Category: reviews

Detective Mike Nash thought that moving back to Yorkshire from London would give him a quieter life. Little did he know . . .

The burglar has a rule: before he leaves, he empties the freezer. Tonight, in the utility room of the Old Manor House, he lifts the lid — and finds a young woman wrapped in a travel rug. Shot dead. Twenty-four hours later, he picks up a burner phone and calls the police.

Detective Mike Nash is already investigating a man found shot through the chest in a hire car, at the end of a quiet country lane that goes nowhere. No wallet. No phone. No match on any database. Now a nameless woman lies on a mortuary slab . . . waiting to thaw.

Nash can’t name either victim. He can’t say if it’s the same killer. All he knows is that bad luck comes in threes.

The gang they call The Snatchers have their orders. And this time their target is on Nash’s patch . . .

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Bill Kitson was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire. His father, a wool merchant, was a fan of crime books giving Bill access to his diverse thriller collection from a young age.

Educated at Ashville College, Bill worked in the family business before spending over thirty years as a bank executive. A keen cricketer and sportsman, the highlight of his career came when he umpired a one-day international at Lords.

He and his wife now live in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, where he writes crime, romance, and general fiction.

Bill’s interests include Cricket, Crime, Crete, Cookery, Cryptic crosswords – and also Alliteration.

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My thoughts: This is such a good series, the characters are well written, the crimes are often shocking but also realistic and the cops always get their man or woman. I enjoyed seeing Mike’s teenage son Daniel take on more of a role in this story – he’s shaping up to get his own series I reckon.

The various cases the team get this time eventually weave into one and allow them to identify the victims and tighten the net around the suspect. There are bodies abandoned in cars, on rural estates and wrapped up in a rug in a freezer, a missing child and a burglar with the taste for fine dining.

It’s all very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Excellent crime fiction.

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

Bologna, Italy’s happiest city – or is it?

A grieving father asks Dan to uncover the truth behind the death of his gifted son, a student at Bologna’s prestigious Art Institute. Accompanied by his loyal Labrador, Oscar, Dan heads north from
Florence to investigate.

Still life or still death?

The student’s former girlfriend is consumed by grief and the Art Institute is mourning one of its brightest talents. But beneath the surface, Dan senses that someone is hiding the truth.

(Artistic) license to kill?

Doing a favour for his friend, Commissario Virgilio Pisano of the Florence murder squad, Dan soon finds himself caught up in the shady world of drug dealing, organised crime and fraud on a grand scale.

A paintbrush with death

When the killer strikes again, Dan faces one of his toughest cases yet. With Officer Oscar’s nose for trouble, he must catch the murderer before it’s too late.

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I’m a man. And a pretty old man as well. I studied languages at Nottingham University a long time ago and then lived and worked in France and Switzerland before going to work in Italy for seven years.

My Italian wife and I then came back to the UK with our little daughter (now long-since grown up) where I ran a big English language school for many years.

We now live in a sleepy little village in Devonshire. I’ve been writing almost all my life but it was only 13 years ago that I finally managed to find a publisher who liked my work enough to offer me my first contract.

I started off writing romances but after 28 of them, I knew I wanted to try something different, and so the first of the Armstrong and Oscar cozy mysteries, Murder in Tuscany, was born three years ago.

I’ve been having a lot of fun ever since getting to know the dynamic duo (and introducing them to people all over the world). These books are cosy crime [a genre I didn’t even know existed when I
started writing them). They are murder mysteries, but not gory, over-violent stuff, but stories designed to exercise the brain of the reader and to put a smile on their face.

Maybe it’s because there are so many horrible things happening in the world today that I feel I need to do my best to
provide something to cheer my readers up. My books provide escapism to some gorgeous locations all over my beloved Italy.

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My thoughts: By now, regular blog readers will know that I love this series, and this book is no exception. I’m happy to say Officer Oscar and his canine nose come through again in solving the murder of an art student and the attempted murder of his girlfriend at Bologna’s university, one of the oldest in Europe.

When Dan is asked to look into the supposed suicide of a young man, Luca, by his grieving father, he finds plenty of evidence that it wasn’t so straightforward as the original police report states. For a start, Luca was left-handed but found with a pen in his right (nice to see some lefty representation, shame he’s the victim). 

But it’s when Bianca, his girlfriend, remembers that he was concerned that something not quite right was going on at the art college that Dan begins to dig deeper. He also helps the Italian police get an international drug dealer in the process.

He and Oscar are compared to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson by several of the characters, but I think they’ve got it the wrong way round – Oscar is Holmes, Dan his faithful John Watson, documenting their cases, in this case because Oscar is a dog, and an excellent detective.

Another highly enjoyable read, although I am now very hungry for some proper Italian food, Dan and Oscar manage to pack in plenty of stops for delicious meals!

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

Meet Detective Sophie Allen. She’s an expert on murder and violent crime. Her brilliant mind works tirelessly to put the most vicious criminals behind bars, but conceals dark secrets from her own past.

‘Hello? Is that the police? I think I’m being stalked . . .’

Two weeks later, Linzi Brightman’s body is pulled from Christchurch Harbour. Killed by a vicious blow to the head — and left to drown. At first glance, Linzi’s life is spotless. A respected university lecturer. Popular. Outgoing. Uncomplicated.

But Sophie Allen knows better. Because someone was watching Linzi in the weeks before she died.

Witnesses remember a heated argument in a local Italian restaurant, between Linzi and a man no one can identity. No name. No trace. Just anger . . . and something darker beneath it.

Then another body surfaces. A young woman pulled from the River Avon, just a few miles away. Dead for months.

Two victims. One pattern. This wasn’t random. Someone is choosing his targets. Studying them. Waiting. And he’s not finished yet.

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I try to write thoughtful, contemporary crime novels and include several plot layers in my books. The adult novels feature DCI Sophie Allen and her close-knit team of detectives. I don’t write simple whodunnits, nor violent, all-action, gun-toting thrillers.

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My thoughts: This book handled a complicated subject very well, the rise of violent misogyny online and how it has spilt into the real world is not an easy one to tackle in a novel but Michael Hambling has done so with grace and without making the reader too distressed. As a woman the last thing I want is for the genuinely awful things in the world to spill into my private life via reading and although the victims are female (as they often are both on the page and in the world), there are plenty of female characters here on the side of good to balance it.

Sophie and her colleagues, especially Rae, are impacted by the murders but their response is to work hard to find the killer and those behind them, and then work out how to respond to the rise of misogynistic hate crimes as a police force and how to protect female officers (both trans and cis) from the effects of this.

It’s a really important thing and I hope mirrors what’s happening in our police forces, especially considering the things we have learnt about those who are meant to protect us in the last few years. It would be shameful if only fictional officers gave a damn.

I always enjoy this series, it tackles big themes with gentle hands, and the characters are well written and get along well, their private lives never stopping them from getting justice for the victims.

*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 evidence is overwhelming. The suspect is terrified. And Nils Shapiro is about to discover that nothing about this murder is what it seems.

Lukas Day is found dead in his Minneapolis condo, stabbed with a ten-inch knife. Two jabs in the stomach. One slice across the throat. Lukas worked for wealthy businessman Jonathan Willett — and Jonathan’s wife was the last person known to see him alive.

Paige’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon, security cameras place her at the scene, and she admits being there that night. The police have already made up their minds. Paige is guilty.

Jonathan hires private investigator Nils Shapiro to clear his wife’s name. So far, so routine. But Nils quickly realizes that he’s being tracked. Someone wants him off the case. And a mysterious man offers him $50,000 to walk away. Nils says no.

Because Nils knows that when someone offers you fifty grand not to ask questions, you probably haven’t asked the right one yet.Now Nils must find the real killer before Paige goes to prison. And before whoever framed her decides to silence him too.

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MATT GOLDMAN is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, a playwright, and an Emmy Award-winning television writer for Seinfeld, Ellen, and other shows. Goldman has been nominated for the Shamus and Nero Awards and was a Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List selection. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, pets, and whichever children happen to be around.

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My thoughts: This was a really good thriller with an excellent twist at the end. PI Nils Shapiro has a good relationship with the local cops, his late wife was one, and that helps him get answers about the evidence in this case, even though they think the suspect is pretty clear – it was the woman who had been sleeping with the victim – Paige Willett. She and her husband had a famously open marriage, so why would she kill her lover? 

Nils discovers an actually rather brilliant conspiracy or two, that distract him from doing what his wealthy and controlling client wants – prove Paige is innocent. So Nils does just that – and finds the real killer.

Really enjoyable and I liked Nils and his colleagues a lot, they’re funny, smart people, who work well together and alone, whether solving crimes and doing the bread and butter work of PIs – catching cheating spouses. It’s a series I’ll definitely come back to.

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

Lady Beatrice should be finalising her wedding vows — not investigating murder.

With just weeks to go before she marries Richard Fitzwilliam, Bea is helping put the finishing touches to Three Lakes, a rehabilitation centre for veterans, when a senior staff member dies in a late-night
lift malfunction.

At first, it looks like a tragic accident. Until the toxicology results suggest otherwise.
With the centre’s opening looming and scandal threatening to overshadow both Three Lakes and her wedding, Bea can’t help getting involved.

While Rich helps with the official investigation, Bea and the others have a few theories of their own. And while Perry obsesses over lift mechanics and Simon
insists he’s staying out of it (he isn’t), Daisy uncovers a clue everyone else missed.

As they dig deeper, they discover buried secrets, old resentments, and a grievance someone may have carried for years.
Some loyalties last a lifetime. So do some grudges.

A warm, cozy mystery with loyal friends, buried secrets, a determined little dog, and exactly the sort of trouble Bea should be avoiding before her wedding.

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Hello. I’m Helen Golden. I write British contemporary cozy whodunnits with a hint of humour. I live in small village in Lincolnshire in the UK with my husband, my step-daughter, her two cats, our two
dogs, sometimes my step-son, and our tortoise.

I used to work in senior management, but after my recent job came to a natural end I had the opportunity to follow my dreams and start writing. It’s very early in my life as an author, but so far I’m loving it.

It’s crazy busy at our house, so when I’m writing I retreat to our caravan (an impulsive lockdown purchase) which is mostly parked on our drive. When I really need total peace and quiet, I take it to a
lovely site about 15 minutes away and hide there until my family runs out of food or clean clothes.

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My thoughts: The final outing for Lady Bea and Perry before she marries Rich and they become full time working Royals, obviously accompanied by Daisy at all times in case snacks attack.

They’re helping finalise things at Three Lakes, a rehab centre for veterans, something close to Rich and Bea’s brother Fred’s hearts as former servicemen. Perry has finally got the decor up to his personal standards and the team is in place to run it – all former Forces themselves.

Then Gareth, one of the management team, is found in the lift, an apparent heart attack. But the autopsy suggests foul play, he took too many tablets and the overdose killed him, but why would he take so many?

As the gang investigate – it appears the whole management team has history.  They all knew each other years ago and may possibly hold grudges. But would someone wait twelve years to take revenge or is it something more recent that caused this? 

Daisy obviously finds the key to the whole case (no pun intended) because she’s brilliant, and probably had the whole thing solved by smelling guilt on the suspects ages ago, but no one ever asks her. 

They do get the case solved and the guilty arrested in time for the wedding though, and as Bea and Rich head off on their well earned honeymoon, with Daisy of course, and Simon and Perry jet off on an American book tour, we say goodbye for now. 

I really like this series, I like this mix of humour and crime solving, Daisy, and the human characters, Bea has definitely grown on me and I think Perry is hilarious.  If this truly is the last book, that’s a shame but I do understand and there is always re-reading the whole 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.