took a job at a charity who looked after abused women.

The second character is Jodie Wolfe, a sixteen year old white girl with a severe facial deformity. The daughter of a single parent, an alcoholic mother, and living in a rundown house on a rough estate her life is not easy.

Jodie walks into Zara’s life when she accuses a group of four boys from her school of gangrape. The boys are all Muslim and from good families. They deny the accusation and give their own version of events.

Will anybody believe Jodie’s account over the four lads, and if they do, can they prove it beyond reasonable doubt.

This book is about so much more than just the rape of a young girl. It’s about attitudes, both preconceived, and actual, which are prevalent in today’s society.

The story itself is stunning. As a reader I was swayed in both directions. At different times I believed both Jodie and the four boys alternatively.

Some of the lads in this book lead a life of entitlement that their parents may have earned, but which they wrongly bask in.

The hatred that is extended to Jodie, by people who should be supporting her is unimaginable, but realistic in the way it is portrayed.

Worse still is the hostility extended to Zara by her own community.

Had the book been written by anybody else I don’t know how much emphasis I’d have put on the feelings that are running through the Muslim Community when it comes to the unwavering belief they have in the word of the young men, and the hold these young men have over their families.

I looked Kia Abdullah up on the internet, she is definitely qualified to right about this community in a way that most of us may never fully understand. But this book may go a long way to helping us.

This could have been a true story and it would not have had more of an impact on me. I felt like I was following a news story in fast forward.

It’s not often a book has me hooked as much as this one did. Thankfully I was in holiday so sitting reading all day was permissible, which was good, because once I’d started this, I was never going to put it down

Pages: 383

Publishers: HQ HarperCollins

Publishing date: 8^thAugust 2019

Dead Man’s Daughter Roz Watkins

Roz Watkins has a way of writing books that I find refreshing and fascinating. Taking a piece folk law, or urbane myth, and interweaving a modern crime she arrives at a book which is a realistic crime thriller with a touch of horror novel. In fact I can’t make my mind up who would be the most proud to call her a student of their genre, Colin Dexter or Stephen King. If you are a fan of either you’ll love this book, if you are a fan of both, this is really going to get your juices flowing.

DI Meg Dalton is a recent transferee to Derbyshire from Manchester Met Police. She not only has to battle the “she’s a know it all from the big Force” brigade but also prove herself better than the men from Derbyshire she was promoted over to get her job as SIO in one of the MIT’s covering the Peak District.

When she stumbles across a crime scene Meg is suddenly immersed in an investigation that seems to have one strikingly obvious outcome.

A man is dead in his house, his daughter is found running through the woods covered in blood. When Meg traces the child’s steps back to the house, she realises the crime has happened in a premises where the Police have had numerous calls to report a stalker but have done little or nothing about it.

The investigation leads Meg and her team down one route, the little girl appears to have killed her father, but Meg is not convinced.

So, why is this book a bit on the horror genre, well the little girl, her name is Abbie, has had an organ transplant, and everything seems to suggest that somehow the organ she has received is affecting the way she now behaves.

To add to that the house that the murder took place in is wrapped in folk law and has connections with a past series of sacrificial killings.

It’s up to Meg to work out who the murderer is, and what the motive was behind the killing.

This story is complex in places with different characters swapping hypothesis to suit their own agenda, more than one of which is purely because they want Meg to fail.

But the story is absolutely brilliant. Like all the best books it had me Googling about things I wasn’t aware of, such as Cellular Memory Phenomenon, and yes it does exist.

What a subject to identify to base a crime story on, and to keep it so realistic. Brilliant.

This book is the second in the series, The Devils Dice is the first, but can easily be read as a stand alone but once you’ve read it you will want to read first.

I really can’t wait for the third book in the series.

Pages: 384

Publishers: HQ, Harper Collins

Available now

Out Of The Ashes Vicky Newham

I have rarely read a book which has so many possible motives for one crime.

When two people are killed in a shop fire on Brick Lane the possible motives are endless, bigotry, jealousy, hatred, anti-Semitism, racism, revenge, anti-gentrification all of them could be the reason the shop was torched, and worryingly they are all realistic motives in today’s society.

So, DI Maya Rahman has her work cut out, but she is the ideal Officer for the job. As a 41 year old Bangladeshi who grew up on, and around, Brick Lane she is used to the mixing pot of a society that live and trades on the famous street. She even knows some of the residents who live near the fire.

The investigation is hindered by the damage at the shop. The fire has destroyed everything and the bodies are not easy to retrieve.

The fire happened as a Flash Mob descended on the street dancing to loud house music. Could this be a coincidence or are the two things related.

The investigation follows Maya and her team as they track through the world of young people who follow a cause on line, for no other reason than the promise of a bit of cash and some free drugs. Are they being manipulated to cause a distraction or are they responsible for the fire.

They encounter homeless refugees, some of which are young orphans, and see the way they are used by some of the lower forms of life in the community who are either too clever, or too scared, to do their own dirty work.

The story revolves around the investigation into the fire and the deaths that occurred in it, but the main story for me is the story of life on Brick Lane.

I have a feeling this book gets very close to the truth of some of the matters that involve the people of Brick Lane, and other suburbs of the bigger cities in the UK.

Generations of traders struggling to make a living in an ever increasing society that buys into the latest fad of “artisan” traders and over inflated property prices.

And of course, where money is the driver crime is not far behind.

I really enjoyed this book and was surprised to find it’s is the second in a series. I’m off to find the first now and then I shall look forward to the third.

Pages: 384

Publishers: HQ Harper Collins

Publishing date: 30^thMay 2019

The Devil’s Dice Roz Watkins

I love crime thrillers with a difference. This book blends a hint of Dan Brown, with a rich mix of Angela Marsons, and is set in the Derbyshire Countryside.

Where does the hint of Dan Brown come in? From the very start. A man is found dead in an ancient cave house. As the forensic teams start to examine the scene the lead detective, DI Meg Dalton finds an old carving of the Grim Reaper with the legend “Coming for PHH” The dead man is PHH, the carving is over 100 years old, he died today.

The cave is tied by local legend to the story of people being found hanged in the cave and tunnel system close by. They are called the Labyrinth and are close to the rock formation, The Devils Dice.

Close to the Devils Dice is an old cottage on the edge of a quarry face. For years people have thought of the cottage as being cursed. People who live there are prone to committing suicide, or worse. Guess where PHH lived.

The rich mix of Angela Marsons? Rox Watkins has created a character in DI Meg Dalton that is as fascinating as Angela Marsons’ DI Kim Stone.

Dalton is a single woman dealing with major family issues, which she is trying to keep to herself and not let them disrupt her work. She has a team member DS Jai Sanghera who is determined to help her, but will she let him.

Then there is the crime. Although the crime is wrapped up in ancient folk law it is very much a modern crime, and its investigated in a very realistic manner which makes the story not only believable, but also very enjoyable to read.

As the investigation continues into the death of PHH more deaths occur, are they linked, are they even suspicious, or is all the talk of the curse beginning to affect even the most cynical of Police Officers.

The story has many threads and it’s not until the last couple of chapters that they all come together to create a brilliant end to the book.

It’s not often that I read a crime novel these days which is so full of originality. After all there are only so many ways a crime can be committed, and there are only so many reasons why. I’m sure somebody will point out there have been similar stories, but I haven’t read them, and certainly not in the same book.

A great read and I can’t wait for the next book from Rox Watkins

Pages: 384

Publisher: HQ

Publishing Date UK: 8^th March 2018, available to pre-order on Amazon