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All She Burns. Charlotte Essex

What happens when the person who investigates the cause of a fire is actually an out of control deliberate fire setter themselves.

Dr Catherine (Red) Carter is known to the Police Officers, and Fire Investigators, she works with as the Fire Guru.

She has the ability to read fire patterns and work out which direction the story travelled so that she can ultimately identify where the fire started.

She has the ability to look closely at the seat of the fire and scientifically work out what caused the fire.

This is why she works for an independent Fire Investigation firm in London.

Most people think that she honed her skills when she was a Firefighter, whilst studying for her Forensic qualifications and writing her doctoral thesis.

What they don’t know is she has a psychological fascination with, and for fire.

She is a fire setter. She has set numerous fires but never knowingly put anybody in danger.

Until now. She had been planning a fire in a boarded up council house. She’d cased the building, gone in an and set the scene, but she wasn’t meaning to start the fire that night.

She hears a voice in her head, Scarlett is the personality driving the fire setting. Usually Red can keep her under control but in a moment of weakness she goes to the house and sets it alight.

The next day she is surprised to be asked to attend the scene to investigate the cause of the fire. It should have been a simple cause diagnosis for the Fire Service.

The problem is the fire didn’t go as she planned it, and worse, there was a body found in the upstairs bedroom.

Now she is tasked with investigating a fire she set. But the deeper she looks the more convinced she becomes that the fire the Fire Service encountered when they arrived at the scene, was not the one she’d set.

As the guilt of killing somebody is replaced by the knowledge that somebody else set a bigger fire, after she set hers, she begins to worry that she may be a target.

I’m going to have to review this book in two parts, firstly as a crime fiction fan, reader and book blogger, and secondly as a Fire Investigator.

As a Crime Fiction Reader.

I loved the story and Red is a great character.

The weaving of the narrative to take the reader on a route that brings all sorts of suspects to the fore, without ever actually giving us a firm reason to suspect them, elevates the story to another level.

Red herself may be one of the best characters I’ve encountered for a while. She is flawed, and there is no way I should have felt any empathy with her, but I just couldn’t help myself liking her.

She drinks too much, she’s self destructive, she’s a fire setter, yet somehow she comes out of this as a good person.

As a Fire Investigator

I spent thirty years in the Fire Service, nineteen on fire engines at all ranks, and eleven as a dedicated Fire Investigator, all in a busy Metropolitan Brigade, so forgive me for being picky.

There are too many procedural errors to overlook, things that just either don’t happen or wouldn’t happen, and yes I understand the need for license in fiction but to me the basis of a good story is being as accurate to real life situations as you can.

There are some technical issues about the observations made at the scenes which I found too much of a stretch.

For example I would imagine every firefighter, or Fire Investigator will have the same thoughts as me about the fact Red thinks it unusual for a fire setter to start multiple fires at the same incident. Multi seated fires are one of the main indicators of deliberately started fires.

But as I said, I’m being picky. It’s just that a lot of people who read my blogs would be surprised if I didn’t bring these things up.

Does this put me off recommending this book.

No it doesn’t. I would recommend it as a great story with a great character.

In fact, I’m hoping for a second instalment.

Pages: 320. Publisher: Wildfire. Publishing Date: 25th March 2027

The Detective’s Wife. Mary Stone

I was convinced I had predicted the end of this book in the first few pages.

I was wrong, until I wasn’t.

How does that make sense? Well I had a hypothesis in my head within the first few chapters, but the more I read, the more I was convinced my first assumption was wrong.

It wasn’t, but how the book gets from start to finish is an amazing read, an amazing story that unfolds through two peoples eyes.

My sympathies and empathies must have changed half a dozen times as I read this book, and not just with the two main characters.

The story is told in the first person but through two peoples eyes.

The first half(ish) of the book is told through the eyes of Jo, a Psychologist working in an institute that looks after troubled women, most of which are dangerous, and spend much of their life highly sedated.

Jo has recently married Conor, a Police Detective whose first wife disappeared 18 months ago.

It’s a Honey Trap, Jo is convinced her husband knows exactly what happened to his first wife, and she wants to use the marriage to find out what.

The problem is Honey Traps are not supposed to result in loving relationships. This one does, and its causing major problems.

About halfway through the book the story switches and is looked at through the eyes of Amanda, a patient at the hospital where Jo works.

Her story is as compelling as Jo’s and is brilliantly written.

The conclusion of the story is epic, but not as epic as the route to it.

As I said at the start of this blog, I had the scenario worked out from the start, as will most people who read the book. But it’s not about the beginning and the end. It’s about the other 80% of the book. The story of how everything comes about.

It’s about what goes on behind closed doors.

It’s about issues within families that not even family members are completely tuned into.

It’s about loyalties, and the way that they are formed, and tested.

It’s about manipulation, and distorted truths.

It is a great story.

Publisher: Bookouture. Pages 404. Publishing Date 24th September 2026

The British Agent. Simon Conway

A good old fashioned espionage story set during the Joe Biden Administration.

The story takes advantage of the chaos caused by the Trump supporters in the January 6th uprising, the war in Ukraine and the revolving door of British Government.

At the centre of the story are three, state-of-the-art, ground-air, guided missiles that the UK supplied to Ukraine.

Chuff is an ex-army private contractor working for E Squadron, a section of the special forces that work directly for Government departments such as MI6.

Chuffs initial job is to audit the munitions being sent to Ukraine, in order to see that its not been sold on to third parties.

When it becomes evident that 3 of the ground-air missiles have fallen into the wrong hands she is initially tasked with finding them.

When that ends in a diplomatic mess she is the scapegoat and is hung out to dry.

Meanwhile in the USA one Politician has eyes on the big seat.

Although the Presidents, past present and future are not named in the book, it is obvious who Conway is talking about.

Biden is seen to be a sleepy liability, but the “Good Old Boys” of the Republican Party are not too happy with the possibility of Trump returning to power.

The answer is to use the militia, formed during the raid on congress on 6th January 2021, to cause chaos and allow one man a run at the Presidency.

To do that they need to get a ground-air missile to Washington and take out the President whilst he’s flying in Marine 1

Chuff is brought back into the fold and tasked with infiltrating the American militia terrorist cell.

But it’s becoming obvious that none of the main players are who they appertain to be.

She can’t trust anybody, the problem is she thinks she can trust some of the main players. In fact the deeper she gets the more she seems to trust. But is that part of the bigger plan.

Who wants Chuff to succeed in stopping the plot to kill POTUS, and who wants him dead and is setting her up to be a scapegoat for the second time.

Throw into the mixture a Russian who also wanted the missiles, and who now holds a personal grudge against Chuff and you have a great story.

The story, and the writing are Clancy(esk).

The plot is not only believable, in the current international climate, but is frankly very realistic.

The characters are not, by any means, a stretch of the imagination. In fact I would go as far as to suggest they are some of the most realistic, and believable characters I’ve read in espionage books.

As a fan of the aforementioned Tom Clancy, this is the book I’ve been waiting for, for years.

Pages: 419. Publisher: Penguin. Publishing date: 20th August 2026. Audiobook length and Narrator yet to be announced but available from 20th August 2026

The Family Secret. Patricia Gibney

This series is a must read for all crime fiction fans, and The Family Secret, book 16, is no exception.

The title gives the plot away, you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. The family showing a happy face to the public can be hugely different in the isolation of their own home.

It’s not the only isolation in the story. Detective Inspector Lottie Parker is newly single following a break up with one of her team, Boyd, and her mother’s dementia is getting worse, and her children and grandchild are always giving her worries.

One of the endearing things about this series is the soap opera that is Lottie’s life, and it plays a major part in this book.

As well as investigating murders and a potential kidnapping, she is being drained physically, and mentally, by things in her private life.

But the main focus is the crime.

A family murdered following a child’s Birthday party.

Twelve year old Freya is dead in her home, the day after her birthday party, and so are her mother and father. It’s a gruesome scene and all of the attending police officers are affected by what they see.

Kneeling at Freya’s side Lottie promises her that she will find the killer.

One key witness is Lily, Freya’s best friend who was supposed to sleep over after the party but changed her mind.

A luck escape, or an insight by somebody.

Before Lily can be interviewed properly she goes missing with her mother saying she had been “stolen” from her own home.

And so it begins. The hunt for a person who has murdered a family, and in all likelihood has kidnapped a child.

What are the secrets hidden behind the closed doors of both girls homes.

Are the parents really as they present themselves, or are there some dark secrets.

Patricia Gibney writes one of the most realistic crime fiction series there is on the shelves right now.

There will be people who have worked crime scenes that will make links to what she has written. In this book she tapped into the one thing that always plagued me.

The normality after the crime.

When she describes the first murder scene, following the birthday party, it was like she was inside my head.

Devastation in one part of the house and total normality in the rest of the premises. The detritus of the party, waiting to be cleaned up. A party dress that should never be part of this type of scene.

I know a few people that hated that normality as much as me, and in a few paragraphs Gibney captures it perfectly.

This story has real pace and is emotionally charged.

As far as fiction goes, it’s as good as it gets, and better than most.

Pages: 503. Publisher: Bookouture. Available now. Audiobook length: 13 hours 24 minutes. Narrator: Michele Moran

The Quiet Kill. Robert Bryndza

London 1987 and Detective Constable Jamie Day arrives in London as a transferee from a uniform post in rural Norfolk.

On his way into the station, the day before he is supposed to start, he is sent to a murder scene. A young cop from the sticks he isn’t expecting his first incident to be a body chopped up and dumped in bags, but that’s what he gets.

Unfortunately for him this is just the first in a line of gruesome discoveries that lead Jamie, and his new team, to start investigating the gay scene where it is becoming obvious that a serial killer is active.

Jamie is keen to impress and his boss DCI Harry Dean is impressed, as is one of his colleges, WPC Tracy Steel.

But there’s always that one person in a team that has his nose put out by the newcomer, and in this case its ex vice copper DC Liam Cole, who takes an instant dislike to Jamie.

The serial killer investigation overlaps an internal police investigation which is looking at a senior officer who is deeply involved in the seedier, and more violent side of the gay sex scene, and police politics soon starts to make things awkward, especially for Jamie who is as naive to the politics as he is to the types of crime he is now investigating.

This is not a complex story. There is no “shark infested Custard” scenarios. Everything just slowly unwinds. In a very captivating manner.

Set in London, in the mid 1980s, it is set in the time when being gay was just about becoming acceptable, people were acknowledging that a gay life style existed, and that not all gay men were perverts. But it was also when AIDs was at its height as an incurable death sentence.

The police investigation in this story highlights the fear that was present both in the gay community, and also a largely ignorant general population.

It makes the investigation more sensitive and difficult.

It also shows the Met Police at a turning point. Female Constables were common place but they were still in uniform, which included a bowler type hat, a skirt, a woolly tights.

It amazed me that in the book, and in real life, even the female constables working with the plain clothes CID officers were still in uniform.

I was in the Fire Service during these times and I clearly remember female police officers turning up at incidents in these uniforms.

I also remember how scary the AIDs disease was, and the precautions we had to take when dealing with casualties at scenes.

Because I was there in those days I can vouch for how realistic the background in this book is. It brought back many memories of the way we dealt with incidents, and how the gay community was treated by the rest of us so called straight people.

The story also contains scenes which include gay sexual assault. The scenes are not gratuitous, and are completely within context of the story, but some readers should be aware that they are graphic enough to be triggering if you are affected by that type of thing.

Would I recommend this book. Yes I would, and as a bonus there’s a short story at the end.

I hope this isn’t a standalone story. I would really like to read more of Jamie and his career in the Met getting on for 40 years ago.

It wasn’t that long ago but reading this book it reminds me of what a completely different world we were living in back then.

Pages: 337. Publisher: Raven Street Publishing. UK Publishing date: 9th July 2026

Wicked Women. Angela Marsons

It must be every Police Officers nightmare case. A completely random murder of a woman who has no enemies. She has done nothing wrong, or has she.

When the first body is discovered that is what Kim Stone is faced with, but everybody has secrets, nobody can have gone through life without upsetting somebody. Can they?

Then a second body, again seemingly random, again no enemies.

But when the teams start digging, are they going to find connections between these two innocent people, is there a link, maybe they are not so squeaky clean as they first seemed.

What I loved about this part of the book is the way Angela Marsons has looked at the way people look at other people. One mans innocent is another mans, or woman’s, villain.

Nobody can go through life without upsetting somebody.

Sometimes just doing your job, or going about your day-to-day business can upset the wrong person, but where is the overlap between the victims.

When a third body is found the team really do end up scratching their heads because this one really does seem totally innocent.

Meanwhile a long standing feud between two neighbouring families in a rural location is providing Kim with a side bar head ache.

Why do two neighbouring families hate each other so much, and what is it that finally trips one of them over the edge.

Angela Marsons has done it again. Without giving too much away she has managed to write a completely compelling and realistic story which has included elements of society that, although we don’t see every day, certainly exist and are probably closer to home than most of us care to admit.

The interaction between Stone and her team is brilliant, and I love the ongoing side stories of their personal lives, but it’s Stone herself I most engage with.

There is something about her personality, the way she thinks, and the actions she decides on, that make these books special for me.

I’ve been with this series from the beginning. In one of my very first blogs, before this series started, I said I didn’t like long books, or authors who published more than one book a year. Well I’m happy to say Angela Marsons has proved me wrong.

This is book 23 in the series, and they are published about every six months, and this is by far my favourite series of crime books, and it just keeps getting stronger.

Pages: 370. Publisher: Bookouture. Audiobook length: 8 hours 17 minutes. Narrator: Jan Cramer

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

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

Little Children Angela Marsons

In one of my very first book blogs I said I didn’t like authors that published a book every 6 months or so. Well this series by Angela Marsons is the proof that I was very wrong to say that.

This series is the one I look forward to reading as soon as the book is available to me.

22 books in and this one is so original that I had no idea that this type of crime existed, but now that I’ve read about it I’m sure that was down to my own naivety.

In this book Stone and her team are seconded to another force, overtly to help with the search for a missing boy, covertly to hunt out bad practices, and a bad apple, in the major investigation team.

The investigation into the missing boy has been run badly and Stone and her team start to identify major issues within the other force.

The clash of personalities isn’t just based on the policing methods and it’s a fascinating read to see how the influence of one or two people can affect a whole team.

That alone as a story would have been brilliant, but throw in the actual crime they are there to investigate and you have one of the best crime books I’ve read for a long time.

Boys going missing around the country. Some of them are a bit rough around the edges and not unknown to the Police, but just because they’ve got a history, and have “run away from home” before, shouldn’t mean they should be treated flippantly.

When Stones team uncover a link it almost unthinkable about what these boys are going through.

The hard part for the team is proving it, and then finding out not only who is responsible, but where they are keeping the boys.

When it becomes evident that at least one of the boys has died, in a horrible manner, the investigation becomes even more highly charged.

And with the investigation getting off to a bad start in the other force Stone is playing catch up from the start.

There are not many books that sit this far into a crime series that I would recommend as a standalone story, but this one is a must read and can be read as a one off.

If anybody hasn’t read any of the others in the series, but picks this one up I’m sure they’ll go back to the beginning and start from book one. I’m almost jealous of the fact I can’t start over and read them all for the first time again.

Pages 371. Publisher Bookouture Audiobook length 8 hours 16 minutes. Narrator Jan Cramer