Tag: Psychological Thriller

The Surgeon. Leslie Wolfe

A roller coaster of a book which brings one phrase to mind.

Bunny Boiler

If you are a fan of films like Fatal Attraction, and The Hand That Rocked The Cradle, this book will be right up your street.

The story starts with an eminent heart surgeon losing a patient during an operation. He wasn’t just any patient. He was the man that abused her sister. Did she give in too easily, could she have saved him.

Meanwhile an Assistant District Attorney is in a hotel room enjoying the delights of the future Mayor, but she’s not his wife. His wife is in hospital trying to fathom out if she could have saved the man who died on her operating table.

The ADA wants to be the woman in the future mayors life but she knows he’ll never leave his wife. So maybe she can find some way of proving she killed the man who died during his heart operation. If she can discredit her maybe her husbands political ambitions will lead him to leave her.

All that in the first few chapters. What follows is a twisting turning path to a firecracker of a finale

The characters in this book are beautifully written. Empathy swaps with sympathy, and changes to loathing as new pieces of the plot fall into place.

Nobody is who they seem to be from the start.

Written partly in the first person, and mainly in the third, this book had me on tenterhooks from the start.

I defy anybody to read this and not say they are shocked by the twists the story takes.

From the first minute the reader is made to sympathise with the Doctor, and even feel empathy for the ADA, the mistress, but things quickly change.

The story is like a tidal river changing flow, encouraging huge surges in empathy with different characters with each change of tide.

Right up until the last few chapters, then just when I thought I had it all worked out I read the very last paragraph

I really hope there’s a follow up to this book.

Pages: 290. Publisher: Bookouture.

Audio book length: 10 hours 46 minutes. Narrator: Gwendolyn Druyor

Available now.

Three Widows. Patricia Gibney

A group of women have formed a self help group following the loss of their husbands, either by death or them just leaving the marriage

Women who at the start of their loss are at their most vulnerable

It’s only a small group and when one of them goes missing it leaves a big hole. When a second goes it must just be a coincidence.

Mustn’t it???

The last thoughts of one of them when they are taken is how unfair it is on her children, they’ve only just lost their Dad.

When the body of the first woman to go missing turns up DI Lottie Parker and her team are given the task of investigating.

Lottie was widowed young and has been a single Mom to young children. She starts to feel the anxieties that may throw her off her “A” game.

One of the murdered women has been living reclusively, hardly leaving the house. But the rest of the group didn’t know that, in fact what did they know about the young widow Éilis.

It’s not long before Parker begins to think there is more to the Grieving Woman’s group than meets the eye.

The Lottie Parker series is now at book 12 and doesn’t show any signs of losing its impact.

This story, like the others, is a hard hitting Police Procedural, wrapped up in a psychological thriller.

Parker is one of the best Police characters on todays book shelves. I’ve said it before but Patricia Gibney puts a lot of herself into these books.

You can’t write books as good as these purely based on research. The policing side, yes. The crimes, yes. But the emotions and feelings have to come from the heart

I always recommend this series to people who want to know why I get hooked on crime fiction. And it’s going from strength to strength.

Pages: 507. Publisher: Bookouture Available now.

A Truth For A Truth. Carol Wyer

Carol Wyer

 

Wow. Where do I start.

This has been a great series from the start and its got even better with the addition of this book.

Kate Young has been trying to break the ring of abusers she thinks is responsible for her husbands murder. The problem is the ring includes at least one Senior Police Officer.

Throughout the series she has been driven by the voice in her head, that of her husband.

But now she’s killed somebody, somebody in power, somebody who was part of the ring.

The Police, and probably her team, will be asked to investigate his death.

But first they have to find the body, at first its just a missing persons case and Kate is doing her best to carry on as if she has nothing to do with the death.

Then there’s the bigger problem. Her husbands voice of reason is being fought against, and at times replaced, by another voice. The voice of the man she murdered, and he’s ridiculing her.

As much as this is a great crime story its also the story of a woman having a breakdown, she’s functioning but her mental health is really on the edge.

Can she keep her mind long enough to escape blame.

Can she break the ring and expose everybody involved.

The very last page made me gasp out loud.

There has to be another book. It can’t end there, or can it.

Pages: 411. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Publishing Date: 4th April 2023

The Snow Killer & The Soul Killer. Ross Greenwood

I picked up Snow Killer on a recommendation, and I’m really glad I did. It was that good I went straight to book 2 The Soul Killer

Gentle Giant, and family man, DI John Barton is the main Police lead and a cracking character, but what steals the show in these books, and makes them stand out in current crime fiction, is the main criminals.

Greenwood dedicates as much time to the criminal and their activities, as he does to the Police and their investigations.

The criminals sections are written in the first person, with the investigation side written in the third person.

This allows Ross to get right into the criminal mind and explore the psyche the murderers.

The Snow Killer

In this book the killer is out for revenge. 50 years ago her family were murdered in a Gangland killing. She escapes badly injured, with the killers thinking she had died.

It took her a few years but she got revenge. Now a he’s killing again, but why.

An old Lady annoyed at the way the youth have no respect. The way the neighbourhood is run by silly, arrogant, tooth sucking teens.

Barton really has his work cut out. The old cases don’t even come on his horizon until a retired officer comes under suspicion for an unrelated issue.

Who would suspect an old lady. But then again we were all young once, and why would our attitude change just because our body isn’t as strong.

A gun is a great leveller, so is a well placed knife in skilled hands

Soul Killer

Following on from the aftermath of the shocking end to the Snow Killer

This time the killer is very close to home.

Again revenge is at the heart of the crimes. This time the killer is young, clever and calculated. But what Greenwood does brilliantly is show the escalating downward spiral of their mental health as they start to make mistakes.

One killing has to lead to another, just to cover up their tracks, the more killings the more chance of a mistake. The cold calculated killer starts to turn into a panicked psychopath.

One of Barton’s team is a new and very blunt young DC. The team find him hard to get on with but Barton sees something in him and lets him have his head. He hits the nail on the head quickly but is largely ignored, after all how could the person he thinks is a serial killer be responsible, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Both of these books had me hooked. I’ve not come across any other stories that give the killer so much time in a story, and have them writes so well.

Greenwood gives a real gravitas to the mind of the killer. He looks at their history, in both stories the issues the killers have started years ago and have festered in their minds.

He looks at the planning and consequences. The average person these days think they are Forensically aware, and know that a mistake will almost inevitably lead to their capture. So when killers start to make mistakes, even the coolest start to panic. The more they panic the more mistakes they make.

Barton’s team are good at what they do. There are some great characters amongst them, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but everybody knows their worth, what they are good at, and how to support each other.

At the end of the second book, in the acknowledgments, yes some people do read them and I’m one of them, Greenwood states he didn’t realise, when he was writing the first book, that it would turn into a trilogy.

Well it must really have come as a surprise to him that it went beyond book three. In fact according to Amazon there’s five books in the series.

How good are the first two. I’ve just finished Soul Killer and immediately downloaded the rest of the series.

The books are also available as Audiobooks, narrated by David Thorpe

Publisher Boldwood Books. Available now on Amazon.

Don’t You Dare. Jessica Hamilton

As far as dark psychological thrillers go, this is one of the best I’ve read for years.

A totally believable story. A main character that is both engaging, and at times, frustrating. A touch of “spice” but totally in context and not gratuitous. An ending that I just didn’t see coming.

Three friends spend their college years in a tight little group. They are a introverted group playing an ever increasingly dangerous game of dare and forfeit. But who is the manipulator, who is the one really stirring the pot

Years on Hannah is married with two girls, but she still hankers after her best friends Scarlett, who moved to the other side of the world, and Thomas who was her first love, and who she hasn’t seen since college.

Then Thomas returns and initiates a game of dare between just the two of them.

That is when things start to go wrong.

Hannah is the narrator of the story. She’s a functioning alcoholic, even if she won’t admit it. Her husband is at the end of his tether and their relationship is purely functional, for the girls sake.

When Thomas returns the old flame is ignited and she finds a new purpose.

Like before the dares get more dangerous.

Somebody is spying on Hannah and Thomas.

There is a prowler in her neighbourhood and somebody is sending her husband information about her relationship with Thomas.

Can she keep her marriage together, does she even want to.

More importantly can she survive an ever increasingly dangerous situation.

This book drips the story at a constantly steady pace. The tension builds from the first chapter like a dripping tap filling a sink to the point that it’s overflowing without you noticing one specific thing that’s raised the level.

It’s not often these days that a book holds me enough to read it in a day, but this one did. A genuine “I read it in a day” and I loved every page of it.

Pages: TBC. Publishing Date: 16th May 2023 Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Hidden Scars. Angela Marsons

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Without exaggeration the best book I’ve read

It may be because it’s written by my favourite author.

It may be because it’s the latest in a cracking series.

But I think it’s probably because the author put a lot of emotion into what was written.

Kim Stone nearly died in the last book, Six Graves, this one starts several months later and finds her struggling psychologically and physically.

Her team has been in the hands of another DI whilst she recovered and she can see it being slowly destroyed by his incompetence as a Detective and as a boss, and his failings as a human being.

Will she recover to take the team back from him whilst it’s still intact.

It takes a nasty murder, which he is happy to pass off as a suicide, to tip her over the edge and try and bring the “old Kim” back.

Will she manage it.

This book looks at the roller coaster of recovery from serious injury. How Kim has to struggle internally to get herself in the right place to be effective. Her team is more than her team, it’s her family and they need her.

The crimes in this book are psychologically horrific.

Based on a centre that offers “Correction Therapy” to young gay people.

I’ve not lead a sheltered life but I had no idea this happened. I’m not kidding when I say I disappeared into a Google worm hole for hour’s researching it.

Angela Marsons has dealt with the subject brilliantly.

Every page in this book is gripping as Kim struggles to find her old self.

Her team are there for her every step of the way but it’s a struggle at times.

The dual stories of the investigation into these horrific crimes, and Kims struggles to find, and deal with, her new normality are breathtaking.

And the very last sentence. Wow

Pages: 356. Publisher: Bookouture.

Audio book length: 8 hours 39. Narrator: Jan Cramer

The Body In The Stairwell. Nick Louth

The latest in the DCI Craig Gillard series, and a great story. I just think that if you’re a Gillard fan you are going to be a bit disappointed, as although he’s the lead Police Character, he doesn’t actually appear much in the book.

The story is one of revenge. An English accountant has just served 6 months in an American jail for laundering drugs money for an American gang.

He got a short sentence compared to the gang bosses because he gave evidence against them. Now two of them are dead and one, the fiercest of all of them, has sworn revenge.

The Reptile, as he is known because of a skin condition, is out of segregation and plotting his revenge. Still locked in a maximum security jail in the middle of the desert he shouldn’t be a threat.

But he gets his hand on a smart phone, how hard should it be to find the English Accountant.

Meanwhile the Accountant is in serious financial difficulties. He had a life style funded by his cut of the laundered drug money and was living well beyond his means.

He has a wife and a teenage daughter, they both know, and are both trying to fly below the radar, staying off social media and out of the headlines.

The Reptile is determined and working with the slimmest slither of information starts to use his smart phone to track down the Accountant.

The story centres on the naivety of young teenagers and the information they share. The dogged determination of a desperate man, out for revenge.

Ultimately it’s a bit of an eye opener. It’s a psychological thriller based around internet stalking and grooming.

Young girls desperate for an internet presence, sharing hat they think is trivial information. All of this acting as a mosaic letting the Reptile gradually build a picture of a lifestyle and ultimately a location.

Then it’s time to wreak revenge, and he’s really going to make somebody suffer.

I really enjoy this series. Nick Louth brings a lot of realism to his books and although I mentioned Gillard is not in this book very much, it doesn’t distract from what is a very good story and a cautionary tail.

I wondered how easy it is to dig into a persons life, via social media, whilst I was reading this book. So I gave it a go. Believe me it’s scary.

Pages: 274. Publisher: Canelo Crime. Publishing date: 22nd September 2022

Hidden Bones. Rita Herron

There is something about this series that has me really hooked.

It could be the main character, Detective Ellie Reeves, or the other recurring characters, all of who add massively to the stories.

It could be the setting, a small town at the start of the Appalachian Trail, with its unique inhabitants and visitors.

Or it could be the well thought out, well written crimes.

It’s probably a combination of all of those things.

This book starts like a Stephen King story. A flash back to 30 years ago, a little girl hiding whilst she witnesses her mother being murdered. The killer finding her and taking her away.

Back to today and it’s Spring Break and all the madness it brings. A group of teenagers carrying out a TikTok challenge to film themselves in an abandoned “haunted” house.

The house is an old Orphanage with a bad reputation. When something spooks them they make a run for it but one girl falls into a pit. The pit is full of human bones, but how long have they been there.

Unsure weather this is a historic case, or even if it’s a crime scene Ellie is moved off the case when a very recent murder victim is found.

A woman has been the victim of a horrific murder, and she has had rough sex recently. In another twist the team dig into her past and can’t be sure the rough sex and the murder are part of the same crime.

The story follows the investigations into both crimes, and more as they happen. Inevitably the investigators start to wonder if there’s a link.

If there is, how long has this killer been active, and how many victims are there.

Rita Herron is one of those authors I wait for. I’m lucky enough to be able to read the books before they are published. When the notification pops up to say one of her books is available it goes straight to the top of my TBR list and is always the next book to be read.

I think that speaks volumes.

Print length 460 pages. Audio book 8 hours 58 minutes Narrator Tanya Eby. Publisher Bookouture. Available now.

Stay Awake. Megan Goldin

It might sound a familiar plot, woman wakes with no memory and is in the middle of a murder mystery, but it is much better than anything along similar lines that I have ever read.

To start the amnesia is not the common forgot everything type.

32 year old Liv Reece wakes up tipsy in the back of a taxi. When she gets home she finds it occupied by strangers. Catching herself in a mirror she realises she has long hair several shades darker than the short hair she thought she had.

On the back of her hand, her wrist, and up her arm are scribbles in pen.

Stay Awake, Remember to wake up, Don’t sleep, I forget everything when I sleep.

There’s also the address on a nightclub. People know her there but she doesn’t remember them.

As she starts to put things together she realises the last thing she remembered, taking a phone call at her work desk, was actually over 2 years ago.

Waking up on a park bench the next day her memory is gone again, all she remembers is everything that happened in her life up till the phone call at her desk.

A murder takes place and New York Detectives Halliday and Leville are assigned. A man with a stab to the heart and slashed feet lies naked on a bed. The words Wake Up! Written in blood on the inside of the window, backwards so the can be read correctly from the outside.

Liv sees this on the news and realises she must have had something to do with it. But why.

The story is brilliant, Liv’s fear and frustration as she tries to piece together her life, and work out if she killed somebody.

Halliday and Leville investigating a stranger murder with a suspect who appears to have fallen off the grid over two years ago.

The plot twists around will the Police Investigators find Liv, whilst Liv is going through psychological torture, and trying to stay any awake is only increasing her pain.

As both parties creep closer to the truth, and each other, it become a breathtaking ride of a story that you found myself deeply engaged by.

A great book by a new author to me.

Print Length: 353 pages. Publisher: Canelo. Publishing date U.K. 18th August 2022.

The Lost Ones. Marnie Riches

Well if you are looking for a detective with a difference this is the book to find it in.

Detective Sergeant Jackie Cook. A hormonal woman in the third trimester of an unexpected pregnancy who has: A waster of a husband who contributes nothing but dreams of being a rock star. Nine year old twin sons doing their best Fred and George Weasley impressions. A mother who lives in the basement with her David Niven like boyfriend. The occasional visiting bohemian artist father.

On top of all of that her colleagues blame her for letting the glory seeking, queen detective, DI Venables get the rank of Detective Inspector because she’d stood down from it.

Oh and there’s a series of gruesome murders to solve.

Cook and her partner David Tang are assigned to a murder where the limbless torso of a young girl has been posed in a beer garden.

It’s not the usual gang related murder the team are used to dealing with in Manchester, and it’s not the last body with bits missing that is coming their way.

The story develops as more bodies are found. Each either missing pieces, or being discovered as just one piece.

Cooke and Tang are under pressure, Venables is preening her feathers and wants a quick arrest of who she thinks is an obvious suspect. Cooke and Tang know she’s wrong.

This story is stunning, and has introduced one of the quirkiest characters I’ve read for years.

Cook is a force to be reckoned with, but she’s also a vulnerable woman.

She’s blunt, likes to give the occasional kick in the shin, loves her job, but has real problems balancing her work and home life.

As the story gallops on she finds herself having to merge both worlds, but the result is not what she expects, or is it.

A stunning start to what I hope will be a great series.

If you are a fan of Marnie Riches you are not going to be disappointed. If you are only just discovering her you are in for a real treat.

Publisher: Bookouture. Pages: 324. Audio Book 11 hours 6 minutes. Narrator Helen Duff. Available now.