Tag: Bookouture

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 Hidden Child. Rebecca Griffiths

One of my often used phrases is “I love a book that gets me reaching for Google” and this is one of those books.

In fact it made me realise just how much I didn’t know about the Myra Hindley and Ian Brady murder spree that took place in the early 1960’s.

Maybe it was because the murders took place when I was two or three years old, maybe I thought I knew more about them because they have been in and out of the news ever since.

Rebecca Griffiths has taken those murders and woven a great story around them.

Ronald is a farmer, on Saddleworth Moor. He’s reclusive and keeps himself to himself.

It’s a solitary life and that’s what he wants. So when a couple start to appear on his land, he notices them straight away. When he starts to hear news reports about missing children he quickly realises what the mystery couple are up to.

But what can he do about it.

Go to the police, no way. Ronald has his own reasons for not wanting the Police snooping around his land.

Ronald is a great character, conflicted, would be the best way to describe him. But his story is tough and at times emotional.

Hindley and Brady, there victims, and the families of the victims are written about tactfully but grittily. In fact at times it’s a bit of a tough read when you realise that part of the story is factual

Books which weave fact and fiction can go both ways, really good, or really bad, this one is definitely in the really good category.

Rebecca Griffiths has used just the right mixture of fact and fiction, in fact it’s that good a mixture that I wouldn’t have been surprised if I hadn’t got to the end and found that I’d been reading a book bringing new evidence, and revealing new crimes. There have been rumours for years that there are more victims of Hindley and Brady, and that maybe there was another accomplice.

This book doesn’t open the door of another accomplice but it does open the door on other murders, and that’s where the fiction kicks in.

This is a great read. Weather you remember the Moors Murders, or as was my case, thought you knew a bit about them, I can guarantee that by the end of this book you will have used whatever research engines you have available to you, and learnt a lot more.

The story is great, the jump between what is present and what is past, within the story is sometimes a bit blurred and I got confused once or twice, but that may have been because I was reading it none stop. It hooked me from the start.

Print length: 361 pages. Audio book length: 10 hours 47 minutes. Publisher : Bookouture

Stolen Angels. Rita Herron

Crooked Creek is setting up to be Americas Midsummer.

A great place to set crimes, with its idealistic location, and it’s sometimes eccentric characters.

Detective Ellie Reeves has investigated murders before but the one thing that strikes home, and that gets into her head is child kidnappings.

When the first girl is reported missing it’s bad enough. But then a reporter gets told another girl has been taken.

An unlikely alliance is formed between Reeves and the reporter. Then the discovery, these are not the first girls to go missing. Is it a coincidence that another went missing on the same day the year before.

The community is up in arms with Ellie being the focus of their consternation.

Can she find the girls.

This is a great book but the one thing that makes it standout is the perpetrator.

Rita Herron is really going down the psychological thriller road with this story and the way the perpetrator is portrayed is brilliant.

Reeves and her team are well established in the other books in the series but the peripheral characters in this book are outstanding.

As a series this is one of the best out of America at the moment.

This book elevates the series, but can be read as a standalone.

Print length: 448 pages. Publisher: Bookouture. Audio book playing time: 9 hours 15 minutes

The Dying Game. Ruhi Choudhary

Do you want to play a game..a simple question with chilling consequences.

A beautiful woman murdered, a local man committed suicide leaving a note saying he had to killed her.

A open and closed case until another person is murdered.

Then the first clue, a letter. somebody is showing people how vulnerable a member of their family is. The question. Do you want to play a game. Kill the person I deliver to you or a member of your family dies. Your choice.

Detective Mackenzie Price is assigned the case, and immediately starts to send ripples through the small community she works in.

One of the families involved is old money rich, and they have influence.

But with more people going missing, and now knowing they only have a limited time to find them, she doesn’t care who she upsets, or what the consequences might be.

The way Ruhi Choudhary writes always grips me. She has a way of guiding the story down avenues that always make me think, I’ve got this, only to find it’s another clever plot twist.

But that’s what makes it so good. Real police investigation is all about building hypotheses, the investigators investing their theory, until it’s proven wrong and they have to back track and build another

It’s always about the clues you don’t see, often right in front of your eyes, the clue that only takes relevance when that one piece of the jigsaw falls into place, and you finally see the relevance of the picture.

This is where Choudhary is the master. She lets little things slip into the story that help build the final hypothesis. There’s no sudden revelation of a clue, or suspect who hasn’t been in the story until almost the end.

Everything is there in the build up, but can you spot it. I’m usually quite good at spotting it, but not till really late in these stories.

A great book in a brilliant series. Yes it can be read as a standalone. No it won’t ruin the earlier books if you choose to go back and read them.

Loved it.

Print length: 382 pages. Audio book running time: 10 hours 45 Publisher: Bookouture

Her Dying Wish. Carla Covach

I have to admit to a vested interest in this book. I have an acknowledgment in the back for some advice I gave to the author.

Carla is one of my favourite authors, and her DI Gina Harte is one of the best characters in modern crime fiction. So it was a privilege to be asked, but this is an honest review

What the gumph says:

Kerstin is wide awake. While her family sleeps around her, the devastating secret her husband just told her is spinning through her mind. Does she really know the man she married? And are her children still safe in this small town?

She jumps as she hears a sound from outside. Peering into the inky darkness, her eyes focus on movement at the bottom of the garden. Someone is out there.

She watches as the figure strikes a single match. Kerstin gasps at the sight of the face staring back at her, smiling, as if enjoying her fear.

A car door slams and the figure makes a dash for the trees, leaving something behind – a small memorial candle. As it flickers in the darkness, Kerstin knows exactly what it means. Someone is coming for her, and her family is in terrible danger…

As I was reading it I was making notes for my review, but unusually for me they were one word bullet points.

Manipulation, Murder, Deceit, Blackmail, Victims or Murderers.

The very last thing I wrote in my note was.

Certainly no Occam’s Razor in solving this one.

How Covach even conceived this story makes me wonder about the way an authors mind works. It’s brilliant.

Children are kidnapped, family homes are set on fire, people are murdered. And all this is connected to a small group of seemingly innocent people.

As a reader I am always trying to work out where a story is going to go, who is the next victim, who is the perpetrator, usually with great success.

Not with this book. I loved the crimes, the settings and the story. Did I work out who was responsible and why? Not a chance.

Even though I made a note half way through reading it, 50/50, because I thought the mystery had been solved. I was wrong. It was just another well designed, well written, turn in the plot.

This is a book that just keeps twisting and turning from the first house fire, to the final arrest this book had me hooked.

Print length: 367. Publisher: Bookouture. Available now.

The Drowning Girls. Lisa Regan

The latest in a cracking series and it had me reading well into the early hours.

The publishers material for this book gives a brief insight into the story

A knock on the door late in the evening can only mean trouble for Detective Josie Quinn, but fear chokes her at the news that one of her own team is missing. No one has seen Denton PD’s Press Liaison Amber for days and, as she follows the message scrawled on the frosted windscreen of Amber’s car to a nearby dam, Josie hears a piercing scream that tells her she’s too late. But the body they pull from the freezing water is not Amber…

Josie won’t sleep until she finds a name for the beautiful girl left to drown, and the meaning of the numbers scribbled in a tattered pink diary found on Amber’s desk. She must stay strong and focused for her close-knit team. But as rumors of an argument the night Amber disappeared surface, can she even trust her own colleagues?

But what it doesn’t give you is the glimpse into the emotions involved in the investigation. The who-can-you-trust paranoia that settles over Quinn, and starts to tear her team apart.

Race against the clock stories are common in fiction these days, but I haven’t read one so well written as this for a long time.

I read this book in a day. But that day actually spread well past my usual lights-out, book-down, time, and into the small hours of the following morning. It had me hooked, and I think if it had been another hundred pages long I’d have still carried on reading until I’d finished.

Pages: 391 (Print length). Publisher: Bookouture. Available now

The Memory Bones. B.R Spangler

I have a confession to make. The killings in this book got into my dreams. I won’t say nightmares, because that’s a bit dramatic, but they certainly got into my head.

A choice, a quick death with a bullet in the head.

Or, play the game, take the challenge, escape the knots and run away.

3 years ago a woman is given the choice, she doesn’t know why she’s been taken into a clearing in a wooded area, or who the two men who took her are, all she knows is the bullet will kill her, and escaping being tied up and left alone at least gives her a chance.

Today a man’s body is found hog-tied in a clearing. Two discoveries get Detective Casey White’s attention.

One, the discovery nearby of skeletal remains intertwined with rope and a similar set of knots.

The other, the latest victim is her ex-husband Ronald Haskin, the father of their missing daughter. A man she still has emotional attachment to, but has not been in contact with for a while.

All that in the first thirty pages.

I don’t think I’ve ever done a review where I stopped talking about the plot after just thirty pages, but I don’t want to spoil, what is a stunning story, by discussing the plot line any further.

As with all of the series the characters and settings are great.

The continuing story of Casey White’s daughter runs through the story like a fine grain through an oak table top.

White trying to balance her work life, her ongoing hunt for the truth about her daughter, and her blooming relationship always add to the books, but take on a greater poignancy through this one.

As always the story is full of suspense, Cliff hanger chapter endings, and twist that kept me reading late into the night.

Maybe that’s why I had the bad dreams.

I loved it.

Pages: 337 Publisher: Bookouture. Available now

Fallen Angel. D.K Hood

A group of crime authors. A snowed in mountain resort. What could possibly go wrong.

The book starts with a woman running through the snow, she knows she’s being pursued, but she doesn’t get away.

The staff of the resort notice she’s missing and reports it to the Police.

Sheriff Jenna Alton and her trusty second in command Detective Dave Alton head to the resort.

What follows is a cross between a cosy, locked room crime mystery set in, and around, the snowed in resort, and a chilling thriller.

Alton and Kane are stuck in the resort as the blizzard rages, another woman is murdered.

In true locked room mystery style they know they are trapped with the killer hiding in plain sight amongst the staff and guests.

I like this book, in fact I like this series. The back story of both Alton and Kane, both in hiding with pasts that have seen them work in law-enforcement, is addictive reading.

Both moved to hide in plain sight in the sleepy mountain town of Black Rock Falls, a small team around them that help them solve the ever increasing number of murders that have hit the town.

The town is growing as is its notoriety, that’s what attracted the crime authors, it’s also what’s attracting the psychopaths.

This, off all the books so far, has the feel of an Agatha Christie story, with the inclusion of the modern day chiller.

The story that the book carries is good, but for me it’s the characters and the setting that sets this series apart from others.

For that reason, I wouldn’t read this as a standalone book. It’s an essential cog in a very strong engine, and in the right place in that engine it works perfectly. On its own, I don’t think it would have as big an affect.

Pages: 346. Publisher: Bookouture. Available now.

The Stolen Ones. Angela Marsons

When a man, Steven Harte, walks into a Police Station and asks to speak to Detective Inspector Kim Stone, with information about the disappearance of a young girl 25 years ago she initially gives him short shrift.

But when he says she will want to talk to him again soon, just as another little girl goes missing under very similar circumstances , he gets her attention.

Is he building an alibi, does he know something relevant, or is he just playing with Kim’s head.

And, as if one person playing with her head isn’t enough, the Queen of Psychopaths, Kim’s nemesis, Dr Alex Throne is sitting in prison trying to plot her way to freedom.

She knows Kim won’t be able to resist visiting her if she can get a message to her, all she needs is a phone with a number Kim doesn’t recognise. Easy for a functioning, psychotic, sociopath. But somebody will have to suffer.

Meanwhile. Kim’s team are investigating the latest disappearance and Stacy starts to notice a pattern.

The little girl that went missing 25 years ago was never found, but was she the first.

To find the clues that will help the team find the latest girl the team start to dig into historical cases, none of which had been solved.

How can respected business man Steven Harte possibly be linked to all of these cases?

Why is he leading Kim on a merry dance across the Black Country. He seems to anticipate their every move, and ingratiates himself with her team.

Can he possibly be a cold blooded kidnapper, and killer?

All the time the investigation is going on Dr Alex is plotting, should Kim be spending more time making sure she stays locked away, or is she being blindsided.

This is a belter of a story.

I recently watched a live Stream with Angela Marsons talking about how she comes up with stories for this amazing series. The way a little thing will catch her attention, then develops into a plot.

The way she is intrigued by finding out about specialist fields within Criminology and Forensics. The fact that she has bookshelves full of research text books.

It’s not a coincidence that this is the favourite series of so many people, selling millions around the world. Was it Tiger Woods who said “the harder I practice, the luckier I get”

Angela puts the hard miles into her research, often digging deep just to give a short chapter authenticity and realism.

The people, the settings, the stories, are all very realistic.

But there was something she said in the live stream that really resonated with me. Readers don’t need to know the little things, “like how many forms a cop needs to fill out” What they want to read is what they actually expect of a crime book, based on their knowledge from TV series and documentaries.

Nobody does this better than Angela. I work in the forensic field and have been involved in major investigations. I’ve never once thought anything she wrote was unrealistic.

Yet I have an acquaintance who could not be further removed from that life. Who has no experience of the police, or a police investigation, who is absolutely hooked on these books.

If Angela can keep both of us enthralled, and eagerly waiting for each instalment, she is definitely doing something right, very very right.

This year has been a stellar year for Crime Fiction books, but Angela Marsons still sits reading get at the top of my charts and looking at Amazon Chart today, the day after publication for this book, right at the top of most other readers must read list as well.

Pages: 426. Publisher: Bookouture. Available now

Dark Water Girls. Maegan Beaumont

Georgia Falls has been off the Island for years, running away after she found out the man she thought loved her had got another girl pregnant.

Now she’s back, having served for years in Military Police, and she’s confused by what she’s found.

She’s inherited a mansion and lots of money, confusing because she was a baby abandoned into care.

She’s found that the man she thought she loved has recently come out of prison having served time for attempting to kill his father.

But the most confusing thing is that when she is sent a text asking for help, and she finds a dead woman who has been sexually assaulted.

What follows is a great story.

George is a great character who is left frustrated by the lies people on the island are telling her.

The island suffers from the American caste system. There are those who have, and they really do have, money, mansions, boats, connections.

And there are those that don’t, and they really don’t.

The strangely large amount of adopted girls, especially by one rich family should have rung bells years ago, but who in the family, if anybody, is the problem.

A vicious biker gang run Island Pub where the black and white, of the haves and have nots, blurs into the grey of drugs abuse and prostitution.

George is convinced that one of her fellow adopted girls has been killed at the bikers pub whilst another sits alongside the Gang leader snaring insults at her.

The Sherif, Alex, the man she wakes up with most mornings, is telling her the death was the result of a drug overdose, and warning her off her own investigation.

When she realises she’s under surveillance, by other police officers she becomes really concerned.

Who is to be trusted on the island.

Those she always thought she could trust seem to be misleading her at best, trying to kill her at worst.

The one person she doesn’t want to trust seems to be the only person looking out for her.

This is a fast paced story that had me building hypotheses after hypotheses in my own mind.

It’s written in the first person from two peoples view point.

Georgia. The main character, the island returnee, the confused person trying to piece together what is actually happening on the island.

Lincoln, the rich kid who George ran away from all those years ago, the man who had been in prison, the man she really shouldn’t trust, the only one who seems to be looking out for her.

A great read and hopefully the start of a new series.

Publisher: Bookouture. Pages: 402 (Guide only) Available now.