Psychological Thriller – nigeladamsbookworm

The Surgeon. Leslie Wolfe

A roller coaster of a book which brings one phrase to mind.

Bunny Boiler

If you are a fan of films like Fatal Attraction, and The Hand That Rocked The Cradle, this book will be right up your street.

The story starts with an eminent heart surgeon losing a patient during an operation. He wasn’t just any patient. He was the man that abused her sister. Did she give in too easily, could she have saved him.

Meanwhile an Assistant District Attorney is in a hotel room enjoying the delights of the future Mayor, but she’s not his wife. His wife is in hospital trying to fathom out if she could have saved the man who died on her operating table.

The ADA wants to be the woman in the future mayors life but she knows he’ll never leave his wife. So maybe she can find some way of proving she killed the man who died during his heart operation. If she can discredit her maybe her husbands political ambitions will lead him to leave her.

All that in the first few chapters. What follows is a twisting turning path to a firecracker of a finale

The characters in this book are beautifully written. Empathy swaps with sympathy, and changes to loathing as new pieces of the plot fall into place.

Nobody is who they seem to be from the start.

Written partly in the first person, and mainly in the third, this book had me on tenterhooks from the start.

I defy anybody to read this and not say they are shocked by the twists the story takes.

From the first minute the reader is made to sympathise with the Doctor, and even feel empathy for the ADA, the mistress, but things quickly change.

The story is like a tidal river changing flow, encouraging huge surges in empathy with different characters with each change of tide.

Right up until the last few chapters, then just when I thought I had it all worked out I read the very last paragraph

I really hope there’s a follow up to this book.

Pages: 290. Publisher: Bookouture.

Audio book length: 10 hours 46 minutes. Narrator: Gwendolyn Druyor

Available now.

Don’t You Dare. Jessica Hamilton

As far as dark psychological thrillers go, this is one of the best I’ve read for years.

A totally believable story. A main character that is both engaging, and at times, frustrating. A touch of “spice” but totally in context and not gratuitous. An ending that I just didn’t see coming.

Three friends spend their college years in a tight little group. They are a introverted group playing an ever increasingly dangerous game of dare and forfeit. But who is the manipulator, who is the one really stirring the pot

Years on Hannah is married with two girls, but she still hankers after her best friends Scarlett, who moved to the other side of the world, and Thomas who was her first love, and who she hasn’t seen since college.

Then Thomas returns and initiates a game of dare between just the two of them.

That is when things start to go wrong.

Hannah is the narrator of the story. She’s a functioning alcoholic, even if she won’t admit it. Her husband is at the end of his tether and their relationship is purely functional, for the girls sake.

When Thomas returns the old flame is ignited and she finds a new purpose.

Like before the dares get more dangerous.

Somebody is spying on Hannah and Thomas.

There is a prowler in her neighbourhood and somebody is sending her husband information about her relationship with Thomas.

Can she keep her marriage together, does she even want to.

More importantly can she survive an ever increasingly dangerous situation.

This book drips the story at a constantly steady pace. The tension builds from the first chapter like a dripping tap filling a sink to the point that it’s overflowing without you noticing one specific thing that’s raised the level.

It’s not often these days that a book holds me enough to read it in a day, but this one did. A genuine “I read it in a day” and I loved every page of it.

Pages: TBC. Publishing Date: 16th May 2023 Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

The Prisoners Wife. Ali Blood

I don’t usually read the Gangland type of crime book, but the spiel for this one got me intrigued.

Am I glad I read it? Yes.

Emma is married to a man she thought was the best thing that had ever happened to her, until he put that ring on her finger. Then the true Tommy Driscoll appeared, bullying, coercive, and frightening.

Who she thought was an honest business man, is in fact a Gangland boss. His businesses just a front for all of his illegal activities.

The book starts with Tommy being found guilty of carrying a firearm and being sentenced to five years. Emma’s joy at the thought of freedom from him is short lived.

His brother Liam, and his right hand man Fraser work at Tommy’s behest to ensure she is living a life of incarceration on the outside, just as much as she is on the inside. His threats to her are chilling. Do nothing, live like a nun, wait for him to get out.

But she’s already made a mistake, a one night stand whilst Tommy was on remand.

Now the one night stand is trying to blackmail her, and if her husband finds out……..

But where is the real threat.

Who can she trust.

She can’t turn to her family because Tommy is using threats against them to control her.

The Police? Why should she trust them.

This is a great story with some vicious twists.

The surprises keep coming all the way to the last chapter.

A cracking book. At times this is a tough read but it’s always compelling and I found it hard to put down.

Ali Blood is a new author to me but I’ll be keeping my eyes open for her books in the future

Pages: 400. Publisher: Avon. Publishing Date: 2nd February 2023

Stay Awake. Megan Goldin

It might sound a familiar plot, woman wakes with no memory and is in the middle of a murder mystery, but it is much better than anything along similar lines that I have ever read.

To start the amnesia is not the common forgot everything type.

32 year old Liv Reece wakes up tipsy in the back of a taxi. When she gets home she finds it occupied by strangers. Catching herself in a mirror she realises she has long hair several shades darker than the short hair she thought she had.

On the back of her hand, her wrist, and up her arm are scribbles in pen.

Stay Awake, Remember to wake up, Don’t sleep, I forget everything when I sleep.

There’s also the address on a nightclub. People know her there but she doesn’t remember them.

As she starts to put things together she realises the last thing she remembered, taking a phone call at her work desk, was actually over 2 years ago.

Waking up on a park bench the next day her memory is gone again, all she remembers is everything that happened in her life up till the phone call at her desk.

A murder takes place and New York Detectives Halliday and Leville are assigned. A man with a stab to the heart and slashed feet lies naked on a bed. The words Wake Up! Written in blood on the inside of the window, backwards so the can be read correctly from the outside.

Liv sees this on the news and realises she must have had something to do with it. But why.

The story is brilliant, Liv’s fear and frustration as she tries to piece together her life, and work out if she killed somebody.

Halliday and Leville investigating a stranger murder with a suspect who appears to have fallen off the grid over two years ago.

The plot twists around will the Police Investigators find Liv, whilst Liv is going through psychological torture, and trying to stay any awake is only increasing her pain.

As both parties creep closer to the truth, and each other, it become a breathtaking ride of a story that you found myself deeply engaged by.

A great book by a new author to me.

Print Length: 353 pages. Publisher: Canelo. Publishing date U.K. 18th August 2022.

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

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

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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One Girl Missing. Carla Kovach

Gina Harte. Now that’s a name that we should be hearing on a TV Series.

Carla Kovach has really developed this character, to say she’s been through the mill would be an understatement, but she is one hell of a Police Officer.

This story sees the Harte storyline take another twist, and it’s a belter.

The main story is always the investigation into a crime, and this one opens a real can of worms.

Two women go out for a night. A man attacks them. One of the women disappears, the other is missing.

The missing woman’s 5 year old girl is at home waiting for her mom. When the Police find her she tells them a strange man had been looking in her window.

Then the book turns really dark.

What has life been like behind closed doors.

Every house, every flat, every apartment holds its own story. Most are happy, or just plain mundane, but a few hold dark secrets.

You can’t tell these fearful dwellings from the outside. Every now and then neighbours might hear arguments and banging, and have an idea something is going on, but the truly dark houses are silent. Hiding bad things in plain sight, in ordinary neighbourhoods.

What has been going on.

Why were the women attacked, and where is the missing woman

What a way to start a book.

This is 359 pages of fast paced criminal investigation rapped up in a psychological thriller.

Publisher: Bookouture. 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.

The Thames Path Killer. Biba Pearce

DI Rob Miller is somewhat of an anomaly amongst Police Detectives.

He comes across as shy and a bit insecure. Conversely, in his private life, he is engaged to an ex underwear model who now works on a beauty counter at Harrods.

When the body of a woman turns up on a secluded path Robs boss gives him his first major investigation as Senior Investigating Officer, all his other DI’s are busy.

But Rob is good, and the small team he gathers together are just as good, as well as being dedicated and supportive. Which is more than can be said for his fiancé. She hates him working outside “office hours”

The age old struggle between a detectives home life and their professional life is brilliantly portrayed in the interaction between the pair.

When another body is found it’s inevitable Rob will start to spend many late hours at work, but with pressure coming on him to solve the murders Rob is determined to see the case through as SIO.

The pressure mounts when a team from Lewisham MIT are drafted in to help and it has DCI who is taking charge of the case.

The DCI is a young woman, on fast track promotion, known to be the star in the eye of the Senior Ranks in the Met.

How will she and Rob work together, what will the dynamics of the newly formed team be.

This is a fantastic story by an author I have only just discovered. The book is the first in a series, and I’ve just downloaded the rest of the series onto my Kindle, and once I’ve reviewed a book I’m committed to reading next, I will read the rest of the series straight away.

I read in a review of this book that the rape murder scene was too explicit. That it could act as a trigger for victims of abuse.

I have no doubt it could be a trigger, and I would warn any reader that finds the subject difficult to skip the pages covering that part of the story.

But graphic, I don’t know, I’ve read a lot worse. Yes it is there, and it doesn’t leave the reader in any doubt about what’s happening, but if the one or two pages were taken out the book would lose a part of the story that gives it that psychological thriller hook.

The crime and the investigation is the main part of the story. But I love characters, you can have the best story in the world, but if the characters are weak, or poorly written, the story doesn’t work for me.

The story, and the characters in this book are great.

I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.

Print length: 210. Publisher Joffe Books. Available now