Category: reviews

For Matt Forrester, The Forrester Detective Agency is going from strength to strength: they’ve expanded their office space and even hired a new office manager – a qualified and astute woman named Carol.
What starts as a simple burglary case soon turns into something darker. The victim of said burglary soon turns up dead, after engaging in threats with the local yobs she believed to have been responsible.
But it soon becomes clear that there’s more at play here, and Matt – alongside sister Hermia, partner Steve, and life partner Karen – will have to put all their skills to the test, even if it puts them in
danger…
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Anita Waller is the author of many bestselling psychological thrillers and the Kat and Mouse crime series. She lives in Sheffield, which continues to be the setting of many of her thrillers.

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My thoughts: the Forrester Detective Agency is getting plenty of work, mostly of the cheating spouse kind, when there’s a burglary round the corner. It’s one of Karen’s official police ones, but Matt casts an eye over it, hoping he can help.

While Steve has a landscaping client whose garden has been trashed, and as well as putting it right, he offers to look into the incident.

A brilliant new receptionist, in the shape of scone baking, file sorting, super capable Carol, helps them get the office into shape and creates a database, WATSON, to keep their cases organised.

A strange woman, claiming to be an old friend of Matt’s dad, has appeared but no one has heard of her, but Carol offers to dig through the files for a trace of her. What does this woman really want?

As the team work on their cases, there’s still time for family, although Harry is struggling, and needs his dad more than ever with a new baby sister in the picture.

Another gripping and intelligent thriller that might keep you awake if you read it too late!

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

On the morning after his thirtieth wedding anniversary Stewart Harding is found dead. He was an arrogant and thoroughly unpleasant man and there is no shortage of suspects, but all of them have firm alibis. In any case, everything points towards it being an opportunistic killing linked to a robbery.
Newly promoted DI Mark Webber is assigned as the SIO with Gillian Marsh overseeing the investigation. However, when her mother dies, she takes leave of absence and lets Webber continue on his own.
Webber is making good progress until his colleague – and secret lover – DC Erin Macfadyen disappears without trace. Webber’s world falls apart.
DCI Marsh cuts her bereavement leave short to take over the investigation into Stewart Harding’s death and to track down her missing officer.
There is no doubt that she will find Harding’s killer, but will she find Erin and are the two cases connected?

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Anna Legat is a Wiltshire-based author, best known for her DI Gillian Marsh murder mysteries. Murder isn’t the only thing on her mind. She dabbles in a wide variety of genres, ranging from dark humour, through magic realism to dystopia. A globe-trotter and Jack-of-all-trades, Anna has been an attorney, legal adviser, a silver-service waitress, a school teacher and a librarian. She has lived in far-flung places all over the world where she delighted in people-watching and collecting precious life experiences for her stories. Anna writes, reads, lives and breathes books and can no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction.
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My thoughts: another gripping case for DI (now DCI) Gillian Marsh and her team. When a man is found dead in somewhat strange circumstances the day after celebrating his thirtieth wedding anniversary, the team start to dig. His family don’t seem too upset, especially his wife.

But with two likely suspects first on the scene – was it a burglary gone wrong or something else?

Then Erin goes missing and the team set aside everything else, the case, Gillian’s mother’s sudden death, to look for her. Is it connected to their case or something personal? As time runs down, will they find the DC alive?

I was hooked from the start, although it can be hard to feel sorry for such an unpleasant victim, especially when he behaves so awfully just before he’s killed.

There was a lot going on in the team’s personal lives too – Webber finally got custody of his children, Gillian’s mother dies very suddenly, not that she seems too emotional to the upset of her family, Erin has a secret. This really moved the story along, and it was interesting to see how they juggle their professional and personal situations, especially when one of their own is at risk.

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

After reaching a crisis point at 40, Jenny Watson is offered her dream job running a Shakespeare festival at a Tudor pub. She can hardly believe her luck at this brilliant new start, and chance to escape her unhappy past. The job isn’t all it seems, however.

The pub is remote and her mysterious boss is permanently absent; there’s a 400 year old skull residing in the cellar; and the local actors are less than enthusiastic over her boss’s choice of play. Then there’s the growing conviction that someone’s watching her. Strange messages, withheld calls and shadows on the windows spike temporary attacks of stress-related blindness as she clings to her last chance to live her dream. But as the dark play she’s directing starts to unravel the secrets she’d sworn never to tell, Jenny realises she’s not at the pub by chance . . .

…and soon she finds herself the leading lady in a nightmare replay of her past.

Susan says “I love theatre directing as well as writing, and have found working with Shakespeare’s writing cathartic and inspiring. In my working life, especially teaching adults, I have encountered many women with similar confidence problems, and the book grew out of that experience. It also carries the message that we should never give up on our dreams, no matter what age we are, where we come from, or whoever tells us we are bound to fail.”

Susan has loved writing, books and theatre since childhood, and now loves sharing stories with her small granddaughter. Apart from enjoying time with her family, she has also worked in business, run a theatre arts school for kids and somehow found time to gain a degree in Literature/Creative Writing, and a PhD in Shakespeare! She now writes fiction full-time, runs Shakespeare workshops and directs plays locally.

LINKS TO BUY: Publisher Amazon

Available in paperback format at £13.99 from Troubador.co.uk, and in e-book format from Amazon KDP Select at £4.99. Paperback also available online from Waterstones and Barnes & Noble. 

My thoughts: apart from all the terrible things Jenny encounters doing her dream job, I’d happily do the same. I am a huge Shakespeare nerd, theatre kid and I studied Titus Andronicus at uni (Hamlet is probably my favourite).

Jenny leaps at the chance to re-open an old pub and revive its Shakespeare festival, although she wants to do Hamlet, the mysterious owner insists on the even more gory and blood soaked Titus.

Making new friends in the local community and slowly building her confidence with Speak Out (a therapy group), she also begins researching the pub and the history of its resident Yorick, a human skull that belongs to someone either called Henry or John, according to neighbour George. Finding that there is a genuine link to the person, and a production of Shakespeare’s play in the 1500s, she digs into the local history, encountering witch trials, a hanging and tragedy.

Unfortunately her own tragic past is coming up to find her. An abusive mother, a rape and a pregnancy at 16, Jenny’s life isn’t a happy one. And now, divorced and alone, apart from the wonderful Mags, she’s starting over. Her aunt, in New Zealand, drops a bombshell – Jenny’s son is in the UK and wants to meet her.

But someone is leaving weird notes and the door keeps unlocking itself. A local woman is attacked, and she looks a bit like Jenny. What is going on? Is Jenny safe?

There’s a lot of turmoil and horror to come, but thankfully Jenny has brilliant friends around her, people who care and want to help, including local teacher and historian Ben.

Gripping and at times shocking, I was enthralled with Jenny’s story and the research she was doing. I love history and as a literary material culture buff, this was right up my street. I think Jenny and I would get along famously. She’s a real survivor and what she has been through is heartbreaking. But there’s so much hope and good will for her, that it left me feeling upbeat and pleased. Shakespeare’s incredible way with words guides Jenny, and even saves her life. A real treat of a book in many ways.

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