Author: ramblingmads

Liz has been watching the neighbors. One of them has noticed.

Liz McAdams knows a lot about her neighbors. Recently divorced, with time on her hands, she amuses herself by observing them as she walks her dog past their houses. And no life looks more wonderful than Sabrina Thompson’s.

Beautiful, wealthy, married to a gorgeous husband, Sabrina seems to have it all. But one day Liz sees something through Sabrina’s bedroom window – something that could blow her seemingly perfect marriage apart. Liz is shocked and intrigued. She herself has always played by the rules and now she can’t help envying Sabrina’s reckless abandon as she risks everything for her own pleasure.

Fascinated, she starts to watch Sabrina’s every move. And soon realizes that her glamorous neighbor has some very dark secrets. Then there is a chilling murder on this affluent street, and Liz wonders if Sabrina could be involved.

Even more disturbing, Sabrina seems to have noticed that Liz has been shadowing her. Leaving Liz with two terrifying questions – Is Sabrina a killer? And what might she do to the woman who knows too much?

Goodreads Purchase

Lauren Dykovitz writes psychological thrillers and suspense novels. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, Steve, and her black lab, Lucy. Lauren is a former police officer with a Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and sociology, as well as a minor in legal studies. She has an unhealthy obsession with true crime and murder that makes her husband sleep with one eye open. Lauren has also self-published two memoirs about her mom’s battle with Early Onset Alzheimer’s.

Instagram Facebook

My thoughts: Liz has taken a sabbatical from her job as a divorce lawyer, hoping to spend her time writing a book but she’s having writer’s block. Lonely, she spends her time walking her dog, and watching her neighbours.

She’s fascinated especially by Sabrina and her husband Greg. Sabrina is beautiful, with a lovely house, great wardrobe and an apparently loving husband. Liz becomes a bit too obsessed with Sabrina.

When Sabrina’s husband is murdered, Liz starts her own investigation, which catches Sabrina’s attention. She’s fed up with her nosey neighbour, especially when she’s questioned by the police. She was at a spa weekend her husband sent her on when he died, but Liz is convinced the beautiful young widow was involved.

Can Sabrina, with her collection of lovers, truly be innocent? And what will Liz find out if she keeps spying on her neighbour? Well, read it and find out!

With a rather brilliant twist at the end, this is a smart and entertaining whodunnit.

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

Something old, something new, something borrowed… someone dead?!

When Sadie Sutton swapped four walls for the four wheels of her trusty orange VW campervan, she didn’t realise that it would come with a new career as a super sleuth! But when a wedding at local beauty spot Winching Priory Hotel is halted because the father of the groom has been found fatally poisoned, Sadie drops everything to take on her next case!

As the wedding grinds to a halt, Sadie soon learns that the victim, gifted local artist Benedict Lawrence, also had a talent for making enemies, from the snooty hotel owners to his long-suffering ex-wife. With an ever-growing list of possible suspects, Sadie is stumped. Until she finds a crumpled, threatening note sent to Benedict hours before he died.

The note leads Sadie deep into Benedict’s past, to a secret love affair, a bitter feud and a long-buried grudge. And when she finds a faded newspaper article about him and his artist friends in their youth, she’s stunned at who else she recognises in the photo…

With secrets and lies at every turn, Sadie knows no guests are safe. Can she crack the case before the nearly wed become newly dead?

This warm, witty and utterly addictive cosy crime novel from bestselling author Maeve Haran is perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, The Thursday Murder Club and Robert Thorogood.

Amazon

Maeve Haran is an Oxford law graduate who had a successful career in television before writing her worldwide bestseller Having It All , which was translated into twenty-six languages. She has written twenty contemporary novels, two historical novels, and a work of non-fiction in praise of life’s small pleasures. She has three grown up children and four grandchildren. She lives mainly in North London but escapes when she can to a much-loved cottage in the beautiful Cuckmere Valley near the sea in East Sussex. Her hobby is ignoring age and having a good time!

Mailing List Website

My thoughts: The campervan detective is back! Asked by an old friend to help out because there’s something not quite right about her daughter’s wedding, Sadie isn’t expecting the groom’s father to be murdered.

And with both his current and ex wives present, as well as a few other people with old scores to settle, there seems to be plenty of suspects around. But who could have smuggled poison into the victim? Especially one that’s quite unpleasant taste-wise.

As Sadie investigates with the help of the Vintage Vanettes and her old teacher, there seems to be more than just murder going on at this country hotel!

Another fun and slightly dangerous adventure for our sleuth and her canine sidekick.

*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 notorious investigation into Los Angeles’s darkest criminal network thrusts private investigator Trevor Finnegan into the national spotlight, the fallout is immediate—and lethal.

Haunted by his past as a cop and driven by an obsession with justice for the dead, Finnegan has spent years hunting the powerful men who profited from torture and murder on the dark web.

But when a billionaire suspect dies in federal custody and the agents involved turn up dead under suspicious circumstances, Finnegan finds himself facing a far more insidious enemy. One that doesn’t just silence people but drives them to the edge.

As Finnegan digs deeper, his search leads him into the orbit of a brilliant, charismatic tech mogul promising a cleaner, safer future through artificial intelligence. And the line between progress and cruelty blurs beyond recognition.

With his pregnant wife at risk, his agency on the brink of collapse, and his own moral compass under siege, Finnegan must decide how far he’s willing to go—and what he’s willing to lose—to stop a force that claims it can conquer death itself.

Goodreads Purchase

Aaron Philip Clark is the author of the International Thriller Writers Award-nominated Detective Trevor Finnegan series. He has co-written and collaborated on works of fiction with rap artist and entertainment mogul Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Civil Rights Attorney and activist Benjamin L. Crump, and various public figures and luminaries.

He has two forthcoming novels: BLUES FOR THE DEAD (Severn House/Joffe Books), which features Det. Trevor Finnegan, an ex-LAPD detective turned PI, investigating a powerful tech CEO with a dark past and nefarious plans for the future, and ALL THE SMOKE (Amistad/HarperCollins), a psychological thriller inspired by The Talented Mr. Ripley, set in the world of hip-hop and scheduled for publication in Feb. 2027.

In addition to writing, Aaron is a professor at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in Hollywood, CA, and hosts the podcast, The Culture Point, on the Authors on the Air Global Radio network.

Instagram Threads Facebook X Website

My thoughts: PI Trevor Finnegan is helping the FBI look into a group of truly nasty predators, but when the agents he’s been working with turn up dead, it looks like it might all fall apart. But when the tech billionaire son of a dead suspect hires him, he finds a whole new layer of evil.

His wife’s pregnant and on bed rest, his ex is a mess which puts their young daughter in danger, and his team are not happy with his methods.

As he digs into his new client and tries to find out what really happened to the FBI agents, he puts everything he holds dear at risk.

A smart, gripping dark thriller that exposes the risks of progress when it does harm and the way powerful people manipulate the situation.

*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 Boy is a powerful novel of wasted talent, loss, greed and revenge – but also of discovered genius and life-affirming friendship.

By turns terrifying, taut, humane and tender it tells the origin story of Ireland’s organised-crime epidemic with a skill and grace which belies a debut novel, and is the calling-card of a ringing new voice in Irish fiction.

When the Guards knock on the door The Boy already knows his mother is dead. His father flees to the pub, leaving him to wait alone. Soon his brother Fallon, half-protector and half-outlaw, draws him into a world where grief and crime are rarely separated. At the same time, a wealthy landowner harbours grotesque secrets in the countryside – a hidden “family” of abducted boys, a nightmare lurking beneath respectability.

As The Boy moves through these fractured worlds – his father’s guilt, his uncle’s paramilitary past, his brother’s violent death – he becomes both witness and inheritor of a brutal legacy.

Think of a space where the layered complexity of Tana French meets the whipsmart dialogue and brutal beauty of Colin Barrett and the sharp tenderness and humour of Graeme Armstrong’s The Young Team – and you’re somewhere near where this novel will take you.

The Boy is a dark, lyrical crime debut. It is unflinching, propulsive, and unforgettable.

Mark Gyves is an Irish crime fiction writer. He has lived and worked in the UK and Ireland and now resides in his hometown on the outskirts of Cork.

My thoughts: I actually thought this was a black comedy, as The Boy becomes mired in death and crime in order to buy video games, pizza and trainers. He takes over his brother’s drug business with his strange friend, gets caught up with some complete nutcases and goes all out for revenge.

The world he finds himself in is full of gangsters and drug dealers, people who don’t want to know what’s going on, but also kind neighbours and loving grandmothers. His dad’s a deadbeat, but was once a genius, until he used that brilliance to improve ways of blowing people up and turned to drink, The Boy makes sure his bar tab has been paid.

It’s a weird, dark place, the underbelly of Cork and full of very odd people with nasty habits like killing people or keeping them in dungeons under their ancestral home. The Boy is smart but perhaps a bit too young and naive for the life he finds himself in.

An interesting and quite enjoyable read.

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