Tag: netgalley

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

Hidden Daughters. Patricia Gibney

I used to worry about long series losing there impact or running out of ideas. The Lottie Parker series by Patricia Gibney is one I really don’t have to worry about

Every new addition to the series jut seems to get better, and the bar was high from the start.

I read this book as a recent story about the discovery of a lot of human remains, those of young children, was found in an old school in Ireland, run by the church for unmarried women and their babies

This not only brought a credibility to an already brilliant book, but somehow underlined everything about the story.

When two, seemingly unrelated murders take place, both involving young women with sad stories that include attending the Sisters of Forgiveness Convent Lottie Parker can’t help but get involved but the emotional attachment to this casenearly unhinges her.

Emotionally she has always struggled to keep her family, and partner, separated from her work. Although that’s hard when you’re in a relationship with another Officer.

But the one has always been a refuse from the other.

This case seems like its make or break for her career and her relationships

Lottie will do anything to get justice, and in this case get news of the women’s demise to any family that they might have.

All the time the threat of another murder hangs over her and her team.

This is a timely and very suspenseful story, told by one of the best crime fiction writers on the shelves at the moment

It’s also one of those books I would only pick up if you’ve got nothing else to do for a couple of days because once you start it you are not going to want to put it down.

Pages: 464. Publisher: Bookouture. Audiobook length: 13.25. Narrator Michele Moran

What The Dark Whispers. M.J Lee

The DI Ridpath books are right up there in my favourite reads, and are always the next-to-read, as soon as they are available to me.

Ridpath is a brilliantly conceived character. Employed by Greater Manchester Police, and posted within the MIT, he has, from the start of the series, been on secondment to the Coroners Office, allowing him a greater range of deaths to investigate.

His secondment was intended to give him an easy ride back to work following a battle with cancer, but over the years he has been involved in some serious murder investigations. He has become a single parent who is struggling to bring up his now teenage daughter, and balance his home life with work. A typical cop his work often comes first.

Now, with GMP under increasing scrutiny , and with staff shortages being exacerbated by increased crime levels the Police want more and more of Ridpath’s time.

So when he is called in by his boss (police) to look at a serious crime that another DI and his team have already wound up Ridpath is put into conflict with one of his peers.

The crime, a young girl accused of killing her mother, a seemingly open and shut case following the girls confession. But she is a minor, and the interview was not carried out well.

Did she really killer mother.

In a separate case Ridpath is tasked by the coroner to look into the death of a man who set himself on fire on a petrol station forecourt.

Suicide? Everything points to it.

But why did both victims, who died hours apart, say the same thing insinuating they are dying in order to save others.

As the investigations continue more similarities are uncovered.

Add to this another team investigating the murder of a family of four, which in isolation seems unrelated. And that’s the problem if these crimes were looked at in isolation nobody would ever get caught.

Can the connections be made.

Are there more deaths to come.

The pace of the book is none stop. M.J Lee’s cadence in his writing just keeps me hooked every time I pick one of his books up.

This one, in my opinion, is one of the best in the series.

Could it be read as a standalone, yes, there is enough mention of previous happenings to leave new readers with no doubt as to how Ridpath, and his family, have got to where they are.

Nicely, for those of us that have read the previous books there’s not too much rehashing and it certainly doesn’t detract from the story, it more reminds us of what has gone before.

But, if I was to be asked, I’d say read the series in order. It really is that good.

Pages: 351. Publisher: Canelo Crime. Release date: 03/07/2025

The Chemist A.A Dhand

A massive heads up to give about a book that I think is the best crime thriller I’ve read this year.

Not set with a cop as the main character, but with a pharmacist who is just trying to do the right thing.

Idris Khan is the “Chemist” a pharmacist on a tough council estate in Leeds. His chemist shop is where the locals go for their medicine, it’s also where the local drug addicts get their daily methadone treatment.

Khan is also the only pharmacist who the local drug lord allows into the Mews, a council estate of high rise flats.

Jahangir Hosseini is the drug lord. He runs the five flats and the houses around them. Nobody gets past his gatekeepers, nobody sells drugs unless they are his. But most importantly nobody ever leaves the estate to live elsewhere, because once he has you hooked on his drugs, he doesn’t want you to taking your trade anywhere else.

The rest of Leeds underworld is run by Thomas Mead and he has always wanted to run the Mews but can’t afford the damage a gang war would do.

Meanwhile a small time pimp is running prostitutes in Heaton, one of them, a fresh face is sent out on her first night. Her client attacks her but Liam says if he wants it rough, get him to pay extra. In desperation she turns to Rebecca, a councillor who works with street girls.

In a crazy turn of events Rebecca kills the client by stabbing him in the back. The client just happens to be Thomas Meads brother who has only just been released from prison.

In a panic Rebecca calls he ex husband, Idris Khan, for help.

And that is where the story really starts.

The more Khan helps the deeper the hole he is digging himself, Rebecca, and Amy the young prostitute

This is a compelling story of a man who is trying to help people. Drug addicts, prostitutes, people generally down on their luck, living in a terrible part of the country.

When that help takes him into the mews he is protected by the drug lord, but only their terms.

He has free range to move around in places the police daren’t go.

And in the words of some actor in a film I can’t remember the name of, he has skills. Not physical, he has a brain, and he has a pharmacy in a world where drugs are a daily necessity for most people.

This is the story of bad decisions and loyalties. The story of a man just trying to get along in life by helping others. When that help leads to trouble it comes from all directions. Two drug lords, the police and the community.

A cracking read from and unusual point of view, and I loved it.

Pages: 432. Publisher: HQ. Publishing date: 22/05/2025. Audiobook length 10 hours 14, Narrator TBC