Thomas and Mercer – nigeladamsbookworm

A Soul For A Soul. Carol Wyer

Carol Wyer has done it again.

This is the fifth book in this series and everyone of them has had me gripped from the very start, and this is no different.

Although this book is part of a series Carol does a great job of filling in the skeleton of the running theme in the first two chapters. So, anybody reading this as a standalone novel will not be left totally in the dark.

What’s on the back of the book, or in this case on the Amazon page

DCI Kate Young never meant to shoot Superintendent John Dickson at the reservoir that night—even if, as a scheming corrupt cop and head of the shady syndicate, he probably had it coming. But now Kate has photographic evidence that someone else knows her terrible secret…

Tormented by guilt and the voices of the dead, Kate is desperate to unmask the rest of the corrupt officers before her own sins catch up with her. When DI Harriet Khatri, awaiting trial for the murder of Kate’s mentor, claims she was framed by Dickson’s syndicate, Kate reluctantly agrees to help in the hope of finding answers.

Meanwhile, DI Emma Donaldson finds herself on the hunt for a double murderer—a man who incapacitates his victims with a powerful narcotic called Devil’s Breath. Desperate to measure up to her role-model boss, Emma finds herself hurled into the deep end in more ways than one…

While Kate’s grip on reality wavers and the syndicate closes in, and with the mystery killer taking a special interest in Emma, could this be the case that defeats both detectives?

What I think

Kate Young lost her husband to a murderer. He was an investigative journalist and he was on to a ring of sex offenders.

At least one of which was a high ranking police officer.

Every investigation since his murder has almost been a “side hustle” as Kates main focus has been catching his killer and busting the sex ring.

I have questioned her mental health from the start, she hears voices, mainly that of her husband but latterly the dead Superintendent Dickinson.

It’s like having an Angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other.

What I began to realise, or for my own opinion on, was that actually she was just hypothesis building, the voices she was hearing was just a manifestation of her own thinking.

Police shouldn’t investigate with a bias, and Kates way of building her case was to have the two voices neutralising each other to make sure she was getting things right.

Haven’t we all had that little voice saying “one more drink” and another saying “no you’re going to regret it in the morning”

This book brings that story to a head and draws a line underneath it.

But will it silence the voices?

Is this the end of the DCI Kate Young series?

I sincerely hope not, but Carol Wyer has left us with an ending that might mean it is.

It’s not a cliffhanger, it’s the end of a running story, the logical place to conclude and for Kate to walk away. But the last few lines give me hope that we may see her again.

What a series, what a book, what an ending.

Print length 381 pages. Publisher Thomas and Mercer.

An Eye For An Eye. Carol Wyer

Everybody say hello to my new favourite Detective.

DI Kate Young works for Staffordshire Police, and at the start of the book she’s on enforced leave due to mental stresses brought on by recent investigations, and the death of her husband.

So why would the force bring her back to take on a really nasty, high pressure case.

Is it because they want her to fail, and do they want her to fail because they want to discredit her and get rid of her for once and for all; or is there something more sinister going on.

The case she’s brought back for ticks all the boxes that play with even the hardest of cops heads. Murder, sex, drugs, all involving vulnerable young people.

The investigation would be hard enough for a fit Kate, but one who is suffering with PTSD, one who is still grieving, one who really shouldn’t be back at work, what chance has she got of solving it.

Some people, mainly her closest team, are on her side, some of the senior officers are keeping her at arms length, not wanting to be tainted by what must be her ultimate failure.

Carol is on familiar ground basing her crimes in the Staffordshire area, but where she found the storyline for this book I’ll never know. You can only guess at what runs through an authors mind when they are plotting things like this. Her skill is taking it right to the edge but still keeping it firmly in realms of the realistic.

The other thing you can guarantee with Carol Wyer is good characters, and Kate Young is her best yet. Flawed and vulnerable, whilst still being strong and intuitive. She is as close, in character, as I’ve come across in fiction, to some of the real SIOs I’ve met.

Then there are the recurring characters she has running through a series, there’s always one that brings that bit of quirkiness, and in this series she’s found a beaut, the flamboyant Ervin Saunders, Head of Forensics, who brings that little bit of lightness that every serious book needs.

It’s a brave author that brings to an end, or puts on hold a hugely successful series, to start another.

But, as they say, fortune favours the brave, and this book has me hooked into the series from the start, I can only hope Kate, and Ervin, and the team that come with them, are here for a long run

This book is up there with the best I’ve read, and left me desperate for the next instalment of the series.

An absolute cracking story that announces the start of a series that is destined for the best seller lists.

Pages: 426. Publisher: Thomas and Mercer. Available now

Runaway Justice. Chad Zunker

Sometimes, just sometimes, a book comes along and makes you sit back and smile.

This is one of those. It’s not a complex story, it’s not a heart stopping story. It is a story that flows believably from one scene to the next. It is a story that makes you suddenly realise you’ve had your head in a book for hours, and that you’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in it.

Parker Barnes is 12 years old and living on the streets of Austin Texas. Why? Because both his parents have died and he has run away from an abusive foster father. He’s not doing bad fending for himself and making friends amongst the homeless until he witnesses a murder. Then things start to go bad.

Arrested on another matter Parker finds legal representation in David Adams, an ex big company Lawyer who now runs a small business specialising in working with the vulnerable groups in society.

The problem is the person responsible for the murder wants Parker silenced. Permanently.

The FBI have also identified Parker and think he has something to do with the murder, and they want to talk to him. As you’d expect a young homeless person to be, Parker is scared of them and thinks they’ll frame nine or send him back into the system of abusive foster parents.

So at the first chance he runs.

The story of Parker trying to evade being caught by the FBI and the criminals is interwoven with the story of David Adams and his team trying to solve the original murder, they think it’s the only way to make Parker safe and bring him out of hiding, but is it. are they really putting themselves in as much danger as Parker.

This is a cracking story told at just the right pace.

A new author on my list of must reads, I’ve just read Chad Zunker’s Twitter feed. His pinned tweet says

“Three years ago I sat on this bench in the mall after reading another soul-crushing publishing email rejection. A twenty year journey already filled with over one thousand rejections. Today I sit here with the #1 book in the Kindle Store. Fight for your dreams!”

That is him talking about his first book An Equal Justice the first in the David Adams story, I’ve now uploaded it onto my Kindle and I’m going straight into this next.

What higher recommendation can I give.

So Chad, keep the dream alive, keep the books coming, you are one hell of a story teller.

RAIN WILL COME Thomas Holgate

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Sometimes a character is so well written, and is that “off-the-wall”, I can associate them with a real person or a character I’ve seen on TV. This is one of those books

Detective Paul Czarick reminded me of Rigs from the Lethal Weapon TV series. He is a man who breaks rules, does what he likes, and is fuelled by nicotine, caffeine, and Columbian marching powder, turning to bourbon when he wants to relax.

Czarick works for the unpopular Illinois Bureau of Justice, and thanks to the fact that he solved a very high profile case, he is benefitting from a certain amount of immunity within the Bureau, and in this case he uses it to its full advantage.

Daniel is a killer, he’s a revenge killer, and he has a plan. Czarick picks up one of his murders and starts to connect the dots and links his case to another murder.

As Czarick becomes aware of the killer, Daniel becomes aware of the cop, and so the game begins.

A game of cat-and-mouse that stretches the length of the states. Every time Czarick gets close Daniel surprises him.

For some, there are lucky escapes, for others there is a terrible death that is somehow linked to something they have done in the past.

This is a simple plot, but a cracking story. It is as much a psychological thriller as it is a police story.

A great read

Publishing date: March 2020

Publishers: Thomas & Mercer

Available to pre-order

Truth and Lies. Caroline Mitchell

Straight off, I loved this book.

Take a sprinkling of Fred and Rose West and add a pinch of Myra Hindley and there you have the main villain in this book.

Lillian Grimes is in prison for being one half of a husband and wife team that went from swinging to killing. Carrying out deprived sex attacks and killing their victims after luring them into their home. The victims were buried in the garden, under the cellar floor, and in the walls.

Lillian’s husband killed himself in prison but had already told police there were three other victims. He named them but didn’t say where they were buried.

Now Lillian is using that to her advantage. She wants to drip the information to detectives, but she has a price.

DI Amy Winter is a pocket rocket of a detective. At 5”2 she is not very tall but don’t ever underestimate her.

Amy’s dad was one of the cops who put Lillian in prison, his recent death has left a hole, but she is determined to carry on.

When Lillian gets in touch and says she will only deal with Amy, and will take her to the first burial site, Amy has no idea of the effect it’s going to have on her.

As Lillian plays her mind games a young girl is kidnapped. Amy and her team should be concentrating on the kidnapping, but Amy’s head is with the missing bodies and the revelations Lillian keeps making.

This book is tremendous. I can’t remember a book ever having me hooked so quickly, and kept me hooked so thoroughly until the very last page.

Caroline Mitchell is an ex-Detective and her experience always shines through in the reality of her books; but this book has taken it to another level.

The tension is brilliant. The inter-weaving of the plot lines make the story play out wonderfully.

The reference to Fred and Rose, and Myra Hindley, at the beginning of this blog are not waffle. The crimes Lillian has been convicted of are Fred and Rose’s crimes, or bloody close to them. The fact that Hindley also tried to curry favour by taking the police to the moors to show where the bodies of some of the victims were buried, is also very reminiscent of Lillian’s behaviour.

But there was something else that Rose West and Myra Hindley had in common, and so has Lillian.

What an utterly compelling read. One that had me doing my own research to see if my thoughts were right. Just my kind of book.

Oh, and there’s a twist right at the end. Please let there be a sequel. I want to know what happens next.

Pages: 348

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Publishing Date: 30^th August 2018.