Books – Page 5 – nigeladamsbookworm

Mercy Killing. Lisa Cutts

A good story but it comes with a warning.

The story centres around victims of child abuse, and although there is no gratuitous scenes, it is alluded to strongly, and may act as triggers to anybody who has been affected by these crimes

DI Harry Powell is newly promoted, in an unhappy marriage, and is the father to two teenage sons.

He has a wondering eye, when it comes to attractive women, but is to afraid of his wife’s r eaction to anything other than looking.

In short, he’s a wonderful character for a series.

In his first major investigation as DI he, and his team, investigate the murder of a man who has been convicted of child abuse.

The man is found in his flat, hands secured with cable ties, and strangled with another.

From the start of the book the reader is led down the line of knowing who the killers are, but as the book moves on it becomes less obvious and there appears to be a handful of people who are in the frame.

As the last few chapters draw the story to a conclusion these suspects spiral around until the murderer is finally identified.

Throughout the book Lisa Cutts does a brilliant job of looking at the long term psychological damage suffered by people who are abused as children.

What she also does really well is examine the effect it has on Police Officers. The difficulty in investigating the murder of a monster who has abused children. The fact that most people, cops included, would probably think he got what he had coming to him. But they still have to identify and arrest the people responsible, ensuring fairness in justice.

Part of the book also looks at the tragic consequences of making accusations of abuse, another trigger warning.

As much as I’ve made this sound like a tough read it’s actually not. It’s a good Police Procedural, but it’s also thought provoking.

Pages: 365. Publisher: Bloodhound . Series number 1/3 so far Audiobook. 11 hours 2 minutes. Narrator Iain Batchelor.

36 Hours. Angela Marsons

Wow. In fact several wows

Wow 1 How is this book 21 of the series. I know time flies but it only seems like yesterday I was enthralled by Silent Scream.

Wow 2 The fact that the series just goes from strength to strength

Wow 3. What a brilliant story.

Kim Stone and her team are back, but at first not officially.

When Stones not so favourite journalist turns up on her doorstep with a half baked story Kim should not be giving it any credence, but there is something about the message that Frost brings her that impacts and makes her take it seriously enough to text her team, on their day off.

So what exactly is it that grips Stone. Frost has been given a deadline. If she doesn’t follow the clues she’s going to be sent, and solve the puzzle within 36 hours, somebody is going to die.

Not everybody, including Stone’s boss take it seriously and the team are given the opportunity to bail out, or help Kim with the investigation on a voluntary basis.

To make matters more complex Stone includes Frost in the team and gives her a seat in the office.

Even those that decide to stay find this a step to far and the tension in the office is palpable.

The first clue leads them to a box, amongst the contents is an audio file in which a person can be heard screaming.

As each clue is discovered the contents get more horrifying.

I’m running out of superlatives to describe Angela Marsons books. Amongst all of the things she’s always good at, characters, plot, settings, this one added a rhythm to story that only the really best authors seem to get right.

Any author can add pace but this story pulses. The anxiety of a new clue and the rush to find it, the lull and anticipation when the team, back in the office, are waiting to hear what Kim and Bryant have found whilst out in the field.

As a Black Country lad I always look forward to seeing where the plot will be set, in this case they race across many locations that are absolutely perfect for hiding clues.

Pace, suspense and a terrific story meant that I read this book in as close to one sitting as it is possible whilst carrying on with a normal life.

Can it be read as a standalone, yes.

Should you read the rest of the series in order, I would, but then again I’m lucky enough to have been in from the start.

Pages. 362. Publisher. Bookouture. Audiobook length. 8 hours 3 minutes. Narrator Jan Cramer

The Silent Watcher. Victor Methos

The crimes, two horrendously bloody murder scenes several years apart, the latest in Las Vegas close to the city.

The detective, Lazarus Holloway. He was part of the first investigation and he never got over the scene, or the fact that he couldn’t catch the killer.

The survivor. Sophie Grace, 15 escaped the latest murder scene, but why was she allowed to survive.

Piper Danes, the Gaurdian, a legal representative who looks after the interest of Sophie during the investigation and any court proceedings. Young and inexperienced but with a moralistic compass that makes her a fearsome advocate and protector.

The investigation into the crimes is a gritty story, but to my surprise an arrest is made just over halfway into the story.

Enter a defence attorney that is one of the most aggravating characters I have come across in a book, but I loved her. Russo Blanchi only cares for one thing, winning. She doesn’t care who she defends, who the victims are, or weather her client is guilty or innocent, she just wants to win.

The first half of the book was really good, but the second half goes up another gear.

Victor Methos is another new author to me, and I’m not sure how widely known he is here in the U.K.

I found this book as an Amazon recommendation after I read a US Courtroom thriller, otherwise I think I’d still be in the dark about Methos’ work.

His writing style is fast paced and easy to read, but to keep me as enthralled, as this book did, it has to have a great story.

What I liked was the realism and the fact that at no time could I predict what was coming next. That meant that none of the characters were, in my mind, safe. This added a real suspense to the story.

For me, this is one of my finds of the year.

Pages: 306. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer.

Her Deadly Game. Robert Dugoni

It’s inevitable that every American, legal, courtroom, thriller , I read gets measured against John Grisham. Few get an equal billing but this book is right up there with any of his.

Keera Duggan is an attorney in Seattle. Formerly she worked for the state prosecutor’s office, which she left after a short but ill advised affair with her boss.

Now she’s back working in the family law firm trying to salvage its reputation. Her father, Patsy, was once a fearsome defence attorney, but over the years he has became more dependent on booze and is ruining his own fearsome reputation as well as his firms.

When Vince LaRussa, a rich investment fund manager returns home to find his disabled wife shot dead in their kitchen, the Police do what Police do and instantly suspect the husband.

He is aware of Patsy’s reputation off old, and hires his firm. He doesn’t get Patsy who is recovering from his latest bender, he gets Keera, who is yet to defend at a murder trial.

The case is a strange one. It’s a locked room mystery that LaRussa seems to have an airtight alibi for. But Keera’s ex-boss and lover, wants to get it to trial quick, he wants to use the case to humiliate her.

What follows is an excellent courtroom drama.

As is usual in American courts Keera’s defence is that somebody else, unknown, killed LaRussa’s wife.

There are at least two suspects but why would either of them want Anne LaRussa dead.

There are twists in this story that leaves the final verdict in question all the way up till the end, and even then there is a vicious sting in the tail.

I like books which are fast paced, with a bit of grit, and that are totally realistic. This story ticks all of those boxes.

There is no spurious writing. Every page holds meaning to the story.

Although Keera’s relationship with her father is an important part of the story it doesn’t get over relied on in the plot, a mistake I’m finding more and more writers make these days.

This is book one in a three book series.

I have a big to-be-read pile, and it speaks volumes that they have all gone on hold whilst I download and read the other two in this series first.

Pages: 396. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Audiobook length 11 hours Saskia Maarleveld

Eliot Ness and the Mad Butcher. Max Allan Collins. A. Brad Schwartz

An impulse buy on a quick trip to Waterstones ended up with me reading this true crime book which reads like a crime novel

The subtitle on the cover, Hunting a serial killer at the dawn of modern criminology, understates the impact that Ness had on crime fighting.

Eliot Ness is more famously known for his involvement in cracking the Chicago gangs during prohibition, and his pursuing of Al Capone.

In this book the authors look at what happens to Ness after Capone was jailed for tax evasion.

Ness moved to Cleveland and was appointed Safety Director where he took on corrupt police officers and unionists in equal measure.

He introduced the precinct concept of policing and started to utilise radio cars in the first known patrol area scheme.

He drove down the increasingly dangerous amount of drink drive incidents which had seen the first real surge in traffic accident road deaths.

But for all the praise he was getting there was one crime that was being used as a stick to beat him.

Just before Ness arrived in Cleveland body parts, of unidentified murder victims, started to be found in a run down area.

Although Ness was not a cop, he was responsible for the Police department, and people wanted him to turn his attentions to what was to be one of the first serial killers identified in the USA.

The victims all appeared to be from the homeless communities of an area called Kingsbury Run.

Over the following years numerous bodies, or parts of them were found, all appeared to have been killed by beheading, before being cut apart. Often the body would be found over several days or weeks, sometimes not all of the body was found.

The detective in charge of the case thought he had found the killer, but he was wrong, on more than one occasion.

Secretly Ness was working the case. He had employed his tactics from Chicago and put a team of unknowns together.

The Unknowns were made up of recruits who went straight undercover. They infiltrated everywhere the killer was thought to be hanging out.

Ness identified the man he thought was the killer. An alcoholic, failed doctor and pieced together the case against him.

A case that was never to get to court.

A case that Ness, near the end of his life, stated he had solved.

He also mentioned that there is more than one way to get justice.

The killings did stop whilst Ness was in position as Cleveland’s Safety Director.

Did he get his man.

The case is laid out in this book.

Publisher Harper Collins. Paperback print length 559 pages*

*395 pages are the main text. The remaining pages are lists of references and afterwords*

A Random Kill. Andrew Barrett

Billed as the start of a new series, I can only hope it turns out to be a long one

I like my main characters to have a bit of grit. Detective Sergeant Regan Carter has a whole quarry.

A fiery red head, who has just been transferred to her nightmare job by the husband she’s just divorced, Regan hates dead bodies. She hates the smells, the body fluids, the injuries, the fact that they fart and belch when the trapped gases get released, in fact there is nothing about them she can get along with.

So as a piece of revenge, the worst thing that her nearly ex-husband could do, would be to get her transferred to one of the busiest murder teams in the country.

Just to put the icing on the cake she is replacing a woman that was dearly loved by her team and who died in a freak accident, with everybody presuming that one of the existing DCs on the team would get her post.

Regan Carter, yes she is named after the two main characters in the 1970s TV series The Sweeney, has a mouth that would match Gene Hunt, from another famous series and has an attitude to match, so making friends is not at the top of her list when she arrives at the new team.

Neither is getting involved with a complicated murder based around the drug scene in Leeds.

What follows is one of the best introductions to a new series I’ve read in a very long time.

A seemingly random shooting of a woman, her child taken in his pram, is Carters introduction to her new job.

But is it as random as it seems. Carter is the epitome of a “Dog with a Bone” and in her brash manner manages to annoy both her bosses, her peers, and the local villains.

In the real world she would undoubtedly be sacked, but in the none woke world of crime fiction, she is a breath of fresh air.

A bit like real world policing there are times in this book when a wry grin cannot be avoided. It’s the only way to deal with the horrors the detectives, and the readers, encounter, and in this book there is one very imaginative, and gory, way of killing.

I really hope this series is a long runner, because there is some entertaining mileage in Regan Carter.

Publisher: The Ink Foundry. Pages: 415. Available now

Her Last Walk Home. Patricia Gibney

Every time I read a book in this series I know it’s going to be frighteningly realistic. The crimes, the characters, the lot, all add up to stories that have me hooked, and this one is no exception.

Walking home at night you should be safe, but everyone knows it’s increasingly risky. So when one young woman doesn’t complete the journey and is found dead, on a bit of grass, a murder investigation is got underway.

As a mother, with children about the same age, Detective Lottie Parker is always going to give the investigation her all, she always does.

The team soon identify the girl and find that she had been on an innocent date the night she disappeared.

Or at least on the face of it she had.

When another girl is found dead in similar circumstances the victims begin to look a little less “innocent”

Two things you are Guaranteed with Patricia Gibney books. Firstly they are written from the heart. Every emotion, of every character is carefully crafted and plays out wonderfully on the pages. Secondly the plot is always original, surprising, and most importantly realistic.

I can’t write too much about the plot, the victims, and the person, or persons responsible for the crimes without including huge spoilers.

In a vague way I will say that the young women that are killed are just being young women, and that nobody deserves to be murdered.

But in modern society what is innocent.

It’s a question this book ponders. When does moralistically wrong become illegally wrong.

When does a person cross the line from having fun, to needing the fruits of having fun.

At what point does the empathy of the reader, or the bystander, become negatively judgmental, a luxury a Police Investigator cannot afford to let cloud their investigation.

All of these things Patricia Gibney handles better than most writers.

Lottie Parker has had it rough, her family have put her through the wringer, but no matter what she is still a supportive mother, grandmother, and daughter, faced with all the trials and tribulations of being the “responsible adult” to all of the generations.

The Parker family story is central to these books and although this, and the others, could be read as a standalone, I would highly recommend reading the series to get the full impact.

Print length: 500 pages. Publisher: Bookouture. Audiobook length: 13 hours. Narrator: Michele Moran

The Crash Robert Peston

A great story well written.

Gill Peck is the BBC Financial corespondent that everybody sees on the news talking about stock markets, banking trends, and interest rates.

What he isn’t is a criminalist, or crime reporter.

When he is given a tip off that one of Britain’s leading banks is about to go broke, he breaks the news, and gets the blame for braking the bank.

A long time friend, and lover, working for the Bank of England commits suicide when the news breaks.

What Peck hadn’t accounted for was the things happening in the background.

Why was this bank targeted, and by who, because it soon becomes obvious that this is not the only one in trouble. This just happened to be the one somebody wanted to drastically devalue.

Peck is soon embroiled in an investigation into what happened to the bank, and more importantly to him, why his lover died.

This is a book that I’ll admit I nearly put down on several occasions.

It can be a bit rambling in places, and I got the impression the author was just using it as a vehicle to let the reader know about some of the privileged places he’d visited in the course of his work.

But the more I read the more engrossed I got in the story.

Peck himself is not the most engaging, or likeable character, but neither is he gross, or boring.

It’s the story that hooked me. There are things in this book I knew nothing about, or had a very basic knowledge of. The usual trip to Google led me down the usual rabbit holes, and like with all good books I learned things.

The more I learned the more feasible the story became.

The more feasible it became the more thrilling it got.

In fact, by the time I did finish it, I’d place it amongst the best modern, political thrillers I’ve read.

Publisher: Zaffre. Pages: 395. Audiobook length: 12 hours 19 minutes. Narrator: Matt Addis

Zero Risk. Simon Hayes

This is the book I’ve been waiting for, for years.

Back in the 1970’s, as a young sailor, I discovered Robert Ludlum via the Matarese Circle. I loved his books and found others like him, Nelson Demille being another favourite reads in the down times on board deep sea tankers.

Moving into the 1980’s I devoured each of Tom Clancy’s books, well the early ones anyway.

I loved espionage thrillers.

But there has been a very thin offering of new authors worthy of these, until now.

Zero Risk by Simon Hayes has filled the void.

The book isn’t about espionage in the more traditional sense, it’s about a person who tries to bring down one of Britains biggest banks, and in so doing the Prime Minister.

It has a touch of the Dan Brown, with the antagonist sending cryptic emails with art references in them, but although they add to the story, if you don’t get them, they are quickly explained.

The plot, as written on the Amazon page.

23 December 2024… Rob Tanner should have been enjoying a rare day off from his life-consuming work as Chief Operating Officer at one of the country’s largest banks. But a panicked phone call from a senior colleague forces him to put his Christmas plans on ice: more than a thousand of the bank’s accounts have seen their balances increased by a factor of ten. Exactly ten.

Tanner enlists the help of brilliant American cyber security expert Ashley Markham, but the attacks only worsen: bank balances rise remorselessly and spread to all the nation’s banks. The only clues to the hacker’s intentions are cryptic daily emails, centred on Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval representation of the seven deadly sins—and packed with colourful artistic and cultural references—taunting Tanner and the newly incumbent Prime Minister, James Allen.

With financial markets—and the very world as he knows it—on the brink of collapse, Tanner races against the clock to decode not just the bizarre emails but their deeper meaning, and the implications for who he can really trust. All the while, his former boss “The Toad” is seeking revenge… and answers of his own.

That only really covers the first couple of hundred pages of a book that stretches to nearly eight hundred pages.

There were times in the book I thought I had things cracked, but then something would happen that would throw me entirely in a different direction.

There were times when I thought, “this has to be almost the end, how come there are so many more pages to read”, but a twist would open up another chapter.

Simon Hayes uses the fact that this is a standalone novel to its best advantage.

Nothing, and nobody is sacred. Anything can happen to anybody.

Having said that there are is no shark infested custard. There are no improbable situations. Everything is scarily plausible, and realistic.

An absolutely stunning read.

Pages: 780. Published: The Rubriqs Press Limited. Audiobook length: 25 hours 8 minutes. Narrator Stephanie Racine

Body Language, Life Sentence, Case Sensitive and Dead Fall by A.K Turner

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a new series this much.

One of the best things about reading is finding a new author with an established series, and binge reading it.

That’s exactly what happened to me with this series. I picked up Body Language just over a week ago and have just put down Dead Fall having read all four books.

There are two main characters in these books Cassie Raven and Phyllida Flyte, and they couldn’t be more at opposite ends of the social scale.

Cassie is a runaway school drop out who once lived, and took class A drugs, in squats around Camden Town, whilst embracing the Goth life style. Now she’s still a Goth, but she’s got herself together, and in her mid twenties she’s working as a Senior Morgue Technician, still in Camden Town.

Phyllida is a very prim-and-proper, Police Detective, who is suffering the culture shock of moving from a relatively safe shire constabulary to a high pressure, machismo fuelled , Major Crimes department in Londons Met.

Cassie doesn’t look the part, with her Goth haircut, tattoos and piercings but she’s good at her job.

She thinks the dead sometimes talk to her, but what is actually happening is her intuition is kicking in. She’s seen something on the body that isn’t right, or contradicts the initial findings, or the Police’s hypothesis of how a person has died.

She knows that instinct has highlighted something, and she is like a dog with a bone until she’s worked out what it is.

Meanwhile Phyllida battles the male dominated rough talking London Officers, she is not just there to make their tea, and although often given the menial tasks, her detective work soon gets to be seen for what it is, brilliant.

When Phyllida first encounters Cassie it’s fair to say she doesn’t like her, and it’s also fair to say the feeling is mutual. These two are everything the other doesn’t like in a person.

But inevitably the trust starts to build, they both recognise each others strengths and intuitions on a professional basis, but find each other immensely irritating on a personal level.

The series follows both of their personal lives, and as both of them have great back stories, and become reluctant friends , it makes great reading.

Each book contains one main crime, starting with a sudden or suspicious death. As in real life the investigation can be complex and convoluted, but it always stays well within the realms of possibilities.

Body Language.

When somebody Cassie knows ends up in her morgue she’s not happy with the initial findings. The Police say Accidental Death, a hypothesis the pathologist is, at first happy to support.

But Cassie’s intuition says different and she goes to great lengths to prove the death was anything but an accident.

The one person who listens to her is the “stuck-up, posh” new Police woman.

Life Sentence

Having learned something about her family, that she was blissfully unaware of ( It’s difficult to go deeper without spoiling book 1) Cassie tries to make right a wrong which has affected her family for as long as she can remember. Her unlikely ally, as this will also bring the police into disrepute is Phyllida, can Miss Strait-Laced be convinced to break the rules with the reputation of her colleagues on the line.

Case Sensitive

This time it’s Phyllida’s turn to trust her instincts. When a body turns up floating in a canal she is sure she recognises him. It’s her that doesn’t like the initial Post Mortem, and asks Cassie if her intuition had kicked in.

This time what they uncover will test both of their resolves, physically and moralistically, but will both of them come out unscathed.

Dead Fall

When a promising young singer ends up on Cassie’s slab everybody thinks it’s a tragic suicide.

Cassie knew her before she became famous and had gone to school with her.

Reflecting the life and death of one of Camdens other tragic pop stars this girl had a roller coaster life of drugs and fame, even if it was very short lived.

Cassie spots wounds on the body that she doesn’t think are consistent with her jumping from her high rise flat.

Things have moved on in Phyllida’s world ( again I can’t go into that without spoiling book 3) but when Cassie is proven right, and that this is not a suicide, Phyllida is tasked to look at how the initial police investigation got things so wrong

The series needs reading in order. The running story forms the backbone of the series and Cassie and Phyllida’s needs reading in chronological order.

Having read 4 books in 10 days I now have to join the rest of the world in waiting for book 5. And to say I’m excited to see where the series goes next is an understatement.

Stunning.