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Her Silent Cry, Lisa Regan, Blog Tour

Her Silent Cry is the 6^thBook in the Josie Quinn series written by Lisa Regan.

I have been lucky enough to have been on board with this series from the start, and I’ve loved every book. So could this one live up to my expectations. Definitely.

The main character Josie Quinn has had a rough ride, from childhood to Detective, and that story alone would be worthy of its own book, but you won’t be left behind if you read this as a stand-alone.

Lisa Regan has a way of writing that I rarely come across. She manages to make the read comfortable, whilst covering the most horrific of crimes. This is never “cosy-crime”, but the stories always slide by really quickly.

Her characters are amazing, Quinn is feisty, pretty, stubborn, and a hell of a good cop.

Her partner Noah is a bit of a mystery to those that don’t know him, and there’s a good reason for that, but Quinn knows him, and they spark together brilliantly

The victims suffer, and boy do some of them suffer, at the hands of some of the best criminals in fiction at the moment.

The setting is perfect Denton, a small town in the US surrounded by forests and mountains means Regan can set just about any crime she wants in a realistic surrounding, but the best part is the isolation she finds in scenes set in the wilds. If it was a film I’d be watching from behind the sofa

So here’s my review of Her Silent Cry, book six in my favourite American Crime series

Her Silent Cry Lisa Regan

For once Detective Josie Quinn is having some time off and has taken a friends young son to the park for a day out. The piece is soon shattered when a 7 year old girl goes missing, right from under her parents noses, in the same park.

Off duty or not Josie is soon directing operations to try to find the girl. Joined by her team, and a good proportion of the local community the search proves fruitless.

Against her boss’s best wishes Quinn calls in a specialist FBI team that specialise in investigating the abduction of children.

The FBI and Quinn’s team are at a loss to identify the abductor, until a phone call to the parents strikes fear to everybody’s hearts. Their demand, or lack of it, is chilling, and would be every parent’s nightmare.

Quinn has formed a good relationship with the family and the FBI begin to rely on this, but is she getting all the information she needs from them.

This is a cracking story.

One simple crime, an abduction, strikes fear into the community, but things start to get worse.

Lisa Regan has built a strong community of characters in this series. She uses their emotions and feelings to permutate through the story and build up the suspense.

Unlike most series any of these books can be read as a stand-alone. The reader will learn bits of the back stories of the main characters, without being left wondering what is going on.

The setting is perfect. A small City with plenty of isolated rural areas, which allows Regan to set parts of the book in a built up area, whilst having all the suspense of settings in remote country areas.

This book, and this series, ideal for fans of crime series written by the likes of Angela Marsons, Patricia Gibney, Carol Wyer and Graham Smith.

Publishing Date: 14^thAugust

Publishers: Bookouture

TAKEN TO THE GRAVE M.M Chouinard

Jo Fournier has relinquished her Lieutenants role and reverted back to Detective. She didn’t like the politics of the role and hated not being on the streets.

Back with her partner Detective Bob Arnett she is sent to investigate the killing of a professor at the local university.

And so, it begins, Professor Michael Whorton is universally hated, students, peers, his wife, and a long list of women who he’s had adulterous affairs with, all seem to have just reason to want this man dead.

The list may be long but realistically who would murder a man, in his own office, in the middle of a busy university.

Jo and Arnett start to unravel the professor’s life, then another body connected to the university is found, and another.

This book is about University Politics, and relationships, and how the unchecked behaviour of one person can send ripples that ruin a lot of people’s lives.

Once the university starts to receive adverse publicity, they start to put pressure on the Police Department, and once again Jo is caught up in Department politics as she is put under pressure to make an arrest.

I liked this book. Just like the first one in the series it’s a good mix between a full on crime thriller and a cosy-crime mystery.

The characters are good, and I really engage with both Jo and Arnett. It is written in a way that it is never fanciful, everything that happens is logical, and there is no “shark-infested-custard” type scenarios or revelations.

The best recommendation I can give this book is it enthralled me to the point where I could have been reading a true-crime story.

Pages: 330

Publisher: Bookouture

Publishing Date: 19^thSeptember 2019

THE ESSENCE OF EVIL Rob Sinclair

I loved this book, not because its set in my home city of Birmingham, not even because the main character is wonderfully flawed, or because the story is brilliant, even though all of those are true. I loved this book because it is at least three stories in one, all wonderfully woven together to make a story that will stay with me for quite a while.

DI Dani Stephens, what a character, is returning to work in the Homicide Team of the West Midlands Police after two years off following an injury.

Dani is returning after being attacked by a killer, who nearly took her life, and worse still it was her twin brother.

As she returns she is immediately involved in a murder investigation, one of the strands of the story, but she is teamed up with a friend as joint SIO. Is this part of her rehabilitation into the team, or is she just not trusted?

Talking about rehabilitation, that’s the second thread of the story. In flash-back chapters we find out how she was injured, and are taken through her two years of rehab, the first six months of which were in hospital as she recovered from a Traumatic Brain Injury.

The third strand of the story is how she received the injury, the relationship she now has with her twin brother who is serving a life sentence for murders he committed.

Dani is a great character, fiercely independent to the point of pushing everybody away. Paranoid to the point of hysteria, and mucked up in the head by the medication she is still taking, even though she should be cutting back.

So when she develops a theory about the murder she’s investigating it’s not surprising that nobody takes her seriously.

As Dani carries on her investigation she starts to doubt herself, has the brain injury robbed her of the one thing she loves in life, the ability to do her job; or has she got it all right, and should everybody else actually be listening to her instead of doubting her.

This is a belter of a book.

I love complex, dark stories, that could all so easily be real, and this book sits firmly in that category.

Pages: 394

Publishers: Canelo Hera

Release date: 12^thSeptember 2019

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

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

HER SILENT CRY Lisa Regan

Off duty or not Josie is soon directing operations to try to find the girl. Joined by her team, and a good proportion of the local community the search proves fruitless.

Against her boss’s best wishes Quinn calls in a specialist FBI team that specialise in investigating the abduction of children.

Quinn has formed a good relationship with the family and the FBI begin to rely on this, but is she getting all the information she needs from them.

This is a cracking story.

One simple crime, an abduction, strikes fear into the community, but things start to get worse.

Lisa Regan has built a strong community of characters in this series. She uses their emotions and feelings to permutate through the story and build up the suspense.

Unlike most series any of these books can be read as a stand-alone. The reader will learn bits of the back stories of the main characters, without being left wondering what is going on.

This book, and this series, ideal for fans of crime series written by the likes of Angela Marsons, Patricia Gibney, Carol Wyer and Graham Smith.

Publishing Date: 14^thAugust

Publishers: Bookouture

GONE Leona Deakin

People are going missing, nothing unusual in that, people go missing every day, but some of these people are being given a card with a message on it just before they disappear.

On the card is the message “Happy First Birthday. Dare To Play The Game” For some reason the Police aren’t linking the cases, and where they do, they deem the missing person to be old enough, and in good enough health, for them not to be seen as vulnerable.

Dr Augusta Bloom is a Psychologist who has teamed up with Ex MI6 officer Marcus Jameson to carry out independent investigations.

One of the woman that goes missing is related, in a tenuous way to Marcus, and he is asked to look into the case.

Between him and Dr Augusta they start to identify a worrying trend in the type of person that has gone missing after being invited to play the game.

But why are people being asked to play, and what is the end game.

As the two investigate secrets are uncovered which surprise everybody, and scare more than a few.

Can Dr Augusta, the shy almost introvert Psychologist, get into the mind of whoever is collecting these people. While she tries Marcus uses his investigative skills, and a few contacts from his Secret Service past to try to link all of victims.

The main part of this story is the hunt for the missing people, but what I found really intriguing was who was being invited to play the game, and the purpose they were asked to join in. It would not be a big leap of faith to see this happen in real life, and with frightening consequences.

A good read.

Pages: 384

Publisher: Black Swan

Publishing Date: 3^rdOctober 2019

FEAR IN THE LAKES Graham Smith

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The beautiful DC Beth Young is back, and back with a sickening crime to investigate.

A man has been attacked in his home, nearly every bone in his body has been broken in a systematic attack. What is even more disturbing is the reveal of how the attack took place.

As the man fights for his life in hospital Beth tries to find his attacker, but the motive for such a specific attack is evading her and her small team, and it doesn’t help that the man’s wife knows nothing about his early life.

With such an unusual crime it is a surprise when another victim is found with similar wounds.

The team continue to struggle to find any leads until they get a break……but that would spoil the book, so I’ll leave it there.

Graham Smith has created a great character in Beth Young. I if you have read any of the previous books you will know that her beauty is mired by a wicked scar on one side of her face. It happened before she joined the police and the police never caught the person who bottled her in a pub, but she got a look at a distinctive tattoo on the neck of one of the men who was fighting when she got in the way and received the injury.

She’s been looking for that tattoo since she joined the police. This has formed a great back story through the series, and the cliff hanger in the last book was she found her man. But what is she going to do about it?

This forms a brilliant backdrop to the main story in this book. How does a cop get revenge for a crime that happened to her years ago…….again no spoilers

This series is set in the Lake District, and area which most people consider a nice quiet area of countryside to holiday in. Graham Smith looks at it from another angle. Transient communities, big isolated houses, remote areas where nobody can witness crimes. It is an ideal place to set a crime series, and Graham uses it to its full extent.

Don’t be fooled by the setting. This is not some cosy-crime story. This is a full-on story of a terrible series of crimes that would rock any community. It is a terrific read.

Pages: 356

Publishers: Bookouture

Publishing Date: 12^thJuly 2019

CHILDS PLAY Angela Marsons

As if this series needed a hook to get you into a book. Yet Angela Marsons has started this one with the most original, and toe curling, murders of the series.

The book starts with a murder in a kids playground. It’s a bit of a mystery where this murder fits in as its set years before the main body of the book, but fit in it does, and it’s part of a brilliant mystery.

Moving forward to the present day Kim and her team are called to a murder in a local park (and when I say local its where I take my dog for a walk most days). The murder victim is posed and the murderer has left a signature, but what does it all mean.

Kim lets her team work to their strengths. Stacy is set to work trawling the internet, whilst Kim and Bryant hit the streets.

The newest member of the team, Penn, is called back to his old team, and the story that unfolds for him is every Police Officers worst nightmare. Has he put the wrong man in jail. This story alone would have made a great book.

Kim is also fighting the Brass in the Police force. Owing to recent reviews showing that officers are burning out, along with the constrictions of austerity, she is forced to make her team work the case on a 9-5 basis, she and they hate it.

To make up for the lack of Penn, and the lack of available work hours, Kim is given a new officer, a 24 year old PC called Tiffany, who is a bubble of energy and enthusiasm. At first Kim, and Stacy, try to reject the help but soon realise they are stuck with their new yappy (and for us from the Black Country Yampy) puppy of an officer.

As the bodies mount Kim’s team are stretched to the limit. Will burn out claim any of them?

Book 11 in the DI Kim Stone series and again Angela Marsons has given us a brilliantly crafted book.

It’s no secret this is my favourite series in the crime fiction genre. I do wonder sometimes if it’s because the books are set where I live, but then I read the blogs from other reviewers around the world, and realise that if they were set in Mongolia I’d still love the stories.

Angela Marsons has created a fictional team in a real world. The crimes she writes about are all too realistic. The worries and concerns of the Police Officers, the Victims, the Witnesses, and the Criminals are written in a way that lets the reader engage. Empathy and sympathy for some characters, and anger at others are emotions which each of the books evokes aplenty.

In my very first blog, about my life and how reading has been my companion, hobby, and at times escape, I recall how I read all of the Sven Hassle war books on my first ship. I wrote how when I’d finished the series I felt like I’d lost some friends. I don’t know when this series is going to end, I hope not for a while yet, but I have the feeling I’m going to miss Kim and her Team just as much, and probably a lot more.

Pages: 397

Publishing Date: 11^thJuly

Publishers: Bookouture

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