Tag: book review

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

Mystic Wind. James Barretto

This book reminds me of the early John Grisham books. A defence attorney battling the odds to save a man from a guilty verdict which will lead to the death penalty.

Jack Marino was a star prosecution attorney, but following an attack on him in his own home he is forced to stand down. He is going through the motions as a corporate lawyer for his father-in-laws huge firm when a request comes out of the blue.

He is asked to defend a man who is charged with murder. What he doesn’t know is that he has been hand picked by his former boss, set up to fail.

Why, because the District Attorney is running in the local election and wants a landmark case under his departments belt to help him get the votes he needs.

What they didn’t take into consideration was that Jack was back on his game. There is no way he is going to let the prosecution railroad his client into the death penalty.

The case agains the man Jack is defending is flimsy. It relies on the testimony of a man who has been granted immunity in the case, a man that Jack thinks is the actual killer.

Blocked at every turn Jack fights the prosecution team, and a Judge who likes to railroad his court along his own lines.

This is a brilliant book. John Grisham was one of my favourite authors for years but I’ve found his recent books have been a bit of a disappointment. James Barretto has filled the hole that Grisham left.

The book holds no punches and grips from the start. Jack Marino is a great character that is easy to engage with. His frustrations in the court, and with the investigation translate to a great story.

Just like Grisham you are not guaranteed a happy ending. That is what makes this book so good. The reader has no idea how it’s going to end. Who is going to come out on top. Right up to the last page there are surprises.

The book is advertised as Book 1 in the Jack Marino series, which gives me a great anticipation of what is to come. Bring on book 2

Publisher: Oceanview Publishing. Pages: 401.

Audio Book running time: 9 hours 10 minutes. Narrator: Dylan Walker

Behind Closed Doors. Carol Wyer

30 years ago Stacey was kidnapped.

Now she’s an investigative journalist missing a little finger and part of her ear. Reminders of a kidnapping she has forced deep into the “forgotten box” in her memories.

The one thing she does remember is the fact that her father refused to pay the ransom, even when bits of her were sent to him, and for that she’ll never forgive him.

When her ex-husband turns up on her doorstep to tell her that his daughter, her step-daughter, had been kidnapped; and that the kidnapper was demanding £500,000, whilst saying they would kill the girl if the Police were informed, Stacey’s memories start to bubble back to the surface.

But why has her ex husband chosen her to be his confidente, is it just her journalistic skills or does he have a more sinister motive.

This is more than just the story of a kidnap. It’s a story of emotions and betrayal, whether that betrayal is actual or just perceived, trust and the psychology of the memory.

It’s a cracking story full of twists and turns, more than once I was convinced my hypothesis were right, only to have them shattered in the next chapter.

Carol Wyer is good at this, it’s a trait of many of hers stories.

Her other traits are realism, believable stories, great characters that I can engage with, or take an instant dislike to.

All of these are right here in this book.

I enjoyed every page.

Pages: 335. Release Date: 6th December 2022

The Silent Dead. Marnie Riches

Detective Sergeant Jackie Cooke is not your average fictional Police Officer, but I think she’s probably one of the most realistic.

A newly separated single mother with twins boys, one of who is the “child from hell” and a few months old little girl.

She is battling her ex partner, who wants to take her for a much as he can, having contributed very little, and relies on her mother, who lives in a granny-flat in the basement, for child care.

When she’s at work she’s worried about her kids and the over reliance she places on her mom. When she’s at home she can’t stop thinking about her cases.

Her work is suffering because of her home life, and her home life is suffering because of her work.

The icing on the cake for Cooke is that she was a DI, but stood down when she became pregnant with her daughter, and the new DI is, in her opinion, inept.

So that’s the backdrop to the story and it really adds a touch of reality that helped me engage with Cooke.

When she attends a murder scene to find out that it’s an old school friend of hers who has been killed, she is caught slightly off guard.

When the investigation starts to take her into the world of, online dating, and seedy hook ups she wonders what her old friend had got herself into in the years they had been out of contact.

The fact that more murders show a similar MO, leads Cooke and her Sergeant into the murky world of on line hook ups.

I have come across the phrase Incel in a few books recently, but Marnie Riches seems to have hit the right balance of menace and desperation that people that fall into that category exude and suffer.

I love the main characters in this book.

The crimes are really well considered and fit the story perfectly.

A great read.

Pages: 325. Publisher: Bookouture. Publishing Date 1st November 2022

Sudden Death. Rachel Lynch

A sleazy MP and his “fixer” are on a helicopter flight over the Lake District piloted by two former RAF pilots.

It should be a safe journey. The helicopter is top of the range, luxurious, and relatively new.

So why did the tail rota come off.

The ensuing crash kills all on board and people on the ground who are taking part in a Fell Run

DI Kelly Porter is just finishing off in a high profile court case which has seen her pitched against her “ex” boyfriend.

When the call comes in about the crash they are thrown together by circumstance. She’s SIO for the Police investigation, and he’s part of the mountain rescue team.

Porter conducts her investigation and attempts to keep other agencies in line, whilst dealing with the inevitable political pressures which are brought to bear on the investigators.

The conundrum of which of the four dead people on the helicopter was the intended target is the major factor. They all have secrets in their past.

I really enjoy this series. Rachel Lynch gets the mix just right for me. The investigation takes centre stage, but the lives of the characters, and the ongoing story of Porters private life leads to great read.

The setting of the Lake District is perfect. Close enough to big towns and cities, but remote enough to cause the difficulties found in tackling rural crimes, and disasters in almost inaccessible places

Pages: 355. Publisher: Canelo Crime. Release date: 10th November 2022

The Ink Black Heart. Robert Galbraith. An honest review by a fan

Like it says in the title of the blog I’m a fan of “Robert Galbraith” just like I’m a fan of J.K Rowling.

I’ve loved every book in the Strike/Ellicot series, so I hope everyone will understand that I am not jumping on a band wagon, or trolling with this blog.

It’s my honest opinion of the latest book in one of my favourite series.

The story is basically a murder, and attempted murder investigation.

Two people are attacked in a Cemetery, one is killed, the other left paralysed. They are the creators of a cult cartoon series. The cartoon had led to an unauthorised gaming app which acts as a chat room for fans.

It’s the chat room which the story revolves around. And this is where the problems start for the reader.

A lot of the plot is set out in the chat room format, with two or three conversations taking place at the same time, on the same page, in different columns. The spacing of each chat leaves large gaps and I was puzzled as to whether I should read each column in turn, each page in turn, or across the page to read each column in timeline order.

A short explanation by the publisher at the beginning of the ebook explains why the format on ebook is unchanged, and explains that it is then written in an ebook user friendly way after the original format. A note to them is, it isn’t in many places, in fact it isn’t in most places.

No explanation is given by the author as to how these sections should be read. I tried all ways to read it but found them frustrating and at times ambiguous.

One of the reasons I found them ambiguous is that, owing to the way chat rooms work each character has their own username which is unique to the room/game.

Getting used to these names is at times confusing. Adding to the confusion is that each of the people in the chat room are also active on Twitter.

Again there are long sections of the book written as Tweets or Twitter streams.

Each person on Twitter has their user @name plus their user name which is often not their actual name.

So now we have Strike and Robin investigating a case where all of the suspects, and there are quite a few, have at least 3 pseudonyms and a real name.

The problem being neither Strike, Robin, or the reader know who the characters are in the game compared to their Twitter names, or their actual name.

The basis of the story is that one character in the game chat room is bullying, cajoling, grooming, and generally being aggressive, and is thought to be responsible for the attack on the cartoons creators.

Strike and Robin are not investigating the murder, that’s down to the Police. They have been retained to find out who the online bully is.

This takes them into the murky world of the cartoon, it’s game/chat room, and it’s weird fans.

It takes them to places as diverse as an artistic commune and a Comic-Con Convention.

Just like all the other books in the series there are also other investigations taking place with Strike and Robin’s team being stretched to the limit and thankfully providing occasional relief from the main storyline.

The ongoing private lives of Strike and Robin, as well as their relationship also provides a relief within the story.

It pains me to say this, but this is not the best book I’ve ever read, nor is it the best book in this series. In fact, it it wasn’t part of the series I would have given in on it early on.

I did make it to the end, and in all honesty I’m still not one hundred percent sure I know exactly what happens or why.

Yes I know the identity of the killer but how we got there I’m still a little confused by.

Just after I started the book I started a thread about the format it’s presented in, on ebook, on a Crime Book Group I’m part of on Facebook. The general opinion was reflective of my thoughts that it was impossible to read in Kindle, an opinion that hasn’t changed.

A couple of interesting things came out of the responses.

People who were reading it in Hardback were also finding it confusing and frustrating.

Some people on there would not hear a thing said against Galbraith/Rowling.

I wonder how many people will buy this book and read it, like me, all the way to the end. How many people will either skip vast chunks of it, namely the chat room and Twitter streams, and just how many people will just give in on it.

Will this book become, what I call a “Lord of the Rings” book. Everybody’s has a copy, but not many have ever read it to completion., but many will claim they have.

As I said at the start of the blog, I’m a huge fan and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series. This one is just a bit…….. I don’t really know. I read it all, it was hugely frustrating, and a bit anticlimactic, but I read it all just in case something happened that I’d need to know in future books.

Print length: 1024 pages according to Amazon. Audiobook: 32 Hours 43 Minutes. Narrator: Robert Glenister

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

6 Ripley Avenue. Noelle Holten

A great standalone crime thriller, and I find that I’m saying that with less frequency than I’d like.

Why? Because most writers these days seem to stick with tried and trusted characters within a series.

The good thing about standalone books is you are never sure how they are going to end, which character will survive to the end, who will be left in a position that they can continue life in the way they were when the book started. It doesn’t have to have a happy ending for everybody.

The story in this book is like a locked room mystery with teeth.

The “locked room” is a hostel, rehabilitation centre, for serious offenders who have been released from prison. 6 Ripley Avenue.

When one of the inmate-guests is murdered in the middle of the night there are only so many suspects that can possibly have carried out the crime. Either other “guests” or staff

As the Police start their investigation a local, freelance crime journalist, Sloane starts her own.

Sloane has an advantage over the Police, she can listen to hearsay and gossip, the Police have to establish truth and relevance.

Sloane has a person on the inside, a volunteer cook who fancies herself as a bit of a Miss Marples, but she does tend to jump to the wrong conclusions at times. Does she help or hinder Sloane.

The Hostel is run by Jeanette. She is shocked by the murder but as the blame game starts, she begins to look at her staff differently. As Sloane’s investigation relies on gossip, Jeanette starts to realise some of it might have foundation.

This is a brilliant story. As with all of Noelle Holten’s books there is a depth of realism in her writing that can only be born of experience.

I’ve read mixed reviews of this book, and honestly, I don’t understand some of the criticisms. This is a fast paced thriller. A book that had me hooked from page one until the last full stop.

The characters are brilliantly written and I found myself having empathy with some, frustration with others, and engaging with all of them. Just as it should be.

The story is realistic, set in a tight community, limited suspects, Police frustrated by sticking to the rules, whilst the main characters carry on unrestricted by procedures and red tape.

That is another reason I loved this book. It’s not led by a Police Investigation, with a cop as the main character.

Sloane is a great lead, with a fresh way of looking into things.

Overall, in my opinion, one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Pages: 378. Publisher: One More Chapter Audio Book 10 hours 40 minutes, narrator TBC. Publication date: 27th September 2022

The Body In The Stairwell. Nick Louth

The latest in the DCI Craig Gillard series, and a great story. I just think that if you’re a Gillard fan you are going to be a bit disappointed, as although he’s the lead Police Character, he doesn’t actually appear much in the book.

The story is one of revenge. An English accountant has just served 6 months in an American jail for laundering drugs money for an American gang.

He got a short sentence compared to the gang bosses because he gave evidence against them. Now two of them are dead and one, the fiercest of all of them, has sworn revenge.

The Reptile, as he is known because of a skin condition, is out of segregation and plotting his revenge. Still locked in a maximum security jail in the middle of the desert he shouldn’t be a threat.

But he gets his hand on a smart phone, how hard should it be to find the English Accountant.

Meanwhile the Accountant is in serious financial difficulties. He had a life style funded by his cut of the laundered drug money and was living well beyond his means.

He has a wife and a teenage daughter, they both know, and are both trying to fly below the radar, staying off social media and out of the headlines.

The Reptile is determined and working with the slimmest slither of information starts to use his smart phone to track down the Accountant.

The story centres on the naivety of young teenagers and the information they share. The dogged determination of a desperate man, out for revenge.

Ultimately it’s a bit of an eye opener. It’s a psychological thriller based around internet stalking and grooming.

Young girls desperate for an internet presence, sharing hat they think is trivial information. All of this acting as a mosaic letting the Reptile gradually build a picture of a lifestyle and ultimately a location.

Then it’s time to wreak revenge, and he’s really going to make somebody suffer.

I really enjoy this series. Nick Louth brings a lot of realism to his books and although I mentioned Gillard is not in this book very much, it doesn’t distract from what is a very good story and a cautionary tail.

I wondered how easy it is to dig into a persons life, via social media, whilst I was reading this book. So I gave it a go. Believe me it’s scary.

Pages: 274. Publisher: Canelo Crime. Publishing date: 22nd September 2022

The Ambassador. Tom Fletcher

The type of book I don’t come across much these days, the type of book which was my staple reading for years. A book which fits in nicely with books by some of my favourite authors, like Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy.

Taking inspiration from some modern day events and weaving a great narrative Tom Fletcher has created a great, believable, story.

A young woman is taking refuge in the British Embassy in Paris, she’s managed to annoy most, if not all, of the Governments of the world.

But she has sought asylum in the embassy and it’s been granted. Her idea is to get a global government formed to make the world better prepared for any future pandemics.

Meanwhile a Scandinavian hacker is releasing leaked papers which have profound effects on Politicians, Public Figures, Business Leaders and many others. His idea to ruin lives.

She dies live on camera, locked in her room as the embassy hosts a gala.

Her death triggers other suicides in her name but seemingly controlled by the Scandinavian Hacker.

Ed Barnes, the Ambassador is instantly convinced her death is suspicious, the French Police say it’s suicide, without carrying out a proper investigation.

Barnes is isolated. His own Government insist the French investigation is correct. He wants to run his own but is told to stand down.

How can he. The same people he thinks are involved in the murder are threatening his daughter.

There’s only one thing he can do. Defy his Government, go on the run, and carry out his own investigation.

A brilliant story.

Pages: 320. Publisher: Canelo. Available now.