ramblingmads

A body in a cello case. A victim who shouldn’t be dead. A killer playing a deadly
game.

Detective Jack is enjoying a rare day off and attempting a spot of DIY when the call
comes in.

A passenger has made a horrifying discovery on the Edinburgh to King’s Cross train.

Stuffed inside a cello case, abandoned on a luggage rack, is the body of a middle-aged
woman. Strangled to death.

Wealthy businesswoman Rhona Miller has been dead for at least two weeks.
But that’s impossible.
She spoke to her father just four days ago.

As Jack and his team dig deeper, he finds himself plunged into the most frustrating case
of his career – a crime carefully staged, a timeline that makes no sense, and a killer
always one step ahead.

Jack comes to realize this isn’t just murder.
It’s a performance.

And Detective Jack MacIntosh has been cast in the lead role.

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Michelle Kidd is a crime fiction author best known for the DI Jack MacIntosh and DI
Nicki Hardcastle series. Michelle qualified as a legal executive in the early 1990s,
spending ten years practising civil and criminal litigation.

But the dream to write was never far from her mind and in 2008 she began writing the first book in what would later become the DI Jack MacIntosh series.

Michelle now works full time for the NHS and lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
She enjoys reading, wine and cats — not necessarily in that order.

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My thoughts: This is a nasty case for Jack and his team, and one that hits close too. Rhona Miller has been strangled, placed inside a cello case and left on the train from Edinburgh to London for an unwitting passenger to find.

But Rhona’s father is adamant he spoke to her the previous day, and as he reveals that his daughter was kidnapped and he paid a ransom, the case takes on a different form. Something else is going on here, and it might date back to Rhona’s time at medical school. A medical school also attended by Jack’s friend, pathologist Dr Philip Meadows.

As the case heats up and the killer strikes again, Jack needs Dr Meadows to think, he knows the Millers, he’s known them for years, can he help identity the killer?

A shocking, twisting story with a nasty sting in the tale for some of the team, as Jack hunts an obsessed, revenge seeking psychopath, who refuses to stop on his dark path. Will they all survive it?

Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Join Maddie Penrose, scone baker, book lover and amateur sleuth, in her new home by the Cornish seaside. A member of her local book club has been murdered, and she’s on the case!

Maddie Penroseis settling into Cornish life with her fun and feisty grandmother, Nor. She throws herself into getting to know the locals, helping out at the village book club and enjoying the occasional G&T in the pub with handsome police officer DI Tom Trevelyan. But one sunny morning, her newfound peace is shattered when she spots Quentin, a member of the book club… dead, with a knife in his back.

To Maddie’s surprise, it transpires that almost all the other members of the book club have a motive to murder Quentin. Quentin’s own wife, a fellow reader, seems to be hiding something. The local romance author isn’t all sweetness and light, and another writer is keeping secrets. But is one of the book lovers in the sleepy seaside village really responsible for Quentin’s untimely death?

No sooner has the ink dried on the page of the first killing, another takes place – and the second victim is also a member of the book club! As Maddie frantically scrambles to get her clues down in black and white, she unearths a discovery connected to Nor. Is her gran the next victim on the list?

Can Maddie rescue Nor before her story ends in murder too? Or will the killer have the last word?

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Fliss Chester lives in Surrey with her husband and writes historical cozy crime. When she is not killing people off in her 1940s whodunnits, she helps her husband, who is a wine merchant, run their business. Never far from a decent glass of something, Fliss also loves cooking (and writing up her favourite recipes on her blog), enjoying the beautiful Surrey and West Sussex countryside and having a good natter.

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My thoughts: Maddie Penrose has a habit of finding dead bodies, and this one, washed in with the tide during the early morning midsummer swim, has clearly been dumped at sea. Local bookseller Quentin isn’t the sort of person to have enemies, but someone wanted him dead.

Then another member of the book club is killed, and Maddie tries to work out the connection between the two men’s deaths. Does it have something to do with the Pendragon Treasure and what secrets is her grandmother, Nor, keeping?

There’s some goat related shenanigans and a lot of tea and cake gets eaten as Maddie investigates, she’s able to ask questions the police wouldn’t and gradually she gets Nor to open up and tell her the truth. But not before a terrifying show down in a cave. Maybe she should stick to baking!

Another fun and enjoyable outing for this new series, hopefully in the next one Maddie and DI Tom actually go on a date rather than just hanging around crime scenes flirting.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

One dark night in the Shropshire Hills, a car goes hurtling down the lonely track to Clive Quarry. Careering ever closer to the sheer drop at the end of the lane. It teeters on the edge for one heart-stopping moment. Then plummets down to the jagged rocks below.

Next morning, the bodies of two teenage boys are pulled from the twisted wreck. But the real mystery is what’s locked inside the boot.

The body of a frail old woman, wrapped in a woolly blanket. Nails painted, hair freshly dyed. Six months dead.

With no leads, no ID and no living witnesses, only Coroner Martha Gunn can piece together this Jane Doe’s story.
Someone out there knows exactly who the old woman is.

And they’ll do whatever it takes to keep Martha from the shocking truth . . .

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Priscilla Masters was one of seven multi-racial children adopted by an orthopaedic surgeon and his Classics graduate wife. She trained as a nurse in the 1970s at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham.

She is the author of more than thirty crime novels, including the popular DI Joanna Piercy series set in the Staffordshire Moorlands.

She currently lives on the Staffordshire/Shropshire border and has two sons and two grandsons.

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My thoughts:  This book has shocking moment on shocking moment, first a car goes over the edge of a quarry and two young men die and then the body of an old lady is found in the boot. But are the two events connected?

The two young men in the car dying is awful, but as the police look into the body in the boot, other sad and terrible stories come to light. In the end the death is tragic and moving, and the police find themselves unsure whether a crime has really taken place or just a sad tragedy.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

When a body is discovered at their local country fair, amateur detectives Flora and Jack Carrington agree this death smells suspicious – and it’s not just the killer cheese. It’s the scent of murder…

Sussex, 1960: It’s the perfect day for Abbeymead’s autumn fair. The village green has been transformed into a riot of stalls and tents, and Flora and Jack are keen to sample all the local produce. But when local cheesemaker Gilbert Barrow crashes into the fair, he brings the festivities to a dead halt.

Flora rushes to the van and finds Gilbert slumped over the wheel, killed by his prize-winning round of cheese, which has broken free of its bonds. Flora is immediately alert – surely Gilbert would have been more careful with his treasured prize… and with his life?

Certain there’s more to this than just a tragic accident, Flora and Jack begin investigating Gilbert’s close circle – his jealous cousin, Bea, his corporate dairy rival, Reginald, and his estranged wife, Vivienne. When Gilbert’s new girlfriend is attacked, the race to find out who had the biggest motive heats up faster than fondue. But can Flora and Jack sniff out the killer – or will their investigation crumble before the murderer strikes again…?

A completely gripping and page-turning, charming cozy mystery novel packed to the brim with brilliant twists. Fans of Agatha Christie, Faith Martin and J.R. Ellis will love Murder at the Country Fair.

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Merryn taught university literature for many years, and it took a while to pluck up the courage to begin writing herself. Bringing the past to life is a passion and her historical fiction includes Regency romances, wartime sagas and timeslip novels, all of which have a mystery at their heart. As the books have grown darker, it was only a matter of time before she plunged into crime with a cosy crime series set in rural Sussex against the fascinating backdrop of the 1950s.

Merryn lives in a beautiful old town in Sussex with her husband and one last cat, Bluebell. When she’s not writing, she tries to keep fit with adult ballet classes and plenty of walking.

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My thoughts: When local cheesemaker Gilbert is crushed to death by a massive wheel of cheese, in his van, after someone cuts through the straps holding it in place. (It’s ok, cheese doesn’t kill people normally.) Flora and Jack investigate, Gilbert seems to have plenty of people who might have wanted him dead – his ex-wife, the dairy that wanted to buy his business, his cousin.

The police are stumped but since Flora and Jack are good at thinking outside of the box and are good at getting people to talk, they soon unravel why so many of the people around him seem to have reasons to do away with Gilbert. And narrow it down for the police.

A smart and entertaining case with an interesting cast of characters.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.