Recommended Book – nigeladamsbookworm

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

The 12th Cleansing. N. Joseph Glass

I may have left on of the best reads of 2025 to one of the last reads of 2025.

N. Joseph Glass is a new name to me but one I will be watching out for.

The story is that of the investigation into the murder of Sandra Rawlings, an innocent 17 year old, church going girl.

A girl who it appears has been murdered by a serial killer who had previously killed eleven young girls, of a similar age, but having not been caught has laid dormant for four years. Is Sandra really the 12th victim of a man who killed girls who had either just lost their virginity, or are just about to.

The story is cleverly told via six main characters, all of which have equal billing. Each chapter has one of these characters at its centre but is not written in the first person.

Walker Michaels is the veteran senior detective who was the lead on the first series of murders. A middle age man with virtues and an ethos that are typical of his age and experience.

Brandon Jones, the junior detective on his first murder case. His youth and enthusiasm, along with his misplaced confidence and machismo getting him into trouble with his more experienced partner.

The other main characters are the immediate family of the dead girl.

Allen Rawlings, a hard working man who is a pastor in the local church. An oxymoron of a man he rules his own house with a sullen harsh hand. At the same time he is having an affair with a foxy single mother in his congregation.

His wife Sonya, the down trodden and at heal wife who outwardly defends her husband attitudes and actions, whilst secretly harbouring more liberal thoughts.

Their son, Connor, a typical moody teenage boy who spends most of his time on his computer shielded from the outside world by his headphones. His sisters death brings him closer to his mom and he starts to rebel against his dad.

There are peripheral characters that add to the investigation. The mysterious M, who it quickly become obvious is a killer.

Pete, one of the other Pastors and Charlotte, the single mother Allen Rawlings is having an affair with.

The plot is nicely written with a fast pace.

I like to think I’ve usually got an idea of who the killer is relatively early in a book, not this one.

And the reveal when it came, although surprising, wasn’t one of those unlikely or unrealistic reveals. It was perfectly in context, just really well hidden.

Pages: 404. Publishers: Monocle Books. Available on Kindle unlimited.

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.

All the Colours of the Dark. Chris Whitaker

If ever the word epic was appropriate for a story, it’s for this book

At 580 pages it’s a tomb of a book but not one word is wasted.

Spread over three decades, and full of unpredictable but realistic twist, this is one hell of a story.

Two young misfit kids find themselves attracted to each other because they are almost outcast from the other children their age.

Patch, a one eyed boy who lives his childhood as a pirate, and Saint the geeky late developing girl.

A childhood friendship built on being two outsiders.

When Patch goes missing protecting a young girl from attack the police investigation soon peters out.

He’s alive and being kept in a dark cellar, but he’s not alone. There’s a young girl with him. A girl he can’t see in the dark, a girl that asks him to imagine her features by touching her face. She talks in strange quotes and try’s to educate him with her cryptic stories.

Her name is Grace.

Saint never gives up on Patch and through her amateur, childish investigations finally thinks she’s found him.

In the commotion that follows the Saint and the Police find Patch but there’s no sign of the girl he says was in the cellar with him.

Over the next three decades Patch devotes his life to finding Grace.

Over the same three decades Saint, who joins Law Enforcement tries to keep Patch out of trouble, and independently looks for Grace for her own reasons.

There’s no real spoilers in what I’ve written above. Patch’s abduction and his release happen fairly early in the book, the real story is what follows.

The characters in the book weave in and out of the plot around Patch and Saint.

The relationship between Patch and Saint is never really a “will they, won’t they” get together, it’s more the story of two best friends who love each other unconditionally but more as brother and sister.

It’s all about what each of them will do to prove that Grace existed. Patch because he thinks he loves her, and Saint because she is on the trail of a long dead killer.

This is my first Chris Whitaker book but, coincidentally, whilst I was reading it he was recommending to me by a fellow book worm.

She was talking about a book I’d read, a gothic fantasy novel, and I had said the second in that series was the same story as the first. We both love crime fiction and she said to me, aren’t all crime stories basically the same.

Many of them are, but this one definitely isn’t like any I’ve read before.

She’d found it and pointed me in Chris Whitakers direction.

Now I’m looking at his back catalogue.

Pages 580. Publisher Orion. Audiobook length 14 hours 37 minutes Narrator Edoardo Ballerini

Damascus Station. David McCloskey

This is one of the easiest reviews I’ve written. Buy the book.

My formative years of reading were taken up reading great espionage books by the likes of Robert Ludlum, Alistair McLean, Nelson Demille and the likes, and rarely have books that come close to their work.

This one does. Billed as the first of four this book it is set around the end of the Assad regime in Syria, and not only looks at American CIA activities but also the in fighting between different factions in Assad’s security and militia, and the rebels seeking to free the country from the Assad regime.

CIA agent Sam specialises in developing assets in foreign countries. So when a woman working at the heart of the Assad regime is thought to be a viable target to turn into an American agent it’s him they send.

Miriam works as an assistant to a high level officer in Assad’s security forces.

Miriam herself is tasked with silencing a rebel who is spreading the anti Assad message throughout Europe.

Unknown to her boss she is also having doubts about the regime, even though her father and uncle are high ranking officers in the Army she sees the tyranny and misjustices that comes with it. Her own cousin is caught at anti government rallies and is beaten badly before her uncle arranges her release.

The story of Sam making contact and attempting to lure Miriam is the main story, but the infighting and politics of the different factions in Syria make this complex and fascinating.

Family members on different sides of the political, and moralistic fences. Fanatics who thrive on violence, and people with more empathy and sympathy, clash within the same factions.

There are those who want war, and those who are not against it, but not at any cost, working for the same people.

How can Sam and Miriam navigate their way through this. Do they both want the same thing, and who is playing who, and to what end.

Not everybody comes out of this book in one piece. The happy-ever-after is not guaranteed. Just like real life the scenarios in this book are messy, and inevitably mistakes are made on both sides as all interested parties look to gain advantage.

This is a great read. At times I sat holding my breath, at others I found myself reading at a frantic speed to find out what happened next.

Brilliantly written, very realistic, great characters and a cracking story.

Pages: 433. Publisher: Swift Press Audiobook length: 12 hours 48. Narrator: Andrew B Wehrlen

Hunted Abir Mukherjee

If you’ve missed the type of book that Robert Ludlum wrote back in the 70s and 80s, or some of the early Tom Clancy novels, then this book set firmly in the modern day is definitely for you.

Hunted is set against the backdrop of an imminent American Presidential Election, very thinly disguised and based on Trump v Harris, and hints that one of them, or at the least their supporters, are trying to sway the election by setting up terrorist attacks on US soil.

Young vulnerable Asian women are being groomed to join a US Terror Cell, but they are not being told the truth about the severity of there actions, or the cause they are fighting for.

Somebody wants to make it look as though there is a Muslim Terror Cell working in America.

After an explosion in a Mall FBI Agent Shreya Mistry manages to see CCTV footage of the alleged attacker, but she looks like she’s running away, not planting a bomb.

Mistry has difficulty getting her bosses to agree with her and finds herself increasingly distanced from the investigation.

Meanwhile and American mother goes to the U.K. to find the family of another Asian girl who is believed to be part of the cell. The mother’s white and is convinced her son is also part of the cell, but knows he can’t be acting out of principles the American Government Agencies, and the press, are attributing to the cell.

She convinces the father to go to the States with her to find their children before the FBI does, because she’s afraid they won’t be listened to fairly, if at all.

The title the hunted come onto play here. The mismatched couple are hunting their children. The FBI are hunting the cell, and also the mother and father team who they now think are also terrorists.

So, who is the puppeteer grooming and guiding the would be activists into terrorism.

And what s their ultimate goal.

I loved this book. It took me right back to the books that hooked me as a young adult. This sits nicely alongside Ludlum, Clancy, and DeMille as a brilliantly tense terrorism novel.

Hopefully there will be a follow up. It doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but there is scope for another book.

Pages: 468. Publisher: Vintage Audiobook length: 13 hours 21. Narrator: Mikhail Sen