Tag: blogathon

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Anything For Her – Jack Jordan

ramblingmads

Sometimes the past comes back to haunt you.

Louise Leighton’s life has fallen apart, all because of one fateful night. Her husband is an adulterer, her sister is his mistress, and soon, Louise will lose everything she owns. But she never imagined she would lose her daughter.

Eighteen-year-old Brooke Leighton is missing. It’s up to Louise and the Metropolitan Police to find her. Has Brooke run away? Or has she been taken against her will? And can Louise aid the investigation without mentioning the night where all of her troubles began?

If she mentions that night, she will incriminate her daughter for heinous crimes. But if she doesn’t, she may never find Brooke; and if she has been abducted, the person who took her may come for Louise, too.

Sometimes the past comes back to kill you.

My thoughts: Louise discovers her husband has been sleeping with her sister and walks out of her life, leaving him, their children and her clients without any explanation. She’s struggling with her own secrets and can’t cope with this news as well.

Someone has started leaving her dead robins at the house in the countryside, she’s freaked out but it gets much worse when daughter Brooke goes missing and she has to tell the police. But she doesn’t reveal the terrible secret that has been tearing her daughter apart and destroying her too.

The night in question is something she just can’t tell anyone, but someone out there knows what happened, someone knows what they did and now Louise and Brooke must pay.

Creepy,  chilling and shocking, this is a clever and gripping exercise in suspense, things are revealed slowly, leaving you wondering what Brooke and Louise did and who is watching them. The police are kept in the dark but increasingly aware that something very bad is going on. Unfortunately they’re too late to put a stop to things that have been in motion for a year, and need to be resolved in blood.

*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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Blogathon: I Am Death – Chris Carter

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In this pulse-pounding thriller from bestselling writer Chris Carter, criminal behavior psychologist turned LAPD detective Robert Hunter finds himself engaged in a brutal game to the finish with a ruthless opponent. But no matter what moves Hunter makes, death is coming….

At the Los Angeles International Airport, the body of a twenty-year-old woman is discovered. The autopsy reveals that she had been tortured and murdered in a most bizarre way—but the surprises don’t end there. The killer likes to play, and he left something behind for the cops to find.

LAPD Detective Robert Hunter is assigned to the case but almost immediately a second body turns up. Surrounded by new challenges as every day passes, Hunter finds himself chasing a monster—one with a dark past and whose desire to hurt people and thirst for murder can never be quenched.

My thoughts: After the vacation that wasn’t, Robert Hunter returns to LA to be faced with a new case, another gruesome and violent one. He and Garcia are called out to a body by the airport, the victim was brutally tortured to death, and she won’t be the last.

Taunting the detectives by leaving the message I AM DEATH with each poor victim, the duo feel like they’re getting nowhere, until the killer makes a mistake that will bring Hunter to his door. 

Another shocking and gripping case for Hunter and Garcia – there’s a method of murder in this one that actually succeeded in making me flinch, I am pretty unshockable most of the time. The story has a dual narrative, with a clever twist, and the identity of the killer, and their motivation is something you won’t see coming.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blogathon: An Evil Mind – Chris Carter

ramblingmads

A freak accident in rural Wyoming leads the sheriff’s department to arrest a man for a possible double homicide, but further investigations suggest a much more horrifying discovery: a serial killer who has been kidnapping, torturing, and mutilating victims all over the United States for at least twenty-five years.

The suspect claims he is a pawn in a huge labyrinth of lies and deception—but can he be believed?

The case is immediately handed over to the FBI, but this time they’re forced to ask for help from ex-criminal behavior psychologist and lead detective with the Ultra Violent Crime Unit of the LAPD, Robert Hunter. As he begins interviewing the apprehended suspect, terrifying secrets are revealed, including the real identity of a killer so elusive that no one, not even the FBI, had any idea he existed…until now.

My thoughts: Robert Hunter, possibly the best detective the LAPD has, is about to take his first holiday in…well, forever, when the FBI come calling. They’ve picked up a murderer, and the only words he’s said in the four days they’ve had him are to ask to speak to Hunter.

Flown to Quantico, Hunter discovers the man in custody is someone he used to know. His college roommate to be precise. And he’s possibly the most disturbing killer the FBI, and Hunter, have ever met. He leads them on a merry hunt all over the country to find the remains of his victims. Somehow he’s flown under the radar for 25 years, killing across various states, in various ways, never sticking to one type of victim.

Hunter is horrified, especially as this monster has killed those close to Hunter, from a mutual friend at college, to someone Hunter has never recovered from losing.

This might be his most personal and most horrifying case ever. Each piece of information revealed leads us to a new twist in the tale. What’s clear is that this killer is like no one Hunter or the FBI have dealt with before.

Drawing on his own experiences as a criminal psychologist, Chris Carter has crafted a truly chilling monster in this installment of Hunter’s story.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blogathon: One By One – Chris Carter

ramblingmads

‘I need your help, Detective. Fire or water?’

Detective Robert Hunter of the LAPD’s Homicide Special Section receives an anonymous call asking him to go to a specific web address – a private broadcast. Hunter logs on and a show devised for his eyes only immediately begins. But the caller doesn’t want Detective Hunter to just watch, he wants him to participate, and refusal is simply not an option.

Forced to make a sickening choice, Hunter must sit and watch as an unidentified victim is tortured and murdered live over the Internet. The LAPD, together with the FBI, use everything at their disposal to electronically trace the transmission down, but this killer is no amateur, and he has covered his tracks from start to finish.

And before Hunter and his partner Garcia are even able to get their investigation going, Hunter receives a new phone call. A new website address. A new victim. But this time the killer has upgraded his game into a live murder reality show, where anyone can cast the deciding vote.

My thoughts: Another gripping and stomach churning case for detectives Hunter and Garcia, this time with a killer who is manipulating them with technology. Turning death onto a reality show, where the audience votes on the method of execution.

Of course that audience probably believes they’re watching something staged, not real deaths. But Hunter and Garcia know differently and they are racing to shut this horror show down.

Hunter’s insomnia, always an issue, means he can’t let go of the things he’s seen and now countless others are watching murder happen in front of their eyes, whether they believe it’s real or not. The killer is exploiting new technology and people’s inability to look away.

Bringing in the FBI and their own advanced tech in order to try to track and locate the killer, and the site of his home made nightmare, is deemed necessary, even as it causes resentment. Hunter doesn’t really enjoy collaboration or being told what to do. But even he can see that the LAPD doesn’t have the resources to do this on their own. But it’s still his case, and he will find the killer. 

*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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Blogathon: The Death Sculptor – Chris Carter

ramblingmads

‘Good job you didn’t turn on the lights . . .’ A student nurse has the shock of her life when she discovers her patient, prosecutor Derek Nicholson, brutally murdered in his bed. The act seems senseless – Nicholson was terminally ill with only weeks to live. But what most shocks Detective Robert Hunter of the Los Angeles Robbery Homicide Division is the calling card the killer left behind.

For Hunter, there is no doubt that the killer is trying to communicate with the police, but the method is unlike anything he’s ever seen before. And what could the hidden message be?

Just as Hunter and his partner Garcia reckon they’ve found a lead, a new body is found – and a new calling card. But with no apparent link between the first and second victims, all the progress they’ve made so far goes out of the window.

Pushed into an uncomfortable alliance with confident investigator Alice Beaumont, Hunter must race to put together the pieces of the puzzle . . . before the Death Sculptor puts the final touches to his masterpiece.

My thoughts: Another creepy and chilling killer for Hunter and Garcia to find, LA seems to attract the worst monsters. This one is turning his victims into strange flesh sculptures. Hunter knows there’s a message here, but he needs to figure out what it is so they can solve the case.

They’re asked to work with DA’s investigator Alice Beaumont on the case, she’s an interesting addition to their partnership and brings a different perspective to the case.

It’s a race against time to figure out what the killer is saying with his disturbing artworks, keeping the reader guessing as to how exactly the detectives are going to solve another case before anyone else gets killed.

*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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Blogathon: The Night Stalker – Chris Carter

ramblingmads

When an unidentified female body is discovered laid out on a slab in an abandoned butcher’s shop, the cause of death is unclear. Her body bears no marks; except for the fact that her lips have been carefully stitched shut.

It is only when the full autopsy gets underway at the Los Angeles County morgue that the pathologist will reveal the true horror of the situation – a discovery so devastating that Detective Robert Hunter of the Los Angeles Homicide Special Section has to be pulled off a different case to take over the investigation

But when his inquiry collides with a missing persons’ case being investigated by the razor-sharp Whitney Meyers, Hunter suspects the killer might be keeping several women hostage. Soon Robert finds himself on the hunt for a murderer with a warped obsession, a stalker for whom love has become hate.

My thoughts: Another chilling and sinister case for Detectives Hunter and Garcia. Women are being abducted and murdered in horrific ways, and it hasn’t hit the police radar until now when a body is found in an empty old butcher’s shop. There is no obvious cause of death and I won’t tell you what the autopsy reveals, but it is shocking. As is what happens next. 

This killer is a monster, and Hunter, the man who can get inside a monster’s mind, is the only one who can catch him. But not before they find more victims.

I was hooked from the beginning. These books are dark and often very shocking but the writing is so good and I can help but root for the detectives to get the killer and save more potential victims from terrible deaths.

*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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Blogathon: Human Remains – Jo Callaghan

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DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock are back in a cutting-edge new thriller.

The truth will always come out, but at what cost? 

Fresh from successfully closing their first live case, the Future Policing Unit are called in to investigate when a headless, handless body is found on a Warwickshire farm. But as they work to identify the victim and their killer, the discovery of a second body begins to spark fears that The Aston Strangler is back. And as the stakes rise for the team, so do the tensions brewing within it.

When DCS Kat Frank is accused of putting the wrong man behind bars all those years ago, AIDE Lock – the world’s first AI Detective – pursues the truth about what happened with relentless logic. But Kat is determined to keep the past buried, and when she becomes the target of a shadowy figure looking for revenge, Lock is torn between his evidence-based algorithms and the judgement of his partner, with explosive results.  

When everything hangs in the balance, it will all come down to just how much an AI machine can learn, and what happens when they do . . .

Jo Callaghan works full time as a senior strategist, carrying out research into the future impact of AI and genomics on the workforce. She was a student of the Writers’ Academy Course (Penguin Random House) and was longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Writing Competition and Bath Novel Competition. After losing her husband to cancer in 2019 when she was just forty-nine, she started writing In the Blink of an Eye, her debut crime novel, which explores learning to live with loss and what it means to be human. She lives with her two children in the Midlands, where she spends far too much time tweeting as @JoCallaghanKat and is currently working on further novels in the series.

My thoughts: This series just gets better and better with each book, giving both a cracking read and plenty to think about.

Kat’s in the spotlight as an anonymous podcaster is determined to prove the conviction of The Aston Strangler, a man Kat arrested, was wrong and that Kat make mistakes and manipulated evidence.

With the remains of a young woman found on a local farm, and Lock’s involvement in the autopsy being questioned, could Kat lose her job or will her accuser go too far in their desire for the truth?

The title and the plot ask timely questions about the role of AI, Lock cannot understand why humans behave the way they do, there’s often little or no logic to their actions, he doesn’t understand human emotions.

His actions are also being called into question, the fact he can only really follow instructions to their logical conclusion and can’t deviate or use his own intuition leads to devastating consequences for the team, but is it his fault?

Their victim only came to be on the farm in the first place, following clues to try to find out what happened to her grandfather, who was a POW there but never returned home. Actions have consequences, even decades later, which will destroy two families. Lock can’t really understand the whys of this either, he’s a bit like Spock from Star Trek in that sense, none of the things anyone in this does seem logical, because humans aren’t logical. We act on instinct, emotions, our gut, all sorts of things you can’t define to AI. Even the doctor who designed him is starting to question whether she’s right, and she used to be sure she was.

A truly thought provoking, intelligent read that throws up plenty to chew over once it’s finished.

*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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Blogathon: Crucified – Lynda La Plante

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The fifth book in Lynda’s brilliant Detective Jack Warr crime series.

Jack, after taking paternity leave for the birth of his son, is forced to take even more time due to emotional fatigue and depression. Jack’s wife Maggie is more than aware of Jack’s issues, attempting to persuade him to accept private medical help as he has refused any form of counselling given to officers in the Met. Jack is suffering a nightmare consuming rage. After having to deal with the lengthy horrific murder trial detailing the tragic victims of the serial killer Rodney Middleton, he is haunted by the unidentified remains of more of the killers victims.

Jack finds solace in renewing a dangerous relationship with the artist Adam Bolder. They meet in Portobello market, in a shop selling frames. The enigmatic Adam, has taken up working on fake art in an old disused school out building. The fascination of watching Adam work, the brilliance of his artistic work and the obvious criminal activity in producing these paintings enthrals Jack.

Maggie becomes equally interested in the world of fake art. Jack collecting books and watching art programs, his renewed friendship encourages him to return to work. As he settles back into the old regime at the station, a new female DCI is a force to be reckoned with. One weekend visiting Portobella market again, going to purchase some photo frames for pictures of his new son, the street is cordoned off by police crime scene officers. Ambulances and patrol cars blocking all traffic. A body has been found in the framer’s shop. The naked murder victim has had his features destroyed, and horrifically nailed to a giant cross.

The murder is not in Jack’s jurisdiction, so another team have been allocated in to lead the enquiry and attempt to identify the victim. But Jack is too involved to steer clear – is he detective or witness?

My thoughts: Jack is struggling with the aftermath of his last horrific case, even with the killer behind bars, there are still unidentified victims whose families deserve answers.

He’s also struggling with a sleep disorder that makes him cranky when awake and violent when asleep. He’s been signed off work and Maggie is redesigning their house now they have two children, to get more space. Which is driving him crazy. Both of them need to go back to work!

When he does it’s to a new boss and new cases, firstly a domestic that his new DI is a bit too invested in. But a chance encounter with a suspect from an old case, has Jack headed down a rabbit hole into the world of art forgery and the millions made each year by a network of sellers, dealers and those linking them to clients.

Getting involved in a brutal murder in a frame shop in Portobello Road draws unwanted attention to Jack, and has higher ups suspicious of him and his behaviour, especially at an art gallery. He’s now on their radar. Can he toe the line and do his job?

I really felt for Maggie, Jack pushes her patience to the limit, he’s combative and secretive, when she tries to get him to open up, he pulls away. She just wants him to be well and happy, to spend time with his family and stop keeping so many secrets.

This is probably the book that explores Jack’s family and his past the most, in that he starts remembering before he was adopted a little, and being at home he’s spending time with his children and with Maggie and Penny. It’s also where he makes a decision about his career that will change everything.

*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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Blogathon: The Executioner – Chris Carter

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Inside a Los Angeles church, on the altar steps, lies the blood-soaked body of a priest. Later, the forensic team discover that, on the victim’s chest, the figure 3 has been scrawled in blood.

At first, Detective Robert Hunter believes that this is a ritualistic killing. But as more bodies surface, he is forced to reassess. All the victims died in the way they feared the most. Their worst nightmares have literally come true. But how could the killer have known? And what links these apparently random victims?

Hunter finds himself on the trail of an elusive and sadistic killer, someone who apparently has the power to read his victims’ minds. Someone who can sense what scares his victims the most. Someone who will stop at nothing to achieve his twisted aim.

My thoughts: It’s another twisted case for detectives Hunter and Garcia, starting with a dead priest in a church, his head replaced with that of a dog. The killings are nasty and replete with meaning known only to the killer, but Hunter must get inside this murderer’s head to understand the motivation and stop him before more people are killed.

Each victim is made to confront their deepest, darkest fears as they die, and the deaths are gruesome and sadistic. Whoever the killer is, he knows a lot about his victims. The duo dig into the lives of the deceased to hunt for their killer, a warped and cruel mind.

Another chilling case for Hunter and Garcia, utilising Hunter’s remarkable ability to think like a killer and Garcia’s straight down the line policing. They balance each other well, Garcia providing a grounding presence as Hunter turns inwards and mentally becomes the monster they seek.

*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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Blogathon: Pure Evil – Lynda La Plante

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It was supposed to be a simple case: a young man arrested for armed assault.

But it was just the beginning.

As Rodney Middleton awaits trial, Detective Jack Warr is warned by his mentor DCI Ridley that they have only scratched the surface of the man’s crimes.

Then DCI Ridley is suddenly removed from his post. No one is to contact him – and no one will say why.

As Warr digs into Middleton’s past, Ridley calls pleading for help, now accused of a murder he insists he didn’t commit.

To catch a monster and exonerate his friend, Warr must weed out the lies. But what awaits Warr if he uncovers the truth?

My thoughts: This is definitely the darkest and most shocking book in the series so far, the case takes Jack into the nasty recesses of a terrifying sociopath and deals with human trafficking, kidnap, murder and psychological control.

Jack’s boss DCI Ridley is also in trouble too and needs Jack’s help to clear his name.

Dealing with both cases and needing to be very secretive about Ridley’s leaves Jack feeling pulled in different directions and he isn’t seeing the issues in his own home as his mother seems to be struggling.

Another brilliant, knotty, intelligent read from the queen of crime, this had me hooked from page one and as Jack does his best to solve the mysteries surrounding Rodney Middleton and his peculiar girlfriend, as well as help Ridley, he puts his job at risk and a strain in his marriage, leaving Maggie handling their personal lives as well as working long hours in the hospital.

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