Category: blog tour

Four hikers enter the mountains. Only two return. But is it tragedy? Or treachery?

When sisters Cat and Ginny travel with their husbands to the idyllic Swiss Alps for a hiking holiday, it’s not just a chance to take in the stunning scenery. It’s an opportunity to reconnect with each other after years of drifting apart–and patch up marriages that are straining at the seams.

As they head into the mountains, morale is high, but as the terrain turns treacherous, cracks in the relationships start to show. With worrying signs that someone might be following them, the sun begins to set and exhaustion kicks in. Suddenly, lost high on a terrifying ridge, tensions spill over–with disastrous consequences.

When only two of the four hikers make it down from the mountain, the police press them for their story–but soon become suspicious when their accounts just don’t add up.

What really happened up on that ridge? Who are the survivors? And what secrets are they trying to hide?

Susi Holliday grew up near Edinburgh and worked in the pharmaceutical industry for many years before she started writing. A lifelong fan of crime and horror, her short stories have been published in various places, and she was shortlisted for the inaugural CWA Margery Allingham Prize. She is the acclaimed author of nine novels and a novella. The film adaptation of her Trans-Siberian-set psychological thriller Violet is currently in development.As well as working, reading, writing, walking and drinking tea, Susi provides mentoring for new crime writers via http://www.crimefictioncoach.com.You can find out more at her website, http://www.susiholliday.com, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/SJIHolliday, on Twitter @SJIHolliday, and on Instagram @susijholliday

My thoughts: families are very complicated – and Cat and Ginny are very complicated. On a hiking trip with their husbands, secrets forcing wedges between both sets of spouses and the sisters. These secrets are boiling up and over as the four get lost hiking in the Swiss Alps.

Cat has a plan, but it goes sideways on the mountainside and now she has to convince the police that she’s the only one telling the truth, not the man she stumbled off the mountain with.

I love Susi’s books, they’re always smart and compelling reads, and this is no different. Cat is a mess and her plan isn’t very smart – there are better ways to deal with your sister (mine is still alive, promise).

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

AMY ROWLINGS RETURNS!

Sunday morning, and the body of Reverend Villiers has been found propped up on the vigil seat in the church’s lychgate. It appears that he has been poisoned.

When amateur sleuth and regular churchgoer, Amy Rowlings arrives she finds DI Bodkin already at the scene. Bodkin tells her about a cryptic scripture reference that has been scrawled in chalk on the stone slabs beneath the body. What the citation hints at, shocks everyone.

Amy, a huge Agatha Christie fan is determined to get involved in the investigation and despite a stern warning from the detective’s boss, Amy and Bodkin team up again to try to solve the most complex murder case he has ever been involved in. When the toxicology report comes back from the lab, the results only add to the mystery.

Meanwhile, Amy looks to her favourite Agatha Christie character, Hercule Poirot for help, and using his techniques, she narrows down the list of possible murderers to just nine suspects.

Can Amy fit together the jigsaw of clues to solve this, the most complex of cases?

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T A Belshaw is from Derbyshire in the United Kingdom where he shares a house with his chatty rescue cat, Mia. He writes for both children and adults. A former miner and computer technician, Trevor studied Advanced Creative Writing at the Open University. He is the author of Tracy’s Hot Mail, Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail and the noir, suspense novella, Out of Control. Following the sudden death of his wife in 2015 Trevor took a five-year break from writing, returning during lockdown in 2020, when an injury forced him to take time off work. The result of this new creative burst was the Dual Timeline, Family Saga, Unspoken and the Historical Cosy Crime Whodunnit, Murder at the Mill.

Trevor signed his first contract with Spellbound Books Ltd in April 2021. He signed a further mullti-book contract with them in the spring of 2022.

His short stories have been published in various anthologies including 100 Stories for Haiti, 50 Stories for Pakistan, Another Haircut, Shambelurkling and Other Stories, Deck the Halls, 100 Stories for Queensland and The Cafe Lit anthology 2011, 2012 and 2013. He also has two pieces in Shambelurklers Return.

Trevor is also the author of 15 children’s adventure books written under the name of Trevor Forest. 

His children’s poem, Clicking Gran, was long listed for the Plough prize (children’s section) in 2009 and his short poem, My Mistake, was rated Highly Commended and published in an anthology of the best entries in the Farringdon Poetry Competition.

Trevor’s articles have been published in magazines as diverse as Ireland’s Own, The Best of British and First Edition. 

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My thoughts: this was a really enjoyable crime story about a vicar, who nobody seems to really know, left poisoned and a suspicious Bible verse chalked onto the wall behind him in the lychgate of his church on a Sunday morning.

Local detective Bodkin and newly minted PI Amy Rowlings set out to find the truth about the Rev Villiers and who could possibly have wanted to kill him.

Amy is a clever, determined sleuth, she’s the one that cracks the case, even though Bodkin gets the credit with the police. They work well together and always find time to hit the cinema or the pub with friends. In fact that’s where they pick up a few clues.

Set in a time when women had far fewer options than we do now, Amy isn’t keen on being a housewife and giving in to society’s expectations, instead she’s forging her own path and putting things to right at the same time.

*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 killer is closing in… can she find him before he finds her?
When Detective Nikki Parekh receives a set of threatening postcards, she knows it can only mean one thing… The man who escaped arrest after murdering her mother two years ago is back.
Each postcard has a similar message: You’re next Parekh.
As the post marks on the cards gradually get closer to Bradford, Nikki must do everything she can to protect her family and catch the killer before it’s too late.
But when human remains are found in a remote barn on the icy Yorkshire moors, Nikki’s attention is pulled away from her family. When a tattoo on the victim’s arm – the only means of identification –
leads nowhere, the team have already met a dead end.

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Born in Scotland, Made in Bradford sums up Liz Mistry’s life. Over thirty years ago she moved from a small village in West Lothian to Yorkshire to get her teaching degree. Once here, Liz fell in love with
three things; curries, the rich cultural diversity of the city … and her Indian husband (not necessarily in this order). Now thirty years, three children, two cats and a huge extended family later, Liz uses
her experiences of living and working in the inner city to flavour her writing. Her gritty crime fiction police procedural novels set in Bradford embrace the city she describes as ‘Warm, Rich and Fearless’
whilst exploring the darkness that lurks beneath.
Struggling with severe clinical depression and anxiety for a large number of years, Liz often includes mental health themes in her writing. She credits the MA in Creative Writing she took at Leeds Trinity
University with helping her find a way of using her writing to navigate her ongoing mental health struggles. Being a debut novelist in her fifties was something Liz had only dreamed of and she counts
herself lucky, whilst pinching herself regularly to make sure it’s all real. One of the nicest things about being a published author is chatting with and responding to readers’ feedback and Liz regularly does events at local libraries, universities, literature festivals and open mics. She also
teaches creative writing too. Liz has completed a PhD in Creative Writing on Diverse voices in crime fiction.
In her spare time, Liz loves pub quizzes (although she admits to being rubbish at them), dancing (she does a mean jig to Proud Mary – her opinion, not ratified by her family), visiting the varied Yorkshire
landscape, with Robin Hoods Bay being one of her favourite coastal destinations, listening to music, reading and blogging about all things crime fiction on her blog, The Crime Warp.

Twitter: @LizMistryAuthor / Facebook: @LizMistryBooks / Website: lizmistry.com

My thoughts: Nikki Parakh is back, and not a moment too soon. Her evil biological father is closer than ever, breathing down her neck, but she’s not allowed to pursue him. Instead she’s hunting the owner of an arm found in an abandoned barn, probably connected to illegal dog fights.

As the team try to find the arm’s body, and join the wider operation into the dog fighting ring, Nikki takes her eye off the ball at home, with potentially deadly consequences.

As gripping, clever and twisting as always, both cases are shocking and brutal, but it’s nice to finally be getting somewhere with the over arcing plot regarding Nikki’s terrible monster father. He needs to pay for the awful things he’s done.

Hopefully there won’t be too many repercussions for Nikki – emotionally or at work, she’s dedicated but distracted and that could go badly. Only book 6 will tell!

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