Must Read – nigeladamsbookworm

City On Fire. Don Winslow

Set in the mid to late 1980’s in and around Providence, Rhode Island this is an epic mafia story.

Mainly looked at from Danny Ryans prospective the story looks at the relationships within families and factions of gangs.

The Murphy family are Irish, they run the docks and they are old school.

Danny has married into the family, marrying the daughter of the top man John, but he’s never had a proper seat at the table. He’s never really been part of the decision making process. He’s has responsibilities within the “firm” but they are minor in comparison to Johns sons.

There has been a peace amongst the main family’s who run Providence for years.

The Italians and the Irish had been at war for years until the two heads of the families had decided to divide the area equally and live in peace, and it was working until one of Johns sons, Liam, let his dick get in the way of his brain.

A summer cook out, on the beach, members of all the leading families having a party.

Then a hot, beautiful woman appears on the sand. Danny instantly thinks shes going to cause problems, and he’s right.

Pam, the hot woman, is with Paul Moretti, one of the sons of the main man in the Italian mafia in the area.

Liam touches her inappropriately and gets a beating from the Italians, and those are the sparks that lead to a bloody battle which will last for years.

The book looks at the battle from all sides, the tit-for-tat attacks that escalate with beatings moving on to murders and full on executions.

It looks at the ways former friends are pitted against each other, but although some of them want to bring peace back to the streets, there are others who are hell bent on full on war.

The Italians have other mafia families from across New York to bring into the fray, The Irish have the ”Boys” back home to bring over.

The conflict gets bloody, really bloody.

The corrupt cops try to keep the peace but are so far in the pocket of the gangs they only add to the problem.

The politics of the gangs is fascinating. The leader, the elders, having old school attitudes which almost makes them look like gentlemen compared to their younger siblings.

Danny is one of those trying to keep the peace at first. But as the casualties mount, and as Liam spirals deeper into drugs and alcohol abuse he finds himself close to the leadership of the Irish.

Does he continue trying to find a way to peace, or has it gone too far now. Does he need to use the full force of the Irish gangs to finish off the Italians.

This is the first book in a trilogy. It isn’t often I will read a book and go straight to the next, but I am this time.

There is no cliffhanger ending, but I am desperate to see what happens next.

Trigger warnings for this book include violence, it’s not gratuitous, and it is very much in context, in fact the book would not be as good without it, but it’s there.

There’s also a bit of spice but again it’s in context and adds to the story.

So not only is Don Winslow a new author to me, but having read one book he has me hooked into at least another two.

Pages: 356. Publisher: Harper Collins

The Serial Killer Gene. Alice Hunter

I have to admit I had to look it up, and yes there is a “Serial Killer Gene”

Or actually to be more precise, there isn’t a specific Gene by that name, but it is thought that a combination of genes may make a person more susceptible to being violent, extremely violent when external triggers are brought in to play.

Lily Chapel can’t remember her father, or so she thinks. As long as she can remember it has just been her and her mother.

Although shes now living with her boyfriend something is not right. She needs to prove herself to him and his family, and to help with that she takes a DNA Geniality test. It doesn’t give her much information apart from one bonus section which looks like click bait, but she clicks it out of curiosity.

That is when she discovers she has the Serial Killer Gene, and that is when her dreams, and occasional flashbacks start to make sense.

In her troubled state she leaves her boyfriend and moves back in with mom, only to fall in lust with Margo, a slightly assertive, lesbian, Journalist who she begins a lustful relationship with.

The more adventurous and heated their relationship becomes the more Dreams and Flashbacks Lily has, and the more lucid they become.

Did her Dad simply disappear, or was there something more sinister at play.

Who passed the gene down to Lily, was it Mom or Dad.

What do the dreams mean, or are they really just memories which have been deeply buried.

The book examines relationships as much as anything else. Is Mother really the supportive single parent doing her best to raise her only child, or is she protecting her from a truth Lily couldn’t bare.

And Margo. Is he too good to be true. Turning up on her first night out after breaking up with her boyfriend. She is gentlewoman and looks after Lily. The sex with her is great, but Lily can’t shake the feeling there is something else. Is she just Margo’s next story.

The story unfolds quickly with the clever use of Past and Present sections. The back story is cleverly disguised and although I thought I knew what was happening to Lily, I really couldn’t be sure until the last few chapters.

This book is the epitome of a psychological thriller. It had me from page one and provided a rollercoaster of suspense.

Alice Hunter is now another name on my must read list.

Publisher: Avon. Release Date: 7th May 2026

Her Cold Justice. Robert Dugoni

Dugoni is at leat the equal of Grisham in the world of courtroom and legal thrillers.
For me this is the best American Courtroom Thriller series on the bookshelves at the moment.

As I’ve said in a previous review about a book in this series, every legal thriller coming out of America is always going to be compared to John Grisham, and just like the previous two books in this series, this book more than holds its own in the company of Grisham books.

Defence Attorney Keera Duggan has stepped out from her father’s shadow and is building a fierce reputation as a Defence Attorney.

But shes not cheap. So when a relative of her chief investigator is arrested for murder there’s no way he can afford her services.

Keera, her father, and her sisters run their own law firm and decide to register as a pro bono firm to take on his case, and in doing so take on the most formidable public prosecutor in Seattle.

Anh Tran, whose nickname is Batwoman because shes trying to clean up the city, is a power house both in, and out, of the courtroom.

As a child she hid under a bed and watched as her parents were executed in a robbery in their small shop. Since then she has sworn to bring justice and has dedicated her life to convicting murderers.

Michael is accused of murdering his work colleague and his colleagues girlfriend. The colleague was shot in his garage and his girlfriend was battered to death in her bed.

The only thing that brings Michael into the frame is the fact that the work colleague gave him a lift home shortly before the murder.

Tran is quickly on the scene and starts to issue search warrants instantly targeting Michael, on very little evidence.

But more incriminating evidence is found during the search of his home. Although all of the evidence is circumstantial, and there is no solid evidence to suggest his involvement, Tan arrests Michael and fast tracks him trough court.

Keera quickly becomes suspicious of how Michael was arrested but the problem is she is very friendly with one of the lead detectives. Could Detective Frank Rossi and his partner really be part of a bad arrest.

Meanwhile Rossi and his partner are feeling railroaded and although they think they have the right man for the murders, they don’t like how the investigation, arrest, and trial were conducted.

As with the other two books in this series the crime takes part early on in the book with a good 2/3s of the book being about the pre-trial work and the actual trial itself.

Robert Dugoni is really good at building up the tension.

The court room scenes are brilliantly written. The examination and cross examination of the witnesses is so well written it’s like actually being in court.

Keera is a top class chess player, and she uses all of her tactical skills in the court room, but in this case she’s up against a woman who is willing to push the boundaries right up to the breaking point.

That, plus the fact that there is no love lost between the Judge and Keera’s father, who was also a formidable defence attorney, make for a very tense trial.

If you haven’t read the previous books in the series, Her Deadly Game and Beyond Reasonable Doubt, I would recommend that you do. Not because this book can’t be read as a standalone, it can, but because they are brilliant stories and will only enhance your enjoyment of this one.

Bring on book 4, I can’t wait.

Pages: 369. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Available now. Audiobook Length: 10 hours 28 minutes. Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld.

The Octagon. C. J Merritt

There’s a massive gap in the book market for decent espionage thrillers.

This book fills that gap very nicely thank you.

My formative years of reading, when I really became a proper bookworm , was the mid to late 1970s.

Back then this type of book was a staple in all bookshops.

Writers like DeMille, Ludlum, MacLean and the likes were my favourite reads.

With the exception of the early Tom Clancy books this genre has been sadly neglected ever since.

Until now.

Merritt is right up there with those authors, and has looked at today’s international security threats and come up with a brilliant story.

Stella McRae is a former MI6 Agent runner who is now working in the private sector, having set up her own Intelligence Agency.

When a former colleague is killed after giving her a drunken, rambling, cryptic brief into a current threat she feels compelled to look into it.

Tommy Kane is an ex SAS soldier and the only person Stella trusts to help her as she tries to uncover the threat by moving through Europe.

Back home her only employee Hoss, a nerdy social media and gaming geek, is trying to unravel the cryptic clues given by Stella’s friend, and the new ones she and Tommy are uncovering.

None of this story requires the reader to suspend reality, in fact it’s frighteningly realistic.

As Stella and Tommy work their way through Scandinavia and Europe they begin to uncover a plot to destabilise Europe.

Mystery figures lurk in the back ground prying on local extremest groups and hatching a plot for a multi city terrorist attack.

The one thing Stella’s friend told her in plain, straightforward English, before he was murdered, was “don’t trust anybody. They have people everywhere”

So going it alone is the only option for Stella and Tommy.

But is that a wise move.

A ritualistic murder marks the start of the terror campaign, but is only a small event that goes largely unnoticed.

The main event is days away and the consequences will be horrific and far reaching.

Tommy and Stella push themselves to their limits but will they stop it in time.

I got invited to read the ARC of this and I’m so glad I said yes.

There is no cliffhanger ending but there is an opening for a follow up, and just the thought of that has me excited.

Pages: 400. Publisher: Michael Joseph. Realise Date: 28th May 2026

Evil In The Family Michael Wood

The third book in the Dr Olivia Winter series.

The story starts with a realistic account of two people trapped in a house fire. Every choice they make in trying to escape is thwarted by something blocking a way out.

Whilst they are in the kitchen trying to break a window they see their murderer through the glass. Begging for help they can’t believe he just looks at them and does nothing.

They don’t survive.

Dr Olivia Winter is a Forensic Psychologist, one of three people working in the newly founded Behavioural Science Administration.

She is unequally qualified and experienced as a serial killer hunter, having escaped her father, who she caught in the act of killing her mother and sister.

But she doesn’t work live crime scenes. She is happy to look at scene videos and recordings and the last thing she wants is to see a live scene for herself.

That changes when DI Amyas Foley calls her to the scene of a particularly gruesome murder in London.

The family of a retired Police Officer, her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren have been murdered, had their faces disfigured and posed as a family group in the mother and father’s bedroom. The retired officers son, the husband and father, was in New York on business and escaped the murder.

This family won’t be the last, and each scene, although similar at the core, become more gruesome.

The investigation is going nowhere, each family are seemingly randomly chosen.

This drives the team to the edge, some are finding a tipping point where they suffer mentally and physically.

This is where Michael Wood is a masterful writer. Nobody, in British Crime Fiction, writes as well a he does about the psychological effects attended serious crime scenes has on the investigators.

From the dark humour to the sleepless nights, from flashbacks to nightmares, he covers it all in the most realistic of manners.

Winters can’t handle the scene and is on a downward spiral. Foley is getting pressure not only from his senior officers to solve the case, but also some of his team who think the use of Winters is a bad idea as they see her unravel.

There are some key peripheral characters in this book and Michael Wood does a great job of subversively building a case for two or three of them being the murderer.

I was convinced I knew who it was, more than once, but the reveal at the end caught me out.

This is a great story in a magnificent series. it could be read as a stand-alone but why miss out on the previous books which are just as good.

Pages: 476. Publisher: One More Chapter. Release date: 31/03/2026

Vine Street. Dominic Nolan

A new author to me and I’m really excited to see he has other books already published.

Why?

Because I’ve just read the best British crime thriller I’ve ever read.

Reading is subjective, and not everyone has the same tastes, but for me this book ticked every box, and ticked them in style

Predominantly set from the mid 1930s up till just after the Second World War the story mixes fact with fiction.

Real events, and real people populate the story alongside the fiction.

The fact, in the 1930’s somebody was killing prostitutes in the red light area of Soho. Several murders were attributed to Soho Strangler, a case that was never solved.

These murders form the skeleton for the story in this book. When the first woman is found the Clubs and Vice Unit, known by the locals as “The Dirties” start an investigation.

Lead by DS Leon Geats the team are more known for keeping the girls and their pimps in line, and controlling the gangs running competing clubs which provide drugs and girls.

Geats knows the streets and the people who inhabit them, a proper old school, skull banging policeman.

When senior officers decide to allow the notorious Flying Squad, with their maverick leader Nutty Sharpe, to take over the investigation it only leads to conflict amongst the police, whilst the murder investigation merely trundles along.

Geats is tasked to partner up with one of the flying squad, DS Mark Cassar. The unlikely partnership begin to link several murders, much to the annoyance of Sharpe who is convinced he has his man, but the murders continue.

The murdered women, mainly prostitutes, are factual, as is the leader of the Sweeney. The rest is a cleverly woven, semi factual, brilliant story telling.

The lives of Geats and Cessar are consumed by finding the real killer, with the story moving, at times into the 1960s before finishing, where it started in 2002.

I love stories set in the recent past, with real life settings, where the fiction is knitted into real events and includes real people.

British readers might be familiar with the excellent Charles Holborn series by Simon Michael, and international readers will know of James Ellroy and his books set in 1940s onwards America.

Dominic Nolan is right up there in that category.

The historical events in the book had me disappearing into Google for hours. The story of the Soho Strangler is fascinating and the way Nolan has written it took me right into the heart of 1930s Soho and the police investigation.

Some of the periphery character also prove to be real life people. The Mitford Sister were socialites associated with Oswald Mosley and his Black Shirt fascists. In fact Unity Mitford was umpired to be a lover of Adolf Hitler.

Another few hours spent on Google educated me about them, and what a story that is.

All of the things we hear on the news about London, and other big cities, today were happening in the 1930s Soho.

People trafficking with women being sold into the sex trade. The women having to pay off the debt of the traffickers being forced into prostitution.

To make sure the debt was never paid getting the girls into drugs, which they had to sell their body to purchase.

All of these we think of as today’s problem. But in the 1930s there was another layer.

Some of these women were foreign agents acting for the German military, trying to infiltrate British society, and get access to British troops, and ultimate their knowledge of how Britain was preparing for war.

This all forms part of the story and adds real intrigue.

Who is the murderer, but almost more importantly who are some of the victims, they certainly aren’t who they seem to be.

And if that’s the case, are they just random prostitution who happen to have met the wrong man, or are they women working undercover who have been specifically targeted.

And just to add to all of this, the killer is a pervert with a liking for incapacitating and flogging his victims.

My next few reads are already loaded on my Kindle and it’s no surprise that they are written by Dominic Nolan.

Pages: 610. Publisher: Headline. Audiobook length 14 hours 13 minutes. Narrator Owen Findlay

The Final Whistle. Nigel Owens

Before I start on the content of the book I’ve just got to comment on the quality of it.

It’s been a while since I held a book that was so aesthetically pleasing, and made of such good quality materials.

The paper quality is really nice, the text is printed in a lovely format, and the two sections of pictures are plentiful and have quality images.

I don’t think I’d realised how badly presented books have become until I picked up this quality product.

So what about the content.

I’ve been a fan of Nigel Owens for years, since well before his one liners and comeback responses started to go viral.

This is a second autobiography by Nigel, Halftime being the first. This book pretty much starts at the darkest time in his life. It’s no secret that he had attempted suicide, and that he’d been very nearly successful. In this book he lays out how he got to that point.

He also details the struggles he had with coming out. Announcing to the world that you are gay can be tough at any time, but within the world of professional sport, particularly one seen to be so alpha male macho, it must have been terrifying.

The reaction from the general population, and in particular the rugby fraternity was fantastic, apart from the odd moron.

The descriptions of some of the memorable moments in his career are an absolute must read for any sports fans.

It’s a measure of the man that he speaks as fondly of refereeing matches in his local Llanelli and District League, as much as he does of refereeing massive internationals between the top countries in the world.

His progress through officiating rugby games sees him taking charge of the World Cup Final in 2015 between New Zealand and Australia. The man with the best seat in the house gives a great account of this, and many other games, most rugby fans would have dreamed to have been in the crowd for.

His self analysis is humbling. Where many would have considered they had done a great job Nigel looks at the one or two decisions he, and his team of officials got wrong.

He’s at pains to point out that the one referee we see is not alone in running the game, touch judges, fourth officials and the TMO, all get credit, and the occasional tongue in cheek jibe. Step forward Wayne Barnes.

He talks about the isolation of the officiating teams during world cups, the elimination of the referees, not always being put down to their performance, but also the success of their home nation. A referee can’t officiate in a game in which their own country play, but also, and as a direct result of a championship he refereed in, they can’t officiate in a game that could have an influence on their home teams progression.

Imagine being the best in the world at what you do, but never been able to reach the pinnacle of your profession because you come from country that keeps getting to the World Cup final. I’m tempted here to say thank god Nigel Owens is Welsh, but as my wife is from Llanelli I might let that slide.

Perhaps the hardest thing to do when you enjoy the job you do, especially when you do it so well, is to know when to quit.

Nigel covers this in the later chapters of the book. A decision that was so nearly taken out of his hands. I recently heard another sportsman say that people at the top of their game are the first to know when they are losing that edge, that extra yard of speed, that extra ounce of strength, but they are the last to admit it.

Nigel seems to be the opposite to this. Towards the end of his career he was slowing down, even though he was in great physical shape. The trouble was rugby was changing, and even the pack were now, in the majority, becoming racing snakes built like brick outhouses.

He didn’t step back and think he couldn’t keep up. He sought help and changed the way he reffed the game. Took up different positions on the pitch, and extended his reign as one of, if not the top Rugby Union Referees right up till the end.

What did he do when he retired, not only is he running a farm with his partner, he has a media presence, and why not he has a great personality.

But the things he mentions right at the end of the book, almost as a few throwaway comments, about how he is helping the next generation of Welsh Rugby Officials will guarantee his legacy.

And whilst the rest of the WRU seems to be in disarray at least we will know the the future of the officiating is in good hands.

Max Boyce used to sing about the The Outside Half Factory buried in the Valleys of West Wales. With Nigel Owens on the production line I’m sure it’s about to reopen producing the men and women in the middle, giving us great match officials who can run a game with a smile on their faces whilst commanding full respect from the players and fans alike.

A brilliant read

My wife got me this book for Christmas and Nigel had put an inscription inside the cover.

It will take pride of place amongst my growing collection of books with inscriptions.

Diolch yn fawr Nigel

Relentless Pursuit. Our Battle with Jeffrey Epstein

Bradley J. Edwards with Brittany Henderson

My last review was Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. I started that book because I was intrigued by the actions of the then Prince Andrew, who immediately after that book was published lost his Royal titles.

That book sent me down a rabbit hole of research. I had heard of Jeffrey Epstein, and was vaguely aware of the crimes he was ultimately arrested for. But I had no idea of the Epstein empire, the type of person he was, and the high level relationships he incubated, and the reach those relationships had.

As fascinating as Nobody’s Girl was it was a single persons account and I was desperate to find other accounts of Epstein’s activities.

Relentless Pursuit stood out. Written by two of the people that were involved in trying to prosecute Epstein and get him in prison.

Edwards, and the book, are mentioned by Giuffre in her book, and she was full of praise for his tenacity in prosecuting a man many people thought was untouchable. So what better place to start my extended reading.

In June 2008 Edwards was a young lawyer opening his first law firm. He had never heard of Jeffery Epstien. A young 20 year old woman, Courtney Wilde was referred to him by a friend. She stated she had been sexually abused by Epstien from the age of 14.

And so it began.

What follows is years of tenacity on Edwards’ side, and years of lies and deception on Epsteins.

As Edwards’ investigations gather momentum more witnesses start to come forward, one of which is Jane Doe 102, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Although a star witness, and a person who does as much to bring down the Epstien empire as anybody, a person who Edwards finds himself admiring for her bravery in standing up, it’s very telling that his first emotion was excitement at getting one of “Epstiens inner circle” to testify against him.

That line in the book, the one of Epstiens Inner Circle, exhibits the depth of her involvement.

Epstien’s only defence is attack

In fact he attacked every lawyer, and every victim those lawyers represented with either lawsuits or intimidation tactics, and often both.

The sphere of Epstein’s influence is clearly displayed when he made a Plea Deal in 2008, which saw him serve a minor sentence, during which time he spent nearly every day in a charity foundation office next to the jail. A foundation he set up so that he could spend his days in relative comfort.

This deal saw him convicted of relatively minor crime but the deal he struck was a none prosecution deal for all of the major charges he could have been charged with, including sex trafficking and rapping underage girls.

The frustration Edwards and his team felt at this is palpable in the book. The only avenue they now had was civil suites.

But Epstein was in full attack mode. Edwards had been employed for a short time by a law firm whose director was found to be running one of the world’s biggest ponzie schemes, that’s a whole other story worth looking into.

Epstein accused Edwards of not only being involved in the scheme but also being the main orchestrator. A fact he knew from the start to be false.

This tied Edwards and his team up, distracting them for years.

All the time Edwards and Epstein had occasional off the record meetings in, of all places, a Starbucks coffee shop, no other lawyers or representatives being present. Edwards likens his dealings with Epstein as a complicated game of chess. During these meetings he relates how Epstein is cheerfully friendly, as if he is talking to a friend, but every meeting held an alluded to, or indirect threat that Edwards was going to be ruined professionally and financially, because he hadn’t got the resources or money that Epstein had available to him.

Neither did Edwards have judges, politicians, senators, and many other highly placed people in his pocket.

When the direct fight against Epstein seems impossible the team go after his close associates. In particular Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwells is as close to a girlfriend as you can associate with Epstein, but is also his chief recruiter. A woman that finds underage girls and cons them into sexual activities with Epstein, often taking part in the sessions and abusing the girls herself.

This is when the castle walls around Epstein start to crumble.

The accusations made against Maxwells opens the possibility of new charges against Epstein.

Still the civil cases continue, as does Epstien attacks in the victims and their lawyers.

Until the final day of reconning, the day of Epstien ultimate arrest and his eventual death in prison. Another story that needs reading into.

Throughout the book there are allusions to Epstien real status. Was her working for governments, American, Israel, or both, or more.

He was certainly protected at very high level in America and had such people as Bill Clinton amongst his closest associates.

Evidence is presented in the book suggesting the Epstein facilitated large a money transfers between America and Israel. A former Israeli Prime Minister is mentioned in this book as being one of his associates, and in Nobody’s girl Giuffre recounts being viciously assaulted by a foreign politician, it’s not hard to make the connections.

Why did Epstein get away with what he was getting away with for so long. This book establishes, with information that is now freely available, that he was above the law for a long time.

It also establishes connections between him and high ranking officials in America.

Was he working for governments, was he establishing dark routes for money transfers. It’s still all very vague and still really intriguing.

Will this be the last book I read on this subject. Certainly not.

What started for me as a passing interest in what “Randy Andy” had been up to has developed into a fascination about a very dark period in recent history.

This book, and the story it contains, reads like a Grisham thriller mixed in with a Clancy espionage book. But as fanciful as those two authors stories are, this is pure fact.

The link below is to my review of Nobody’s Girl. Whichever you read first the other compliments it.

https://nigeladamsbookworm.com/2025/10/31/nobodys-girl-virginia-roberts-giuffre/

Pages: 399. U.K. Publisher: Simon and Schuster.

Cop Hater. Ed McBain

I’ve recently been in a bit of a reading slump.

Modern crime fiction seems to be following an all too familiar formula with many of the stories being very samey.

I recently resorted to rereading one of James Elroy’s books, classic crime fiction set in the 1960s, and having enjoyed it and looked for inspiration on Amazon.

The name Ed McBain came up and I remembered people reading his books when I was on the ships in the late 70s. I don’t know why I never picked one up then.

I’m sort of glad I didn’t because now I’ve found a rich vane of new books to make my way through.

Cop Hater is the first in a very long series, of over 50 books in the 97th Precinct series set in the fictional city of Isola, which is very obviously New York.

Written and set in the mid 1950s it’s an excellent study of not only policing in that era, but also of how people lived, their styles and attitudes. The language used, the thoughts and behaviour are very much of that era.

The city is no stranger to serious crime but when the Detectives end up investigating the murder of one of their own no stone is going to be left unturned.

The way they pull in known criminals, and the quick back stories associated with each, are mesmerising.

A second detective is killed and some forensic evidence is left. The Criminologists, Crime Scientist of the day are the early forerunners of today’s Crime Scene Investigators, but have little proven science to help them.

Blood matched only by types, no national shoe database, finger prints sent to the FBI for analysis, and DNA is decades away, as is CCTV, and personal phone data which so much of today’s policing relies on.

So who is killing detectives, and why. There are some nice observations and twists in this plot. There is the still, and ever present, hinderance of the journalist trying to get the “scoop” on the story. The reliance of information from an informer, who I hope has numerous appearances during the series, an early Huggy Bear, type character.

But the big draw is the cast of police officers, their professional and personal lives giving great depth to each character.

One of my favourite tactics that writers employ is to kill of protagonists or main characters in series. It means that the reader is always on the edge of the seat, as no one is safe. McBain sets his stall out early and kept me right on the very edge of the seat.

I won’t be reading all fifty plus books in one binge, but much like Elroy, McBain’s stories are now going to be my default books when I’m looking for a good, no holds barred, original, none woke story to read.

Pages: 226. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer Included in Kindleunlimited

Chapter One. Michael Wood

A clever thriller that had me convinced I knew who the killer was, until I didn’t, and then I realised just how dark this story is.

Reclusive author Aiden Cullen hasn’t left his house for years.

The day his first book was published should have been a huge celebration, but it was the day that changed his life for the wrong reason.

Stabbed multiple times and left for dead the previously shy man, who was leading a normal life, turned into a recluse during his rehabilitation. Now he never leaves his home.

Writing from home he has become a successful author writing murder based crime thrillers.

His life is turned upside down when a murder is committed close to the rear of his house. He has to answer the door to the police, he has to let strangers into his house, even if they are Police Officers, and that really freaks him out.

When he becomes aware of other crimes, all of which are frighteningly similar to the murders in his books he has to tell the police.

Then strange things start to happen in his house.

The list of suspects is short and the top of the list is Aidens best friend and occasional lodger, Luke.

Aiden fights the police’s assumption it’s Luke, it can’t be, it’s his best and only friend.

This is a cracking story written by a brilliant story teller.

I’ve struggled with how to describe it, and I don’t think this does it justice but, if Stephen King wrote Cosy Crime, this is what he’d come up with.

The cosy part first, it’s set predominantly in a nice country family home.

The Stephen King bit. The story is a psychological mind twister.

To be honest, as good as the story is from the start, it’s not until the killer is revealed that I realised just how good the whole plot was, and it elevated my enjoyment of the book even further.

What a cracker of a read.

Pages: 380. Publisher: One More Chapter.