Category: blog tour

Meet Gwinny, an unlikely bloodhound, and her four-legged friends determined to dig up the truth. Bestselling author Antony Johnston launches a brand-new contemporary cosy crime series, ‘The Dog Sitter Detective’, following former actress Guinevere ‘Gwinny’ Tuffel who stumbles upon murder cases and embarks on a burgeoning romance, often accompanied by her canine companions. Each book follows a different breed of dog influenced by the author’s lifelong love for dogs and support of rescue charities.

Retired actress Guinevere ‘Gwinny’ Tuffel is finding life hard after inheriting her late father’s run-down house and discovering she’s broke. So she is delighted to be at Hayburn Stead in Hertfordshire for her best friend Tina’s upmarket wedding to a handsome Italian business magnate. But when the big day ends with a dead body and not a happily-ever-after, Gwinny is left with a situation as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

When her friend is accused of murder, Gwinny takes it upon herself to sniff out the true culprit. With a collection of larger-than-life suspects and two pedigree Salukis in tow, she is set to have a ruff time of it.

Antony Johnston is a New York Times bestselling writer. The Charlize Theron movie Atomic Blonde is based on his graphic novel; his critically acclaimed Brigitte Sharp thrillers are in development for TV; and Dead Space, his first videogame, redefined its genre. He recently returned to survival horror to write Resident Evil Village, the Game of the Year-winning eighth instalment in the blockbuster franchise.

His productivity guide The Organised Writer has helped authors all over the world take control of their workload, and he interviews fellow writers on his podcast Writing and Breathing.

Antony’s work includes The Exphoria Code, The Dog Sitter Detective, The Patrios Network, Daredevil, Shang-Chi, Shadow of Mordor, the Alex Rider graphic novels, and more. He wrote and directed the film Crossover Point, made entirely in quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic.

Antony is a former vice chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, a member of the International Thriller Writers group, a Shore Scripts screenwriting judge, and sits on the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain’s videogames committee. He lives and works in England.

My thoughts: I hope this is the start of a series with Gwinny, new pal ex-DCI Birch, and various canines investigating crimes. I think it would be tremendously enjoyable and fun. Gwinny is an out of work actress, I believe it’s called “resting”, invited to an old friend’s fifth wedding. Where there’s a terrible murder.

Gwinny gets saddled with two Salukis (fancy breed of dog) and starts to investigate the crime – her friend is the police’s chief suspect. The police seem a little fixated on Tina, but Gwinny knows her pal couldn’t have done it. And she’s determined to prove it.

With the help of a retired police detective she meets walking his dog, she sets out to interview the witnesses, accuse a few suspects and gather clues, before, in the grand tradition of crime fiction, gathering them all in the library to reveal whodunnit. Marvellous.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and Gwinny is a fantastic protagonist. Even as she’s trying to restart her acting career and do up the mouldering family home she’s inherited, she’s not going to let the police ignore her, and she’s going to find the killer. Fabulous stuff from a very accomplished author.

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

An ordinary journey. A shocking secret. And the perfect murder…

Breathlessly, I rush into carriage 3 just as the train doors slam behind me. It’s the same train I get home every night – the 18.53 – and I always sit in the same seat, with the same people. Each journey is fairly uneventful. Except this one…

A passenger drops dead and shockwaves ripple through the train. The lights go out and we’re left waiting in darkness, trapped until further notice. Is it an accident, or something more sinister?

The unwritten rule is you don’t talk to your fellow commuters, but the group of people huddled around me all seem like nice, normal people. I just hope they don’t notice my dishevelled hair or smell the alcohol on my breath. Because my life is far from perfect and there are things I’ve done I’m not proud of.

But as we all get to know each other, I wonder if I can really trust them? Or are they all hiding dangerous secrets…

Was someone in carriage 3 involved in the passenger’s death? And if so, how far will they go to stop the rest of us finding the truth?

An absolutely addictive psychological thriller that will keep you up late into the night. If you love Behind Closed Doors, Gone Girl and The Perfect Couple, you’ll be gripped.

Amazon

Alison James was born in the Cotswolds but spent most of her formative years abroad. She studied languages at Oxford, then became a journalist and author, returning to university after her two children to take a law degree. After a three-year stint as a criminal paralegal, she worked as a commercial copywriter and then a TV storyliner, before coming full circle to write fiction again.

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My thoughts: this is why you should never make eye contact, let alone talk to strangers on a train. Just don’t do it. Otherwise there’s murders, disappearances and international art theft in your future. They should hand a copy of this to every new commuter, and not just because it’s a bloody good read.

I was totally hooked by the 18.57 Crew, as they name themselves. Gregarious barrister and secret vaper on the train Julian, scatterbrained Hattie who could do with a few more sober nights, charming Casper, mysterious Lewis, mousy Bridget and stressed out Carmen.

At first it seems like a locked room murder on a train might be in store, but as the story unfolds and Hattie and Casper get closer, Julian starts to look into something and a much bigger, more elaborate scheme has got this unlikely group in its sights.

So much fun, as the crazy plan takes off involving an incredibly expensive artwork, a suitable “Patsy”, two brazen thieves and the involvement of the police as the group travel back and forth to work, Hattie tries to get her life together and people turn out not to be who they seem. Loved it.

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

Death at the Three Sisters
Three feuding sisters. A faded spa. And a woman, dead in the water…
As they head towards retirement, Suzanne, Hazel and Tessa Walsh are locked in bitter disagreement about the future of the lakeside beauty spa they jointly own. Should they keep The Three Sisters
going as their parents wished, or should they sell to a neighbouring hotelier who seems determined to acquire the failing business, even at a preposterously high cost?
When their employee, Sophie Hayes, is found drowned close to the spa one cold January morning it rapidly becomes clear that it’s no accident: Sophie has been murdered. But who could possibly want
to kill her — or was she mistaken for someone else? As DCI Jude Satterthwaite seeks the answers he and his team dig ever deeper into the complicated and embittered relationships between the sisters and their neighbours.
As the investigation proceeds Jude becomes convinced that Sophie’s murder may only be the beginning. It’s not long before a shocking and tragic turn of events proves him correct and he and his
team find themselves in a race to prevent a further, final tragedy overtaking the Three Sisters. Can he uncover what deadly secrets the sisters are prepared to die — or kill — for, or will he be too late?
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Jo Allen was born in Wolverhampton and is a graduate of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and the Open University, with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in geography and Earth science. She’s been
writing for pleasure and publication for as long as she can remember. After a career in economic consultancy she took up writing and was first published under the name Jennifer Young, in genres of
short stories, romance and romantic suspense. She wrote online articles on travel and on her favourite academic subject, Earth science. In 2017 she took the plunge and began writing the genre she most likes to read — crime.
Jo lives in the English Lakes, where the DCI Satterthwaite series is set. In common with all her favourite characters, she loves football (she’s a season ticket holder with her beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers) and cats.

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My thoughts: I really enjoy this series and in this installment Jude’s colleague Ashleigh comes to the fore a bit more as Jude is trying to remember he’s a DCI and shouldn’t be the one interviewing suspects – as his frosty boss keeps reminding him. I liked getting to see more of the team doing the heavy lifting of the investigation, especially the women.

This book and the case is all about family. Siblings especially, and controlling parents. The three sisters who run the eponymous spa, overlooking one of the Lakes, have a very complicated, messy relationship. Their parents built the business and left it and the family home divided equally between their three daughters.

And now, they’ve had enough. Or at least two of them have. Eldest, Susanna, wants everything to stay the same, she’s very like their late mother and controlling with it. But Hazel and Tessa want to see more of life, and are pushing back.

When their only employee, Sophie, is found in the lake, attention turns to the messy Walsh family. And an unexpected blast from the past complicates things. Do the answers lie in the sisters’ difficult dynamic? Jude and Ashleigh certainly think so.

Another excellent read from Jo Allen, I was kept guessing, and there were plenty of twists to have you gasping out loud. 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

The Sequel to Desmond Bagley’s DOMINO ISLAND

Insurance investigator Bill Kemp had never wanted to trek deep into Australia’s remote interior. But when his clients Sophie and Adam Church inherit an abandoned opal mine, triggering some explosive long-lost secrets, they – and Kemp – find themselves facing an unknown enemy even more deadly than the vast, forbidding wilderness of the Outback…

The Desmond Bagley centenary novel honours the legacy of the bestselling thriller writer with a new adventure featuring Bill Kemp, described by Jeffrey Deaver as ‘part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe, and all hero’. Writer Michael Davies, who completed the first Kemp novel Domino Island for publication nearly 40 years after the author’s death, now weaves an original tale of danger and death under the blistering Australian sun.

Michael Davies began his career as a newspaper journalist and editor and a professional theatre critic. Since moving into fiction, his writing has appeared on stage, screen, radio, the printed page and online. His debut play won a national competition, and subsequent work includes Tess – The Musical, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles. He is a lifelong Desmond Bagley fan, and in 2019 reworked one of Bagley’s abandoned drafts into the highly acclaimed novel Domino Island.

Desmond Bagley was a multi-million-copy selling author of 16 adventure thrillers. Moving to South Africa after WW2, his transition from unskilled printer’s apprentice, aircraft engineer, mine worker, photographer and author.

My thoughts: this was really good, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Bill Kemp was a fantastic protagonist, brave, a little foolhardy, clever and persistent. Even when the odds seem stacked against him – the Australian landscape, the weather, a plane with a gunman in it, slashed tyres, he never lets up trying to get to the bottom of this knotty inheritance.

Helping out an old friend by looking into the life of an old man who lived in the middle of nowhere, nearest town Coober Pedy (the note on how the name is the mispronunciation of the Aboriginal name did make me chuckle – typical white people) who never went anywhere and whose opal mine was worthless, but apparently worth killing over.

His niece Sophie (lovely) and her new husband (very annoying) have come over from the UK to see her inheritance. But as things start to happen, from threatening notes to an awful hit and run, Sophie doesn’t turn tail, she digs in. The results are explosive. Turns out someone really doesn’t want her to inherit.

The writing hooked me straight in, from the Sydney harbour to the unforgiving Outback itself, the geography of Australia is mind-boggling. The place is huge. But why is someone so obsessed with a chunk of desert? There was a lot of action, and several suspicious people around but the final twist – did not see that. You won’t either.

I know this was to carry on the legacy of Bill Kemp’s original creator, Desmond Bagley, but I think Michael Davies has a great character here who could go places and I hope there’s more to come.

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

‘Your tattoo… it’s exactly like mine.’ She hesitates. ‘But – I’ve never noticed it before. I must have had it since I was little.’ The ink markings on both of them are delicate, barely visible. Interlinked triangles in the shape of a daisy. But how can two strangers have matching tattoos, they didn’t know they had?

With their parents gone and nobody left to ask, when Georgia and Oliver first come to amateur sleuth Millie Westlake for help with their daisy-shaped markings she thinks the tattoos are a joke. A funny, if unusual, link between two strangers. In the seaside town of Whitecliff, stranger things have happened – especially to Millie herself.

But then Millie finds an artist who remembers giving someone the same tattoo twenty years ago. Someone who spent years hiding in the isolated woods outside Whitecliff – the same place unidentified bodies were once found…

Even as Millie gets closer to answers, she witnesses a shocking robbery that changes everything. And as whispers of what happened in the woods decades ago become louder, how much danger will Millie, Georgia and Oliver put themselves in, to uncover the mystery of the daisy-shaped markings and the dark truth about their pasts?

This gripping and character-driven mystery read is perfect for fans of Faith Martin, Ann Cleeves and LJ Ross.

Amazon

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Kerry Wilkinson is from the English county of Somerset but has spent far too long living in the north. It’s there that he’s picked up possibly made-up regional words like ‘barm’ and ‘ginnel’. He pretends to know what they mean.

He’s also been busy since turning thirty: his Jessica Daniel crime series has sold more than a million copies in the UK; he has written a fantasy-adventure trilogy for young adults; a second crime series featuring private investigator Andrew Hunter and the standalone thriller, Down Among The Dead Men.

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My thoughts: another weird case for Millie and Guy in Whitecliff Bay, a town i am very glad is fictional. This time it’s a strange tattoo on the back of two complete strangers’ ears that leads to a cult that used to exist in the woods outside town. The cult ended in fire and death but a few ex-members exist and someone must have some answers.

Meanwhile Millie’s personal life is still a mess – she wants custody of her son and is willing to exploit her ex-husband’s secrets to get it, and she needs to confront a friend about the email that outed her affair. Her friends Jack and Rishi are on the outs and even Guy’s acting a bit strangely. His late wife’s obnoxious nephew Craig is hanging about and after cash.

Then there’s the shop robbery Millie witnessed, the police think they have their man, but Millie’s not convinced – and neither is the man’s girlfriend. So of course Millie’s going to investigate.

With all of this going on, life’s never quiet, and Millie doesn’t have much appetite despite all the food she seems to be around, I wish people would randomly bring me a bakery’s worth of treats. Though I don’t get Luke’s toast thing still. And we still need answers about Millie’s parents. Roll on the next weird and brilliant Whitecliff Bay 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.