Category: books

A cold case from the Swinging Sixties.

A sassy senior sleuth.

If Cat Caliban’s not your favorite crime-solving grandma, you just haven’t met her yet.

Meet Cat Caliban: former housewife, widow, cat lady — and private eye in training. Who said fifty-something was too old to start again?

But if Cat’s not old, the case that lands on her desk sure is. Back in the summer of ’69, rebellious teen Leila Perle secretly boarded a bus to Woodstock, and never came home.
What really happened at the legendary music festival — if the missing girl even made it there at all?

Some say that if you can remember the Sixties, you weren’t there. But Cat’s certain someone from the hazy, drug-addled era of peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll remembers exactly what happened to the missing music-lover.
And they’ll do anything to keep their terrible secret buried.

ELEVEN HOURS TO MURDER — a whip-smart, witty mystery featuring Cincinnati’s sharpest-tongued sleuth, three cats, one retired Black cop friend with a very unruly beagle, and a case where justice is long overdue.

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D. B. Borton is the author of two mystery series—the Cat Caliban series and the Gilda Liberty series —as well as the standalone mystery novels Smoke and Bayou City Burning and the humorous science fiction novel Second Coming.

In graduate school, Borton converted a lifetime of passionate reading and late-night movie-watching into a doctorate in English. She is Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Borton currently lives with Zoe the cat in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she gardens, practices aikido, a martial art, and, of course, reads.

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My thoughts: This is easily one of my absolute favourite crime series out there. I love Cat and her band of merry housemates, especially juvenile delinquent Sidney (he’s a cat) and of course Foggy, the voice of reason and experience, that Cat often ignores!

This case takes them back in time to 1969, when Cat was busy raising her children, and the summer of love was underway.

A teenage musician with dreams of making it big, Leila Perle disappeared, supposedly on the way to Woodstock. But as they investigate, Cat becomes certain she never left town.

This might be the saddest case Cat and co have investigated yet, there’s no joyful reunion or humour in what they discover. But it’s all done with such grace, the narrative really buoys you along.

Cat and a few other regular characters are such colourful, genuine people, you can’t help but love them. And it’s Valentine’s Day so Kevin has decorated the building in a way that’s guaranteed to annoy Foggy. And there’s Leon, who must be the hardest-working person ever. He’s on his 600th job here and still has time to help Cat out. It’s just the best.  

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

Meet Sister Agnes. She’s not your typical nun. She loves killer shoes, sipping prosecco — and solving baffling mysteries . . .

Now an acclaimed BBC Radio Crime drama, starring Anne-Marie Duff.

Hackney convent — home to Agnes and her sisters — may be a house of God. But what’s buried beneath is anything but saintly.
After days of brutal storms and lashing rains, the convent’s crumbling cellar gives up a terrible secret. The skeleton of a woman.

Her identity is a puzzle the police can’t solve. Not without a helping hand from sleuthing Sister Agnes.
But her search for answers, deep in the convent’s chequered past, only leads to more questions.

Late one night, Agnes is woken by a gunshot — and the fear that history is about to repeat itself.
Someone under this roof knows more than they’re saying. And they’ll stop at nothing to keep their secrets.

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ALISON JOSEPH is a London-based crime writer and radio dramatist. She started her career in local radio, and then in television as a documentary director. Alison has written about twenty works for radio, including THE TRUE STORY and also dramatisations of Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels. She is the author of the series of novels featuring SISTER AGNES, a contemporary detective nun based in South London. She is also the author of
‘Dying to Know’, a crime novel about faith, evidence and particle physics featuring DI
Berenice Killick. Her new series of novellas features Agatha Christie as a detective. Alison was Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association 2012-2014.

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My thoughts: Sister Agnes has returned to the convent in Hackney from helping at the refugee camp in Calais, and is asked to assist in cataloguing the things in the basement.

However, there’s a bit of a problem with the basement – there’s a skeleton in it and the police say it’s not been there long enough to be history  – it’s probably a crime. So Sister Agnes is trying to help identify the person.

The police are also at a house across the road – one of the residents has died from a gunshot. It doesn’t quite look like suicide. So Sister Agnes is also interested in that.

I’ve read several of the books in this series and they’re really interesting, Sister Agnes is an intriguing protagonist, she often seems to find herself in the middle of events, and perhaps because of her slight ambivalence towards her calling always gets involved. She’s good with people and they often open up to her, much as happens here.

*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 body is found in the woods, more will soon be uncovered, and DS Felix will need to find the killer before another victim is claimed.

Private Investigator, Alison Greene, has been contacted to find a missing person, by the victim’s elderly father, but these two cases may be intertwined and working together will be the only way to solve this case.

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Nina Craig isthe author of the crime novel ‘Fight or Flight’. When she isn’t behind the keyboard, writing into the early hours of the morning while her young family is sleeping, she can be found escaping into
another book under the guise of it being ‘research’.
Nina studied Creative Writing at the University of Kingston in Surrey and was inspired to get straight into writing (After working on her poetry and writing several short stories, she was inspired to write
her first novel.)
Nina currently lives in Hampshire as a naval wife with two young children. In addition to her passion for literature, she is also a qualified yoga instructor and has been teaching classes for the last five years.
If you want to know what she’s reading now and to hear about her upcoming novel, connect with her on Instagram at @NLCraigwrites.

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My thoughts: When human remains are found in the woods by the stereotypical dog walker, the police struggle to get a match with any missing persons. Enter private investigator Alison Greene, she’s been hired to look into a missing young woman by her dying father.

She stumbles across missing persons cases online and is able to match the details with those of one of the bodies found in the woods. If the police are willing to work with her,  she might be able to match some more remains with names.

Unfortunately DS Felix isn’t doing so well, struggling with alcohol addiction, his boss has just about had enough of his loss of focus, but meeting Alison gets him back on track and questioning why they haven’t even got a single suspect for the multiple murders. Between the two of them, perhaps they can shake something loose.

But solving the case could come at a high personal cost, unless they work together.

An interesting read, showing that a more unorthodox approach sometimes yields results and introducing Alison Greene, an intelligent and dedicated investigator.

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