ramblingmads

Bologna, Italy’s happiest city – or is it?

A grieving father asks Dan to uncover the truth behind the death of his gifted son, a student at Bologna’s prestigious Art Institute. Accompanied by his loyal Labrador, Oscar, Dan heads north from
Florence to investigate.

Still life or still death?

The student’s former girlfriend is consumed by grief and the Art Institute is mourning one of its brightest talents. But beneath the surface, Dan senses that someone is hiding the truth.

(Artistic) license to kill?

Doing a favour for his friend, Commissario Virgilio Pisano of the Florence murder squad, Dan soon finds himself caught up in the shady world of drug dealing, organised crime and fraud on a grand scale.

A paintbrush with death

When the killer strikes again, Dan faces one of his toughest cases yet. With Officer Oscar’s nose for trouble, he must catch the murderer before it’s too late.

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I’m a man. And a pretty old man as well. I studied languages at Nottingham University a long time ago and then lived and worked in France and Switzerland before going to work in Italy for seven years.

My Italian wife and I then came back to the UK with our little daughter (now long-since grown up) where I ran a big English language school for many years.

We now live in a sleepy little village in Devonshire. I’ve been writing almost all my life but it was only 13 years ago that I finally managed to find a publisher who liked my work enough to offer me my first contract.

I started off writing romances but after 28 of them, I knew I wanted to try something different, and so the first of the Armstrong and Oscar cozy mysteries, Murder in Tuscany, was born three years ago.

I’ve been having a lot of fun ever since getting to know the dynamic duo (and introducing them to people all over the world). These books are cosy crime [a genre I didn’t even know existed when I
started writing them). They are murder mysteries, but not gory, over-violent stuff, but stories designed to exercise the brain of the reader and to put a smile on their face.

Maybe it’s because there are so many horrible things happening in the world today that I feel I need to do my best to
provide something to cheer my readers up. My books provide escapism to some gorgeous locations all over my beloved Italy.

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My thoughts: By now, regular blog readers will know that I love this series, and this book is no exception. I’m happy to say Officer Oscar and his canine nose come through again in solving the murder of an art student and the attempted murder of his girlfriend at Bologna’s university, one of the oldest in Europe.

When Dan is asked to look into the supposed suicide of a young man, Luca, by his grieving father, he finds plenty of evidence that it wasn’t so straightforward as the original police report states. For a start, Luca was left-handed but found with a pen in his right (nice to see some lefty representation, shame he’s the victim). 

But it’s when Bianca, his girlfriend, remembers that he was concerned that something not quite right was going on at the art college that Dan begins to dig deeper. He also helps the Italian police get an international drug dealer in the process.

He and Oscar are compared to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson by several of the characters, but I think they’ve got it the wrong way round – Oscar is Holmes, Dan his faithful John Watson, documenting their cases, in this case because Oscar is a dog, and an excellent detective.

Another highly enjoyable read, although I am now very hungry for some proper Italian food, Dan and Oscar manage to pack in plenty of stops for delicious meals!

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

Meet Detective Sophie Allen. She’s an expert on murder and violent crime. Her brilliant mind works tirelessly to put the most vicious criminals behind bars, but conceals dark secrets from her own past.

‘Hello? Is that the police? I think I’m being stalked . . .’

Two weeks later, Linzi Brightman’s body is pulled from Christchurch Harbour. Killed by a vicious blow to the head — and left to drown. At first glance, Linzi’s life is spotless. A respected university lecturer. Popular. Outgoing. Uncomplicated.

But Sophie Allen knows better. Because someone was watching Linzi in the weeks before she died.

Witnesses remember a heated argument in a local Italian restaurant, between Linzi and a man no one can identity. No name. No trace. Just anger . . . and something darker beneath it.

Then another body surfaces. A young woman pulled from the River Avon, just a few miles away. Dead for months.

Two victims. One pattern. This wasn’t random. Someone is choosing his targets. Studying them. Waiting. And he’s not finished yet.

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I try to write thoughtful, contemporary crime novels and include several plot layers in my books. The adult novels feature DCI Sophie Allen and her close-knit team of detectives. I don’t write simple whodunnits, nor violent, all-action, gun-toting thrillers.

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My thoughts: This book handled a complicated subject very well, the rise of violent misogyny online and how it has spilt into the real world is not an easy one to tackle in a novel but Michael Hambling has done so with grace and without making the reader too distressed. As a woman the last thing I want is for the genuinely awful things in the world to spill into my private life via reading and although the victims are female (as they often are both on the page and in the world), there are plenty of female characters here on the side of good to balance it.

Sophie and her colleagues, especially Rae, are impacted by the murders but their response is to work hard to find the killer and those behind them, and then work out how to respond to the rise of misogynistic hate crimes as a police force and how to protect female officers (both trans and cis) from the effects of this.

It’s a really important thing and I hope mirrors what’s happening in our police forces, especially considering the things we have learnt about those who are meant to protect us in the last few years. It would be shameful if only fictional officers gave a damn.

I always enjoy this series, it tackles big themes with gentle hands, and the characters are well written and get along well, their private lives never stopping them from getting justice for the victims.

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

The evidence is overwhelming. The suspect is terrified. And Nils Shapiro is about to discover that nothing about this murder is what it seems.

Lukas Day is found dead in his Minneapolis condo, stabbed with a ten-inch knife. Two jabs in the stomach. One slice across the throat. Lukas worked for wealthy businessman Jonathan Willett — and Jonathan’s wife was the last person known to see him alive.

Paige’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon, security cameras place her at the scene, and she admits being there that night. The police have already made up their minds. Paige is guilty.

Jonathan hires private investigator Nils Shapiro to clear his wife’s name. So far, so routine. But Nils quickly realizes that he’s being tracked. Someone wants him off the case. And a mysterious man offers him $50,000 to walk away. Nils says no.

Because Nils knows that when someone offers you fifty grand not to ask questions, you probably haven’t asked the right one yet.Now Nils must find the real killer before Paige goes to prison. And before whoever framed her decides to silence him too.

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MATT GOLDMAN is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, a playwright, and an Emmy Award-winning television writer for Seinfeld, Ellen, and other shows. Goldman has been nominated for the Shamus and Nero Awards and was a Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List selection. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, pets, and whichever children happen to be around.

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My thoughts: This was a really good thriller with an excellent twist at the end. PI Nils Shapiro has a good relationship with the local cops, his late wife was one, and that helps him get answers about the evidence in this case, even though they think the suspect is pretty clear – it was the woman who had been sleeping with the victim – Paige Willett. She and her husband had a famously open marriage, so why would she kill her lover? 

Nils discovers an actually rather brilliant conspiracy or two, that distract him from doing what his wealthy and controlling client wants – prove Paige is innocent. So Nils does just that – and finds the real killer.

Really enjoyable and I liked Nils and his colleagues a lot, they’re funny, smart people, who work well together and alone, whether solving crimes and doing the bread and butter work of PIs – catching cheating spouses. It’s a series I’ll definitely come back to.

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