Category: reviews

Meet Max Donovan, a man who was kicking butt when Jack Reacher was still in diapers…

Vietnam veteran Max Donovan is in Bangkok, and very hungover, when his friend “Fat” Freddie Fields is arrested in San Francisco for the murder of an Australian diplomat. He knows his old buddy would never hurt a fly, so he rushes back to the Bay Area to help. There he locks horns with the District Attorney who seems intent on pursuing the case. Suspecting Freddie is being framed, Donovan tries to rustle up some cash to bail him out, but only succeeds in getting into trouble with the local mob.

He’ll have to solve the case on his own. Unfortunately, the only clue he has suggests the answers lie in the jungle-covered mountains of Papua New Guinea, and the shark-filled waters of the Coral Sea.

As he comes face to face with smugglers, hostile tribesmen, insurgents, and a web of corruption and deception, can Donovan achieve what is seemingly impossible in this high­octane, action-filled adventure full of nail-biting suspense?

The second book in the series, WITH TOOTH AND NAIL will be published later this year.

These books will be great for fans of Lee Child, Wilbur Smith, Raymond Chandler, and Ernest Hemingway.

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Riall Nolan grew up in upstate New York, and joined the Peace Corps after graduating from college. He got sent to Senegal, in West Africa, an experience from which he has never fully recovered.

While there he began to notice that many development projects didn’t work very well, largely because outside experts lacked basic cultural understanding of local communities. That’s when he decided to become an anthropologist.

He headed to the University of Sussex where he obtained a doctorate, and began working around the world as a development planner. He spent nearly twenty years overseas, in places like Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Tunisia and Sri Lanka. When he returned to the US at long last, he became a university administrator in charge of international education at several large research universities. His goal was simple: get as many young Americans out of the country as possible, by any means necessary.

In 2010, he finally moved back into the ranks of the faculty, where he taught courses in development anthropology, cross-cultural adaptation, and the application of anthropology to global grand challenges. Before retiring in 2020, he split his time between Purdue University in Indiana and the University of Cambridge in the UK.

He is the author of eight academic books on anthropology and numerous articles. He has also published a guide to mountaineering in Papua New Guinea. Now his focus is on adventure novels.

Today, he lives with his wife Christine in a small university town, venturing forth as often as possible on exciting trips to faraway places. Aside from writing gripping fiction, he writes, hikes, makes furniture and tries to fix the house.

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My thoughts: an action packed, globe trotting adventure as former helicopter pilot Max Donovan tries to help his friend and fellow vet, Fat Freddie out of trouble. Freddie suffers from horrific PTSD and prison would be the very worst place for him. Besides he’s not a killer, and Max will prove it.

Taking in political corruption, smuggling, collectors of illegal goods, drug addled tribespeople, changing global times and a genial professor with a bone through his nose (one of my favourite characters), this is non stop mayhem. Max angers a drug dealer, a slimy DA, a scary so-called missionary and a lot of other nefarious people as he goes all the way to the top and bottom of this to save his friend.

Accompanied by San Francisco detective Sam Young, who is possibly tougher than he is, Max somehow just manages to avoid death multiple times and get the answers he needs. Cracking stuff.

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

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

In a prestigious Edinburgh apartment building, gym receptionist Evie whiles away long hours doodling the deaths of residents who’ve annoyed her.

On her birthday of all days, a man slumps off the exercise bike — dead. She tries to get help, but someone has locked the doors and the phones are out of reach.

When another resident collapses inexplicably, Evie realises the deaths resemble those she drew … and her sketchbook is missing.

Was she framed…

… or is she next?

KILLER BODIES is a modern locked room thriller full of old-school ‘impossible crimes’, darkly humorous and with some visual surprises inside! Perfect for fans of Ruth Ware ‘The Turn of the Key’, Catherine Cooper ‘The Chalet’ and Sarah Pearce’s ‘The Sanatorium’ — with a dash of Knives Out.

Heleen Kist is a Dutch, formerly globetrotting career woman who fell in love with a Scotsman and his country, and now writes about its (sometimes scary) people from her garden office in Glasgow. ‘Killer Bodies’ is her fourth novel, inspired by her hatred of exercise.

She was chosen as an up-and-coming new author at Bloody Scotland 2018. Her novels have been finalists in a variety of awards, both in the UK and USA, and she years to some day ‘be the bride’.

Heleen hopes you enjoy her writing, and would love to hear from you on twitter (@hkist), Faceboook (@heleenkistauthor) or Goodreads. You can also sign up to her newsletter on http://www.heleenkist.com

My thoughts: this is why I don’t like gyms! Evie is trapped in the gym she works in as the receptionist with some of the residents of the fancy apartment building housing it. They’re twelve floors up, nothing’s working and then people start dying in bizarre and sudden ways that mimic the sketches she’s drawn of them. Is the killer using her as inspiration or is there something even stranger going on? Oh, and it’s her birthday.

As the bodies keep dropping, Evie and the increasingly smaller number of residents try to figure out what’s going on, what is killing these people, who is it? Is it one of them? Paranoia grows, this is the worst birthday ever.

I felt for Evie, what a horrible thing to be dealing with, she’s going to be having nightmares for sure. Although she does form a bond with Suki, the new tenant, and that helps them both cope with the horror around them.

The ending lets up the carnage, thankfully, and the survivors get what they need and deserve. Blackly comic and very cleverly done, I really enjoyed this one.

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

When Sarah Cassells, a young British woman who has just completed her training as a chef, hears of her father’s violent death on Ibiza, she refuses to believe it is suicide.

She goes to Ibiza to investigate and becomes involved with an art dealer; with two beautiful jetsetters; with her brother’s strange predicament; with a remarkable American woman who is not all what she seems – and with Johnson Johnson, the mysterious portrait painter who shows up on his yacht, Dolly.

As Ibiza prepares to celebrate Holy Week with the traditional processions, events become more and more macabre…

Dorothy Dunnett gained an international reputation as a writer of historical fiction. She moved genres and turned to crime writing with the acclaimed Dolly books, also known as the Johnson Johnson series. She was a trustee of the National Library of Scotland, and a board member of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. In 1992 she was awarded an OBE for her services to literature. A leading light in the Scottish arts world and a renaissance woman, Dunnett was also a professional portrait painter and exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy on many occasions. She died in 2001.

My thoughts: we’re back with portrait painter and secret agent Johnson Johnson on his yacht, Dolly, and this time he’s in Ibiza. Sarah Cassells has flown into the island after the supposed suicide of her father, Lord Farley of Pinner, but she’s pretty sure he was murdered.

Besides, she’s a woman in search of a husband with a decent sized bank account and she cooks, rides, water skis and all sorts of other things. Why wouldn’t she find one in this town? Staying with a friend’s family, she’s determined to find out what happened to her father. Getting embroiled in a scheme involving art, fake rubies, Holy Week and Russians, probably wasn’t part of her plan, but she’s pretty game if it will get her answers.

There’s actually less of Dolly and Johnson in this one, probably because they’re just in the port, no yacht race this time, and Sarah is right in the middle of things, including a very crazy party. Everyone drives back and forth across the island and Johnson is just in the background, working it all out in his bifocals.

But he’s there for the vital bits and explaining it all to Sarah and Co, she doesn’t even need to bother finding a husband just yet either, plenty of time for that and most of the candidates turn out to be unsuitable anyway. Jolly good fun.

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

Are you missing Happy Valley? Pre Order the next gripping instalment in the Yorkshire Murder Series by bestselling British crime author Wes Markin!

A murdered child. A case from the past. A detective inspector with nothing to lose…
DI Paul Riddick is a man tormented by his own actions and determined to right the wrongs of his past any way he can. But when his instincts lead him to follow a child he believes to be in danger, Riddick
gets in deeper than he ever imagined…especially when the child is found dead.
DCI Emma Gardner doesn’t believe Riddick has blood on his hands, but he’s off the case until she can clear his name. If she can clear his name. Because Riddick seems determined to chase ghosts that only get him into more trouble.
Riddick’s certain he didn’t kill the kid in the cave. But he also remembers another case, twenty years ago, with shocking similarities…which means someone is trying to trap Riddick.
Can Riddick uncover the truth, or will this be the case that finally destroys him once and for all?
Don’t miss the brand-new gripping crime series by bestselling British crime author Wes Markin!
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Wes Markin is the bestselling author of the DCI Yorke crime novels, set in Salisbury. His new series for Boldwood stars the pragmatic detective DCI Emma Gardner who will be tackling the criminals of North Yorkshire.  Wes lives in Harrogate and the first book in the series The Yorkshire Murders was published in November 2022. 

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My thoughts: so to North Yorkshire, where my Grandad was from. But a different side to God’s own county than the one he told me about, and he would have loved this series. There’s a child’s body found next to Mother Shipton’s cave, petrifying under the unusual mineral water, and a young PC Riddick is first on the scene.

Years later, he’s convinced they arrested the wrong man for that crime, and while suspended after being found unconscious by another dead boy, he decides to re-open that first case and find the real killer. Perhaps he can make amends for his own sins in doing so.

Meanwhile his boss DCI Emma Gardner is looking into the dead body he was found next to – was it murder or suicide? The teenager had lots of secrets, and so do several others around him. As the cases unfold, there are links and a local criminal comes to their attention after a second boy goes missing.

Emma’s also dealing with her personal life, as husband Barry’s girlfriend shows up. All she wants is to keep custody of her daughter and niece, Barry’s free to go.

If she can this case closed, sort out Riddick, who’s spiralling, and get home in time to put the girls to bed, she might get what she wants.

The case she’s on gets very dark and sad, there’s a lot of pain in the lives of the teenage boys she’s looking into. And they don’t talk about it, preferring fantasy worlds in comics and toys to the things they’re dealing with. Getting through to them is tough. But she needs the friends of her victims to open up and help her find the killer/s. Luckily she’s good with people and even though he’s been stood down Riddick has her back. Another excellent book from Wes Markin.

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