Tag: Recommended Book

The Collector Series. Dot Hutchison

There are four books in this series, I picked the first one up over Christmas and finished the last one on the second of January.

Yes, I was hooked.

This is a remarkable series, not just for the stories, which are superb, but for the structure and the way they are written.

The stories centre around an FBI team in the Crimes Against Children division.

Each book contains a gripping story but is told from a different team members point of view, with that character in each book being written in the first person.

In the case of the first book the first person, present tense is mainly used for one of the victims.

This, almost unique, style of writing over the series gives a great insight into the personality, emotions, and relationships in high profile investigation teams.

#1 The Butterfly Garden

Teenage girls kidnapped from the streets and held inside a secured garden. The man who takes them is only known to them as the gardener. He’s a collector, a collector of butterflies, in this case human butterflies.

Once the girl has been kidnapped the are subdued and their back is tattooed with their own unique, colourful set of butterfly wings. The girls is given a new name and released into the garden where they interact with other girls who are also being held.

The butterflies are treated well, except when the Gardener wants sex. In his mind he’s being gentle and saving them from the outside world. But they have a life span and when they reach 21 he kills them, before putting them into a glass frame in resin to display them.

But he’s not the biggest threat to the girls. His son is a monster and uses, and abuses, the girls in the worst way.

Special Agent Victor Hanoverian, and his partner Brandon Eddison, and their team investigate the latest disappearance and start to piece together a case that surprises even these veterans.

The pace of this story is frantic. Following one of the girls experience from just before she’s taken, until ……..well until the end of the book but that would be a spoiler.

#2 The Roses of May

This time Eddison is the main character with the story being written in the first person tense from his point of view.

Young women are being killed and posed with flowers on, or around the body. The type of flowers are different for each girl and seem to have a relate to her in some way.

One of the victims sisters, Priya, is receiving flowers, specifically the same type of flowers the victims were posed with, in some type of predictive countdown to another killing, but is she the target.

Eddison has a relationship with Priya, he had investigated her sisters murder and had kept in touch.

A running theme throughout the series is that the team form friendships with victims, and in some cases the bond is more like family. Often the victims become unofficial councillors, they understand the team like nobody else can, and from very different positions, share the experiences of the crimes they are involved in.

In this story the relationship, between Eddison and Priya, is the main focus of the story and it works really well.

#3 The Summer Children

Team members are introduced through the series, in this book Special Agent Mercedes Ramirez, a background character in the previous books, takes centre stage.

Blood covered children, clutching teddy bears, are being left on her doorstep.

Each time the child is told to talk to Ramirez and that she’ll look after them. They are told by a woman who’s forced the child to watch her kill their parents, telling them that they would be safe now and that she’s saving them.

Ramirez has always given the child victims of the crimes she investigates a teddy bear to help comfort them. The killer is now using this against her.

Her emotions are fraught as she tries to dig into past investigations in an attempt to find a link. The killer is described as looking like an angel, and in a really unusually spin the children are all sure it’s a woman.

#4 The Vanishing Season

One of the newest members of the team, Eliza Stirling takes the first person point of view for the final book in the series.

A young girl goes missing around Halloween time. She was walking home from school in a nice safe neighbourhood and nobody saw a thing.

The girl bears a striking resemblance to Stirling, enough for her to be moved to a desk for the investigation because her looks are to emotional for the family.

Her frustrations are shared by her partner Eddison. It’s the anniversary of his sister’s disappearance, and she was about the same age as the latest victim, and had the same blonde hair and blue eyes, and he is also sidelined because of the triggers the similarities might bring.

The detective in charge of looking for Edison’s daughter is long retired but he never stopped looking for her.

When he, and others start to link numerous disappearances over nearly 30 years, it looks like a serial kidnapper has been taking girls for generations.

The story of the investigation, in this book, is a tool to examine the relationship between Stirling and Eddison, and the extended team of FBI agents and past victims.

It’s one of the best finales to a series I’ve ever read.

Emotions run high, friendship and relationships are strained the bonds are tight but not indestructible.

This is a short but brilliant series. I had not heard of Dot Hutchison before but these books have been available for some time. Why she’s flown below my radar I have no idea. But she is firmly on it now.

Publisher Thomas & Mercer

Mercy Killing. Lisa Cutts

A good story but it comes with a warning.

The story centres around victims of child abuse, and although there is no gratuitous scenes, it is alluded to strongly, and may act as triggers to anybody who has been affected by these crimes

DI Harry Powell is newly promoted, in an unhappy marriage, and is the father to two teenage sons.

He has a wondering eye, when it comes to attractive women, but is to afraid of his wife’s r eaction to anything other than looking.

In short, he’s a wonderful character for a series.

In his first major investigation as DI he, and his team, investigate the murder of a man who has been convicted of child abuse.

The man is found in his flat, hands secured with cable ties, and strangled with another.

From the start of the book the reader is led down the line of knowing who the killers are, but as the book moves on it becomes less obvious and there appears to be a handful of people who are in the frame.

As the last few chapters draw the story to a conclusion these suspects spiral around until the murderer is finally identified.

Throughout the book Lisa Cutts does a brilliant job of looking at the long term psychological damage suffered by people who are abused as children.

What she also does really well is examine the effect it has on Police Officers. The difficulty in investigating the murder of a monster who has abused children. The fact that most people, cops included, would probably think he got what he had coming to him. But they still have to identify and arrest the people responsible, ensuring fairness in justice.

Part of the book also looks at the tragic consequences of making accusations of abuse, another trigger warning.

As much as I’ve made this sound like a tough read it’s actually not. It’s a good Police Procedural, but it’s also thought provoking.

Pages: 365. Publisher: Bloodhound . Series number 1/3 so far Audiobook. 11 hours 2 minutes. Narrator Iain Batchelor.

Her Deadly Game. Robert Dugoni

It’s inevitable that every American, legal, courtroom, thriller , I read gets measured against John Grisham. Few get an equal billing but this book is right up there with any of his.

Keera Duggan is an attorney in Seattle. Formerly she worked for the state prosecutor’s office, which she left after a short but ill advised affair with her boss.

Now she’s back working in the family law firm trying to salvage its reputation. Her father, Patsy, was once a fearsome defence attorney, but over the years he has became more dependent on booze and is ruining his own fearsome reputation as well as his firms.

When Vince LaRussa, a rich investment fund manager returns home to find his disabled wife shot dead in their kitchen, the Police do what Police do and instantly suspect the husband.

He is aware of Patsy’s reputation off old, and hires his firm. He doesn’t get Patsy who is recovering from his latest bender, he gets Keera, who is yet to defend at a murder trial.

The case is a strange one. It’s a locked room mystery that LaRussa seems to have an airtight alibi for. But Keera’s ex-boss and lover, wants to get it to trial quick, he wants to use the case to humiliate her.

What follows is an excellent courtroom drama.

As is usual in American courts Keera’s defence is that somebody else, unknown, killed LaRussa’s wife.

There are at least two suspects but why would either of them want Anne LaRussa dead.

There are twists in this story that leaves the final verdict in question all the way up till the end, and even then there is a vicious sting in the tail.

I like books which are fast paced, with a bit of grit, and that are totally realistic. This story ticks all of those boxes.

There is no spurious writing. Every page holds meaning to the story.

Although Keera’s relationship with her father is an important part of the story it doesn’t get over relied on in the plot, a mistake I’m finding more and more writers make these days.

This is book one in a three book series.

I have a big to-be-read pile, and it speaks volumes that they have all gone on hold whilst I download and read the other two in this series first.

Pages: 396. Publisher: Thomas & Mercer. Audiobook length 11 hours Saskia Maarleveld

A Random Kill. Andrew Barrett

Billed as the start of a new series, I can only hope it turns out to be a long one

I like my main characters to have a bit of grit. Detective Sergeant Regan Carter has a whole quarry.

A fiery red head, who has just been transferred to her nightmare job by the husband she’s just divorced, Regan hates dead bodies. She hates the smells, the body fluids, the injuries, the fact that they fart and belch when the trapped gases get released, in fact there is nothing about them she can get along with.

So as a piece of revenge, the worst thing that her nearly ex-husband could do, would be to get her transferred to one of the busiest murder teams in the country.

Just to put the icing on the cake she is replacing a woman that was dearly loved by her team and who died in a freak accident, with everybody presuming that one of the existing DCs on the team would get her post.

Regan Carter, yes she is named after the two main characters in the 1970s TV series The Sweeney, has a mouth that would match Gene Hunt, from another famous series and has an attitude to match, so making friends is not at the top of her list when she arrives at the new team.

Neither is getting involved with a complicated murder based around the drug scene in Leeds.

What follows is one of the best introductions to a new series I’ve read in a very long time.

A seemingly random shooting of a woman, her child taken in his pram, is Carters introduction to her new job.

But is it as random as it seems. Carter is the epitome of a “Dog with a Bone” and in her brash manner manages to annoy both her bosses, her peers, and the local villains.

In the real world she would undoubtedly be sacked, but in the none woke world of crime fiction, she is a breath of fresh air.

A bit like real world policing there are times in this book when a wry grin cannot be avoided. It’s the only way to deal with the horrors the detectives, and the readers, encounter, and in this book there is one very imaginative, and gory, way of killing.

I really hope this series is a long runner, because there is some entertaining mileage in Regan Carter.

Publisher: The Ink Foundry. Pages: 415. Available now

Her Last Walk Home. Patricia Gibney

Every time I read a book in this series I know it’s going to be frighteningly realistic. The crimes, the characters, the lot, all add up to stories that have me hooked, and this one is no exception.

Walking home at night you should be safe, but everyone knows it’s increasingly risky. So when one young woman doesn’t complete the journey and is found dead, on a bit of grass, a murder investigation is got underway.

As a mother, with children about the same age, Detective Lottie Parker is always going to give the investigation her all, she always does.

The team soon identify the girl and find that she had been on an innocent date the night she disappeared.

Or at least on the face of it she had.

When another girl is found dead in similar circumstances the victims begin to look a little less “innocent”

Two things you are Guaranteed with Patricia Gibney books. Firstly they are written from the heart. Every emotion, of every character is carefully crafted and plays out wonderfully on the pages. Secondly the plot is always original, surprising, and most importantly realistic.

I can’t write too much about the plot, the victims, and the person, or persons responsible for the crimes without including huge spoilers.

In a vague way I will say that the young women that are killed are just being young women, and that nobody deserves to be murdered.

But in modern society what is innocent.

It’s a question this book ponders. When does moralistically wrong become illegally wrong.

When does a person cross the line from having fun, to needing the fruits of having fun.

At what point does the empathy of the reader, or the bystander, become negatively judgmental, a luxury a Police Investigator cannot afford to let cloud their investigation.

All of these things Patricia Gibney handles better than most writers.

Lottie Parker has had it rough, her family have put her through the wringer, but no matter what she is still a supportive mother, grandmother, and daughter, faced with all the trials and tribulations of being the “responsible adult” to all of the generations.

The Parker family story is central to these books and although this, and the others, could be read as a standalone, I would highly recommend reading the series to get the full impact.

Print length: 500 pages. Publisher: Bookouture. Audiobook length: 13 hours. Narrator: Michele Moran

Zero Risk. Simon Hayes

This is the book I’ve been waiting for, for years.

Back in the 1970’s, as a young sailor, I discovered Robert Ludlum via the Matarese Circle. I loved his books and found others like him, Nelson Demille being another favourite reads in the down times on board deep sea tankers.

Moving into the 1980’s I devoured each of Tom Clancy’s books, well the early ones anyway.

I loved espionage thrillers.

But there has been a very thin offering of new authors worthy of these, until now.

Zero Risk by Simon Hayes has filled the void.

The book isn’t about espionage in the more traditional sense, it’s about a person who tries to bring down one of Britains biggest banks, and in so doing the Prime Minister.

It has a touch of the Dan Brown, with the antagonist sending cryptic emails with art references in them, but although they add to the story, if you don’t get them, they are quickly explained.

The plot, as written on the Amazon page.

23 December 2024… Rob Tanner should have been enjoying a rare day off from his life-consuming work as Chief Operating Officer at one of the country’s largest banks. But a panicked phone call from a senior colleague forces him to put his Christmas plans on ice: more than a thousand of the bank’s accounts have seen their balances increased by a factor of ten. Exactly ten.

Tanner enlists the help of brilliant American cyber security expert Ashley Markham, but the attacks only worsen: bank balances rise remorselessly and spread to all the nation’s banks. The only clues to the hacker’s intentions are cryptic daily emails, centred on Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval representation of the seven deadly sins—and packed with colourful artistic and cultural references—taunting Tanner and the newly incumbent Prime Minister, James Allen.

With financial markets—and the very world as he knows it—on the brink of collapse, Tanner races against the clock to decode not just the bizarre emails but their deeper meaning, and the implications for who he can really trust. All the while, his former boss “The Toad” is seeking revenge… and answers of his own.

That only really covers the first couple of hundred pages of a book that stretches to nearly eight hundred pages.

There were times in the book I thought I had things cracked, but then something would happen that would throw me entirely in a different direction.

There were times when I thought, “this has to be almost the end, how come there are so many more pages to read”, but a twist would open up another chapter.

Simon Hayes uses the fact that this is a standalone novel to its best advantage.

Nothing, and nobody is sacred. Anything can happen to anybody.

Having said that there are is no shark infested custard. There are no improbable situations. Everything is scarily plausible, and realistic.

An absolutely stunning read.

Pages: 780. Published: The Rubriqs Press Limited. Audiobook length: 25 hours 8 minutes. Narrator Stephanie Racine

Southern Man. Greg Iles

The one word I would use for this book is “Epic”

Epic in size, at just short of 1000 pages.

An epic story that draws to an end and epic series.

And ultimately the story takes place over a short time in which some epic events take place.

That is when another word comes to mind “Prophecy”

This story is based now. But could be based just before any American Presidential nomination and election cycle, and it’s very realistic.

It looks at how one man’s manipulation of events, to help him make a third party run for President, could lead the Deep South to civil war.

Set in a small city in around the Mississippi, Louisiana area it looks at the deep seated beliefs of some people. The fact that a significant minority of the white population still look down on the Black people. People who are descended from slaves, people who still feel the effects of being considered a lower demographic.

Bobby White wants to have a run at being President, and he has enough supporters to get on the docket.

But what he really needs is to become Nationally known, and to do that he needs to be seen as some type of hero.

And what better way to do that than to stop another race war, or become the piece maker over another Rodney King type incident.

But to become that piece maker, to become that hero, there needs to be some type of situation for him to pacify.

So when a group of cops over react to a situation at a music festival, and shot before they think, leading to dozens of black revellers being killed, Bobby seizes his opportunity.

Set about 15 years after the Natchez Burning the story finds Penn Cage in ill health, but nobody knows just how ill he is.

However he was visiting the festival and witnessed the shooting and one mans attempts at keeping the piece.

As the situation starts to snowball, with some tit-for-tat attacks, Cage starts to suspect not everything is as it seems.

Some large houses are set alight, houses built on slavery and the cotton industry, ideal targets for retaliation against the white community.

But isn’t it a bit too obvious.

Old money is also in play. The Poker Club is a group families with old money, and a couple with new money earned from “legal” modern enterprises. They see an opportunity to gain even more power.

As is typical in America there are multiple law enforcement agencies, State and City, that sit on either side of the racial divide, that have conflicting interests in maintaining, or not, the piece.

This is a story of power, the lust for it, and the how far some people will go to get it.

It’s about how quickly a situation can spiral out of control.

And it’s about people trying to swim against a tide to put things right.

Most of all it’s about the deep seated beliefs and feelings that some people still labour under in the Deep South of the United States.

I’ve mentioned this book takes place 15 years after Natchez Burning. It is, in fact, the final book in a series of seven which have Penn Cage, and his family, as the main characters.

Do you need to read the other books first?

Yes, and in the right order. I’ve listed them below.

This is Iles at his best. I’ve described his writing as Grisham without filters, well this is Grisham without filters and on steroids.

The best thing about this though, is the fact that it could be a prophetic. This story is scarcely close to reality.

It is no stretch of the imagination to conceive that something like this could happen.

Without a doubt Iles is my favourite American author.

This book, and this series is not for the faint hearted. It’s not for people who are easily offended. It’s definitely not for people who are liable to be offended by WOKE triggering subjects.

It is gritty and hard hitting.

However nothing is gratuitous. It’s is all in perspective. It is very very compulsive.

Here’s the list of the rest of the series.

  • The Quiet Game
  • The Turning Angel
  • The Devils Punchbowl
  • The Death Factory ( novella)
  • Natchez Burning
  • The Bone Tree
  • Mississippi Blood
  • Southern Man

Pages: 977. Publisher: Hemlock Press Audiobook: 45 hours 43 minutes. Narrated by Scott Brick

Áróra Investigation Series

Lilja Sigurdardóttir

I’ve spent the last two weeks reading the first three books in this series, back-back.

Set in Iceland with a main protagonist who is half British, half Icelandic, the story in each book is brilliant, as is the running story which continues in the background of the second two, having being the main story in the first.

Áróra is a financial private investigator who specialises in identifying where people hide money, whether it’s for a messy divorce, or a corporate crime. Her favourite outcome to each case is to take her commission in cash and roll around in it, on her bed.

Cold as Hell

When her sister goes missing in Iceland her mother insists she goes to find her. Explaining to her mother that she is not that type of investigator hold no grounds with her mom, so she catches a FI light to meet a “relative” who is a Police Officer who has volunteered to help.

The Officer, Daniel, is only a distant relative, and that is by a marriage that has long ended in divorce, but they click, and start the hunt for her sister.

They start with the boyfriend. is an abusive bully who has beaten Ísafold on multiple occasions, but she keeps returning. Suspected of not only taking, but also dealing drugs Björn is the obvious suspect, but proving it is going to be difficult.

They are not the only one that has concerns about Björn and his treatment of Ísafold. And he is out for revenge, but does this help or hinder Áróra and Daniel’s investigation

It’s no spoiler to say that Ísafold is never found, and it’s Áróra’s hunt for her that continues through the other two books.

Red as Blood

Áróra is still on the island looking for her sister when an accountant she works for contacts her to tell her he needs help with a client in Iceland.

Entrepreneur Flosi has returned home to find his wife had been kidnapped. Told not to inform the police, but to arrange for a 2 million euro ransom to be paid in cash he has contacted his accountant in England.

The accountant wants Áróra to act as liaison and to fly to the U.K. to courier the cash.

Inevitably the police do get involved and it’s Daniel’s team lead the investigation.

Áróra however finds links to Russian mafia in Flosi’s businesses, he’s not the innocent entrepreneur, and the kidnapping isn’t all that it seems.

White as Snow

The story centres on people smuggling. When a container is found abandoned in Iceland with four dead bodies inside an investigation is launched.

There is one survivor, a Nigerian woman that had been living in France. At first she doesn’t know how she ended up in the container but the book contains her backstory in some of the chapters. As this unfolds so does the investigation in Icleland.

Again the Russian Mafia seems to be at the heart of everything.

Daniel has stepped back from leading the investigation, finding it harrowing, having found the survivor, but continues in a support role.

Áróra starts to follow the money, putting herself in more danger than she appreciates.

I read these books because I read a review of the 4th book which is due out later this year. I’m glad I did but now I find myself having to wait months for the next episode in what I’ve found to be an enthralling series.

Publisher: Orenda Books. Print lengths: 309, 315 and 319 pages.

Father’s Day. Richard Madeley

As good as this book is, and it is really good, I fell I have to start this review with a warning, there are triggers in this story that may affect people who have been affected by eating disorders, self harming, and bullying.

That is part of the reason this book is so good. It’s a story of modern day society that needs telling.

For the young girl, Lucy, suffering from PTSD having witness her mother die in horrific and tragic circumstances, life is a lie.

Lucy was living the perfect life in a small village in Cornwall. On a visit to a harbour that life changes when she and her dad witness a horrific accident that leaves her mother dead.

In an attempt to get away from constant reminders they move to the quiet Cotswold town of Willersey.

Becoming more reclusive, spending lots of time in her room, wearing baggy clothing, long sleeves in the height of the summer, all indications that her father eventually picks up on to identify what she is going through.

But there’s an outside influence that her Dad, Nick, has no idea about, until it’s too late.

When a man is murderer and left displayed in the Cirencester Amphitheater, a close to retiring Detective Chief Superintendent is in charge of the investigation.

It doesn’t take much to connect the dots. The storyline is pretty much established in the first few chapters. There is no who done it, more how he did it.

And more importantly what will the outcome be.

I haven’t read any other books by Richard Madeley, I don’t know why, he just hasn’t come onto my radar as far as authors go.

It was my wife who saw Richard talking about his book on the television, and it was her who recommended it to me.

If she hadn’t I’d have never picked it up. I’m so glad she saw that TV show. My next stop is downloading his back catalogue.

Pages: 373. Publisher. Simon & Schuster. Audiobook: 8 hours 25 minutes. Narrators Jamie Parker and Juliette Burton

Guilty Mothers. Angela Marsons

The series that just keeps on giving. I have led a far from sheltered life, but Angela Marsons has found a topic to base this story on that I was blissfully unaware of, and it’s stunning.

Kim Stone and her team are called to the scene of a murder. One of the worst types of crime, a young woman has apparently murdered her mother.

With the daughter locked up the team start to dig into their family relationships.

The only thing of note is that the daughter was a Child Beauty Pageant contestant and that mom might have been a bit pushy.

When another mother of a Beauty Pageant Contestant turns up dead it can’t be a coincidence, and as Stone thought she had the killer already locked up it comes as a bit of a surprise.

And so the journey into the world of Beauty Pageant begins.

The world inhabited by the contestants, and their families, comes as a big surprise to the down-to-earth Stone. The comparison of her early life can’t be ignored.

This is book twenty in the series, that’s one hell of a milestone.

You would think that this far into a series the author would be struggling to keep the reader hooked. This book proves just how wrong that would be.

The story is compelling, who knew that Pageants were a thing in the UK.

The fact that they do, and that there are bitchy, bullying, mothers living their life vicariously through their, sometimes unwilling, and often unhappy children, makes a fantastic backdrop to a murder story.

Stone and her team are always engaging and their back stories always have me hooked.

I love these books. The series is still my favourite. Book 20. Let’s hope for books 25, 30 and who knows how many more.

Pages: 362. Publisher: Bookouture. Audiobook: 8 hours 21 minutes. Narrator: Jan Cramer