Category: reviews

Private Investigator Joe Wilde is investigating the murder of Philippa Redmond a former Labour MP.
She had been found dead in her sauna over the Christmas holidays six weeks ago. The majority of her family had been staying with her at the time, but the police didn’t regard any of them as
suspects. Evidence suggested an intruder had got into her home.

Joe also takes on a cold case of a missing woman named Julie Turnbull. She had disappeared six years ago without a trace. Meanwhile Joe’s good friend DI Whatmore is investigating the horrific murder of a woman who was burnt alive in her own home. His investigation crosses over with Joe’s missing person investigation. As they conduct their own investigations there are more killings.
DI Whatmore and Joe must join forces to track down a serial killer and solve a puzzling mystery, but doing so puts them and others in grave danger.

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Author Bio – C.D Steele works as an Executive Officer in the Civil Service. He has a degree in Recreation Management and lives in County Down, Northern Ireland. This is his third novel and is the
next book in the Joe Wilde Series after False Truth and Dark Truth.

CD Steele on Amazon

Giveaway to Win 3 x copies of False Truth (book 1 in the Joe Wilde series) and 1 x copy of Dark Truth (book 2). (Open to UK Only)

My thoughts: Private Detective Joe Wilde, formerly of MI6 has two complicated cases on his desk. One the murder of a former MP, the other the disappearance of a young woman six years ago.

The family of the MP are cagey, and not happy with his lack of progress, her daughter keeps threatening to stop paying him.

But the missing girl seems to be connected to something bigger, as DI Whatmore’s investigation reveals, a robbery, several murders and gangsters are all involved. The missing Julie seems to have been the daughter of a rather unsavoury person and been dragged into a whole mess before she disappeared.

As Jack and the police carry out their investigations they put themselves in the firing line as someone is chasing old secrets and won’t stop for anyone.

It’s a tangled web that has to be unwoven in order to solve the tragic disappearance and the MP’s murder too. Although Jack is dedicated and determined. This is a clever read with a twisty turny plot.

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

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Margate, on England’s south coast. The hottest day of the year.

A derelict warehouse on an industrial estate. A woman claws desperately at the
smooth, unbroken walls of a steel shipping container as it slowly fills with water.

She has six hours to live.

Her husband gets a chilling message on his phone: Drown The Rats. And a map. He
races to the site. He sees his wife struggling for life . . .

Police Constable Abigail Morton is in her twenties, can’t find a man she wants to
keep, and has just resigned after being passed over for promotion. Her special talent is getting people to talk to her, making her perfect for the role of source handler.

The one detective she really respects is DCI Paul Cotterill. And Abigail is the one
person Cotterill needs in this case. When she gets the call from him, she’s back in.

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Charlie Gallagher was a serving UK police officer for thirteen years. During that time he had many roles — starting as a front-line response officer, he became a member of a specialist tactical team and finally a detective investigating serious offences. Charlie left to concentrate
on writing full time.

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My thoughts: This was a really interesting and fascinating case, death by drowning is apparently incredibly unpleasant, your body desperately tries to fight it. I cannot imagine what watching someone you love die in that way, but that is what happens here.

The police are at a loss, the victims were connected to their covert intelligence unit – passing on information about criminals they happen to be in the orbit of. But someone is clearly unhappy about this and is determined to stop them. It looks like there’s a leak in the unit, so the team have been suspended. At the end of his wits, their boss DCI Paul Cotterill calls on Abigail Morton – freshly resigned from the police, to help him.

I really like Abigail, she’s clever and resourceful, knows her own mind and has become frustrated after being passed over for promotion in the very team that needs her help. She’s not impressed with Cotterill’s methods, but she is intrigued by the case.

As these two cops attempt to get to the bottom of these awful deaths, find the leak and prevent another person from being killed, they come into contact with a strange man who commits the same crime repeatedly in order to get into police custody. He might hold the key to the whole case.

Gripping and intelligent stuff, I wanted more immediately. Abigail is a really interesting character and I would like to see what happens next for her.

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

On a summer’s day, a baby vanishes. The mystery is never solved, leaving a young
mother lost in grief.

Twenty-one years later, ex-police detective Dan Hennessy is struggling with his own
tragic loss, and when a neighbour disappears and a body turns up at the solar farm, he is desperate for answers.
The haunted landscape is keeping secrets, and there are dangers lurking in the Brecks.

Dan must find the truth.

Can he offer hope to the grieving mother, and also save himself?

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Elspeth Latimer is an associate tutor on the prestigious  University of East Anglia MA in Creative Writing Crime Fiction, and also the author of Writing the Detectives, an academic study of the protagonist in the contemporary crime fiction series, published by Cambridge University Press.

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My thoughts: Dan is a former police detective who quit after his fiancée was killed in a horrible accident, he’s still struggling. Having moved to a caravan park where he’s supposedly in charge of security in exchange for a place to live, he becomes involved in the murder of a man on the solar farm next door. His landlady also asks him to look into the cold case of her missing son, who vanished as an infant over twenty years ago.

His former colleagues aren’t happy with his involvement with the murder case, and he keeps his PI activities a secret from them, knowing it won’t go well if anyone finds out he’s digging in a case the police never closed.

His grief is causing him to do strange things, and he’s losing time. But by focusing on the cases he’s able to give his days a little more meaning. He still needs to sell the house he and Beth bought before she died, and decide what to do with her ashes. But it all seems too much, instead he’d rather hunt for a missing caravan renter and the long lost baby Felix, wading into a past some would prefer to forget.

Clever and intriguing, the cases that are helping Dan somehow, weave around each other in his head and in the story, there’s some strange things that he sees and his friend Cassie, now in his old job, gets frustrated with him a fair bit. He hasn’t lost his instincts as a detective, and digs away at things, even when officially told not to. He’s an interesting character, the reluctant detective, who wants to shut out the world but can’t resist a mystery.

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