Month: Mar 2021

Eleven guests. Three nights. One murderer… This is the haunting and atmospheric new thriller from rising star of crime fiction, Rachael Blok.

In a gorgeous mansion in the Hertfordshire countryside, sisters Lois and Ebba prepare to launch their new venture. Archipelago is an exploitation-free tech company whose virtual reality game promises to unite the worlds of technology, politics and the environment.

Invited to the launch party are their investors: current and ex-politicians, international business moguls and activists, one of whom – Marieke – has been receiving online abuse and death threats for her views on eco-politics.

DCI Maarten Jansen has been summoned to join the house party. He is sure the threats are from online trolls with nothing better to do – he’s only offering police protection because his boss wants to put the VIP guests at ease. But when eight of the guests are involved in a suspicious helicopter crash, Maarten starts to uncover long-buried secrets – and a murderer in their midst…

My thoughts:

This was an interesting book, with the terrible helicopter accident acting as a sort of central point and the plot moving back and forth from that moment. Slowly people’s secrets and lies are revealed, the killer’s motivations start to become apparent and guilt makes people act suspiciously.

DCI Maarten Jansen has history with one of the guests and is reluctant to engage with these uber wealthy people. But as he investigates them, he uncovers hidden corruption, these victims aren’t so innocent.

Well written and constructed, with different narrative strands building together to give a complex picture of the company and the characters, especially Iqbal – who deserves his own book. An interesting take on the classic country house mystery.

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

Read my review of Firewatching

After the gut-punch ending of Firewatching, DS Adam Tyler returns to another shocking cold case…

A body has been discovered in Sheffield’s beautiful Botanical Gardens. A young woman, dead from a stab wound, buried in a quiet corner. Police quickly determine that the body has been there for months, and would have gone undiscovered for years – but someone has dug it up.

Who is the victim? Who killed her and buried the body, resting two ancient Roman coins over her eyes? And who dug her up? DS Adam Tyler will find himself drawn into the secretive world of nighthawkers: treasure-hunters who operate under cover of darkness, seeking the lost and valuable, and willing to kill to keep what they find…

Russ Thomas was born in Essex, raised in Berkshire and now lives in Sheffield. After a few ‘proper’ jobs (among them: pot-washer, optician’s receptionist, supermarket warehouse operative, call-centre telephonist, and storage salesman) he discovered the joys of bookselling, where he could talk to people about books all day.

His highly-acclaimed debut novel, Firewatching, is the first in the DS Adam Tyler series and published in February 2020. Nighthawking, the second book in the series, will publish in February 2021.

My thoughts:

This was really good, a mix of crime procedural, personal drama and an alternate version of gentle comedy The Detectorists.

When a body is found buried in the Botanical Gardens, a series of dodgy dealings starts to unravel. The nighthawkers have found some treasure but instead of declaring them they tried to sell them and now someone wants them all. Is that person responsible for the dead woman? Or does it have something to do with her PhD in botanical science?

DS Tyler is distracted by his personal stuff, his dad’s murder, his brother’s reappearance, his faltering relationship, will this affect his ability to get the crime solved?

I felt sorry for his DC, Mina, who ends up doing the brunt of the investigation, carrying two sergeants who are busy thinking about something else, but not getting the respect and acknowledgement she deserves. In a way this is her book, I learnt a lot about her, whereas in Firewatching she was in the background a lot more.

Tyler is a mess, despite his supposed brilliance, he’s all over the place and the case seems like the least important thing to him.

I was completely gripped by the story, it was very clever and each new fragment of information added complications and new suspects to the case. The ending was shocking and I didn’t have a clue who the villain was, I was blindsided by the reveal. Really, really good stuff.

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

HORSEY MERE
The remains of a 17th Century witch, an MP found hanging above a five-pointed star, and three girls with powers beyond anyone’s control.
As DI Tanner and DS Evans endeavour to make plans for their big day, the chance discovery of Norfolk’s last known witch, tried and hanged by Norfolk’s infamous Witchfinder General, sparks a chain of the most horrific events, none of which Tanner seems able to stop.
Purchase

THE WHERRYMAN
Four missing children, three murdered men, and the helm of a boat with a blood-red sail, hiding a
secret only he can tell.
Returning to the Broads after nearly two years at sea, Tanner moors up next to a boat to find the body of a man whose five-year-old daughter is nowhere to be seen. As a torrent of unwanted memories begins flooding through his mind, an attractive Broads Ranger arrives at the scene with a disturbing tale; one of children being taken by a ghostly figure, standing at the helm of an old wooden boat.
Purchase

Consistently ranked within the top 30 most read authors on Amazon.co.uk, David Blake is a full-time author living in North London. To date he has written eighteen books along with a collection of short stories. He’s currently working on his nineteenth, The Wherryman, which is the next in his series of crime fiction thrillers after Broadland, St. Benet’s, Moorings, Three Rivers and Horsey Mere. When
not writing, David likes to spend his time mucking about in boats, often in the Norfolk Broads, where his crime fiction books are based.

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My thoughts:

These were both excellent, slightly macabre, crime novels, set amongst the Norfolk Broads, drawing on folklore and history, strange figures among the reeds.

Horsey Mere concerns witchcraft and the fact that in the 17th Century more women were executed as witches in East Anglia than anywhere else in England. A suspected witch’s skeleton is found on the mere and it unleashes a spree of madness, with supposed modern witches targeted and attacked. It also comes with a body count; starting with the local MP. Local detectives race against time to stop more people dying, but for Tanner and Evans they might just run out of time.

The Wherryman takes place two years later, as the next in the series, so there’s some character changes at the police station. Someone is abducting children and then a man is found murdered and his daughter gone. Tanner starts to investigate and it all seems linked to some unpleasant London gangsters who’ve moved east.

Both clever and well written, with spots of genuinely amusing humour and also terrible darkness inside people, I’m going to be catching up on the previous titles in the series.

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