Category: reviews

Susan Breen introduces a charming series heroine in this poignant and absorbing cozy mystery with a bite. Maggie Dove thinks everyone in her small Westchester County community knows everyone else’s secrets. Then murder comes to town…

When Sunday School teacher Maggie Dove finds her hateful next-door neighbor Marcus Bender lying dead under her beloved oak tree—the one he demanded she cut down—she figures the man dropped dead of a mean heart. But Marcus was murdered, and the prime suspect is a young man Maggie loves like a son. Peter Nelson was the worst of Maggie’s Sunday School students; he was also her late daughter’s fiancé, and he’s been a devoted friend to Maggie in the years since her daughter’s death.

Maggie can’t lose Peter, too. So she sets out to find the real murderer. To do that, she must move past the grief that has immobilized her all these years. She must probe the hidden corners of her little village on the Hudson River. And, when another death strikes even closer to home, Maggie must find the courage to defend the people and the town she loves—even if it kills her.

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Susan Breen’s best-selling Maggie Dove mystery series was first published by a digital imprint of Penguin Random House and in the process of being reissued in paperback by Under the Oak Press. She’s proud to have had two of her Maggie Dove stories in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. A new story will be in Malice Domestic’s upcoming anthology: Murder Most Diabolical (introduced by Walter Mosley.) She was also longlisted for the 2021 Margery Allingham Short Story competition. Susan’s first novel, The Fiction Class, won a Washington Irving Award from the Westchester Library Association.

Susan teaches novel-writing at Gotham Writers and she’s also on the faculty of the New York Pitch Conference. She lives in a very pretty little village on the Hudson River with her husband, two sweet cockapoo dogs and two rather aggressive cats. Her three grown children are flourishing elsewhere.

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My thoughts: Maggie Dove used to write mystery novels, and now she’s in a real life one as her neighbour has dropped dead on her front lawn. Lots of people had reasons to dislike him but did anyone dislike him enough to kill him?

Maggie’s an interesting character – suffering from grief after the deaths of her husband and daughter, she gave up writing and seems slightly stuck in place, lonely and a bit lost. She’s a kind and generous person, but has hidden anger that she’s trying to manage.

She knows that the person the police suspect is innocent, and sick of their inaction, she takes matters into her own hands. She also discovers she has more friends than she thought.

An interesting take on the detective genre – I’d be interested to see how future stories shape up with this cast of characters.

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

Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel struggles to remain focused on the murder investigation. She is distracted by her worries about her colleague and life partner, Ian Peterson, who has disappeared. Geraldine becomes close to her colleague, Matthew. She is unaware that Ian is working under cover in London, helping to identify a criminal gang who have been targeting Geraldine. As a second victim is discovered in York, Ian’s life is threatened by a psychopath. If he fails in his mission, both he and Geraldine may die…

Leigh Russell is the author of the Ian Peterson series (Cold Sacrifice, Race to Death and BloodAxe) and the internationally bestselling Geraldine Steel series: Cut Short, Road Closed, DeadEnd, Death Bed, Stop Dead, Fatal Act, Killer Plan, Murder Ring, Deadly Alibi, Class Murder,Death Rope, Rogue Killer, Deathly Affair and Deadly Revenge. The series has sold over amillion copies worldwide. Cut Short was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association (CWA),John Creasey New Blood Dagger Award, and Leigh has been longlisted for the CWA Dagger inthe Library Award. Her books have been #1 on Amazon Kindle and iTunes with Stop Dead and Murder Ring selected as finalists for The People’s Book Prize. Leigh is chair of the CWA’s DebutDagger Award judging panel and is a Royal Literary Fellow. Leigh studied at the University ofKent, gaining a Masters degree in English and American Literature. She is married with twodaughters and a granddaughter, and lives in London. Twitter

My thoughts: this was a really good, solid police procedural. I enjoyed the changing perspectives between Geraldine and Thomas. Ian’s storyline undercover in London felt a bit weak in comparison, I almost wished there’d been a link between the two cases to strengthen the storylines. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as the York one.

The way Thomas just keeps making things worse for himself was almost comedic – if very black humour. I enjoyed seeing how the police went about looking for every clue and connection – rather than the “gut feeling” some fictional detectives rely on to magically solve a crime.

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

In sixteen-year-old Abida’s small Pakistani village, there are age-old rules to live by, and her family’s honour to protect. And, yet, her spirit is defiant and she yearns to make a home with the man she loves. When the unthinkable happens, Abida faces the same fate as other young girls who have chosen unacceptable alliances – certain, public death. Fired by a fierce determination to resist everything she knows to be wrong about the society into which she was born, and aided by her devoted father, Jamil, who puts his own life on the line to help her, she escapes to Lahore – only to disappear. Jamil goes to Lahore in search of Abida – a city where the prejudices that dominate their village take on a new and horrifying form – and father and daughter are caught in a world from which they may never escape.

Awais Khan is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario and Durham University, and studied creative writing with Faber Academy. His debut novel, In the Company of Strangers, was published to much critical acclaim, and he now regularly appears on TV and radio. Awais also teaches a popular online creative writing course to aspiring writers around the world. He lives in Lahore and is currently working on his third novel. Follow Awais on Twitter @AwaisKhanAuthor.

My thoughts: this book was powerful, moving and devastating. Opening with a terrible “honour killing” that shocked, this is no cosy crime novel. Instead it explores the tragic reality of young women’s lives in parts of Pakistani society. Abida grows up in a rural village where the older men form a sort of council and dispense what they see as justice – including horrific and violent murders of young women and newborn babies. But her father, Jamil, thinks differently, and instead encourages her to flee to Lahore, thinking it will be safer.

Instead she encounters more brutality and violence. But this is a love story – that of a father’s love for his child, as Jamil heads to the city to find his lost daughter. Abida is incredibly resilient and a true survivor – she gets it from her father. Against all the odds stacked against her she perseveres.

This is an incredibly powerful book, it really packs a punch. Khan clearly feels, as many do, that there is no honour in killing and that more men need to be like Jamil and stand against these outdated and deeply monstrous beliefs and crimes. He is not ashamed of Abida, indeed he is proud of his incredible daughter.

This is not an easy book to read, but it is an important one. Tragically Abida’s story is all too real and young women are still at risk of being murdered, not just in rural Pakistan either. What Awais Khan has done with this story is shine a spotlight on the corruption in a society that allows these crimes to go on. Truly vital reading.

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