Tag: crime fiction

After an unexpected death, three generations of women take over the family funeral-home and PI businesses in the first book of a brilliant, page-turning and darkly funny new series The Skelfs are a well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators. When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another women, suggesting that Jim wasn’t the husband she thought he was. Hannah’s best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined. As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything… It’s a compelling and tense thriller and a darkly funny, warm portrait of a family in turmoil.

Doug Johnstone is the author of ten novels, most recently Breakers (2018), which has been shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Several of his books have been bestsellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions – including a funeral home – and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also playermanager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh.

My thoughts:

This is a darkly comic tale of a family who not only bury your loved ones, but also spend their time following loved ones who’ve maybe strayed. I don’t really know how to describe the Skelfs except to say I loved this book. It made me laugh, it’s also got some touching moments. Describing it as Six Feet Under meets Private Eyes set in Scotland sort of gives you a really rough idea.

I am so excited that the second book in the series will be out later in the year too because it’s that compelling and fun, I need another dose asap!

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

R.M Francis is a writer from Dudley. He completed his PhD at the University of Wolverhampton for a project titled Queering the Black Country and graduated from Teesside University for his Creative Writing MA.

Some doors should not be opened.

Some can never be closed.

Jo Palmer’s peaceful and happy life is about to end. Ash – the man she loves – will be arrested by the police. Millie – her precious daughter – will be taken from her.

She will lose her friends. She will doubt her sanity. Someone is stealing everything Jo loves, and will stop at nothing.

But right now, Jo is laughing in her kitchen, eating dinner with her family, suspecting nothing.

It’s raining outside. There’s a knock at the door. They are here.

A DCI Tom Douglas Thriller

My thoughts:

I hadn’t read any of the previous books in this series but this can easily be read as a standalone novel.

It starts as a family drama that quickly spirals into a nightmare as Jo’s family is ripped apart by the police, but all is not as it seems.

As the plot unwinds various characters have their secrets revealed and their dark sides exposed.

I really enjoyed this and it had enough twists and turns to keep me hooked, who was genuine, who was hiding things?

Focusing more on the victims than the investigators was quite refreshing as I read a lot of crime fiction and it so often shifts to the detectives, but this stayed on Jo and her experience.

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

Two cases from the files DCS Palmer and the Metropolitan Police Serial Murder squad. Case 5 ‘Loot’ sends the team on the trail of stolen WW2 Nazi gold that seems to be the reason for two murders. But where has it come from and how much is there? Soon the body count rises as an old gangland adversary from Palmer’s past emerges together with some feisty women and an English MP all prepared to kill for the prize. Everybody is playing cat and mouse with the gold changing hands with every twist and turn of the story that takes Palmer out of London to Gloucester and then to Brighton for an explosive finale. Case 6. ‘I’m With The Band’ features 70’s rock band Revolution are still very big and packing out the major venues today but their original members seem to be dying in suspicious circumstances. Or so their manager thinks and he contacts Palmer’s number two with his fears. Palmer is not convinced until a nasty happening at Baker Street tube station underlines what the manager was afraid of. But who would want the band members dead? With a forty year career behind them it could be any one of thousands of past or present contacts. But this killer is confident, so confident he takes on Palmer via social network and tells him ‘catch me if you can’. But Palmer’s second in command DS Gheeta Singh was brought into his team because of her computer skills and is a match for the killer in cyber space. With just one original band member left alive the threat is real and Palmer must get to the killer before the killer gets to the member. The finale is an explosive one at a major Rock concert at the NEC. Both case move along at the usual fast pace and with the usual ending twist that Faulkner does so well.

Barry Faulkner was born into a family of petty criminals in Herne Hill, South London. His father, uncles and older siblings ran with the Richardson Crime family from time to time. At this point we must point out that he did not follow in that family tradition although the characters he met and their escapades he witnessed have added a certain authenticity to his books. He attended the first ever comprehensive school in the UK, William Penn in Peckham and East Dulwich, where he attained no academic qualifications other than GCE ‘O’ level in Art and English and a Prefect’s badge (though some say he stole all three!)
His mother was a fashion model and had great theatrical aspirations for young Faulkner and pushed him into auditioning for the Morley Academy of Dramatic Art at the Elephant and Castle, where he was accepted but only lasted three months before being asked to leave as no visible talent had surfaced. Mind you, during his time at the Academy he was called to audition for the National Youth Theatre by Trevor Nunn – fifty years later, he’s still waiting for the call back!
His early writing career was as a copywriter with the advertising agency Erwin Wasey Ruthrauff & Ryan in Paddington, during which time he got lucky with some light entertainment scripts sent to the BBC and Independent Television and became a script editor and writer on a freelance basis, working on most of the LE shows of the 1980-90s. During that period, while living out of a suitcase in UK hotels for a lot of the time, he filled many notebooks with DCS Palmer case plots; and in 2015 he finally found time to start putting them in order and into book form. Six are finished and published so far, with more to come. He hopes you enjoy reading them as much as he enjoyed writing them. If you do read one please leave a review as your comments are very much appreciated.
You can find out more about Barry Faulkner and the real UK major heists and robberies, including the Brinks Mat robbery and the Hatton Garden Heist; plus the gangs and criminals that carried them out, including the Krays and the Richardsons, on his crime blog at http://www.geezers2016.wordpress.com. Faulkner also regularly gives illustrated talks on that era to WI and other social clubs. barryfaulkner1@btopenworld.com for details.

My thoughts:

Having previously reviewed two of the other case files I knew I was in for a treat with these humorous crime files. Whether chasing gold bullion or hunting a vengeful serial killer DCS Palmer and his team manage to maintain their sense of humour and sometimes Palmer makes it home in time to enjoy Mrs P’s famous cooking.

Entertaining and clever, these Serial Murder Squad stories are a joy to read.

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

Following a sudden break-up, Englishman in New York Nick Braeburn takes a room with the elderly Peacock sisters in their lavish Upper East Side apartment, and finds himself increasingly drawn to the priceless piece of Egyptian art on their study wall – and to Lydia, the beautiful Portuguese artist who lives across the roof garden.

But as Nick draws Lydia into a crime he hopes will bring them together, they both begin to unravel, and each find that the other is not quite who they seem.

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Paul Tudor Owen was born in Manchester in 1978, and was educated at the University of Sheffield, the University of Pittsburgh, and the London School of Economics.

He began his career as a local newspaper reporter in north-west London, and currently works at the Guardian, where he spent three years as deputy head of US news at the paper’s New York office.

His debut novel, The Weighing of the Heart, was shortlisted for the People’s Book Prize 2019 and longlisted for Not the Booker Prize 2019.

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My thoughts:

This was an interesting read with a very unreliable narrator in the form of protagonist Nick, who has plenty of secrets.

The writing is assured and clever, and the plot has plenty of clever twists and turns.

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

When Private Investigator Beverley Saunders is tasked with going undercover, she relishes the chance to disguise herself as a cleaner in order to get close to Manchester bad boy Anthony Anthony, aka 2Tone. Anthony’s neighbours are suspicious of his wealth and sick of his anti-social behaviour, and Bev’s just the woman they need to find out what’s going on behind closed doors.

As Bev begins to infiltrate Anthony’s world, she soon realises she’s in danger – and this time, she might be too far in to get out. Alongside her sidekick Doc, Bev must fight to discover the truth – but when people begin to die, she has to ask herself – is exposing Anthony worth risking her own life?

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this, Bev’s an engaging character and her sidekick Doc reminds me of some of the men I’ve met, who struggle to function away from their computers and game consoles. Bev makes mistakes as she investigates, rendering her all the more fallible and realistic; she’s definitely no flawless super cop as in some crime fiction.

I hadn’t read the previous book in this series but I don’t think it really matters as the overriding story of Bev’s personal life isn’t essential to the plot and enough back story is given so as not to need to worry if you haven’t read it either.

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

A murder investigation unearths the brutal history of a village where long buried secrets threaten a small community. When psychotherapist Alexis Cosse is found murdered in the playground of the sleepy northern village of Burrowhead, the local police force set out to investigate. It’s not long before they uncover a maelstrom of racism, misogyny and homophobia. But there’s worse to come. Shaken by the revelations and beginning to doubt her relationship with her husband Fergus, DI Georgie Strachan soon realizes that something very bad is lurking just below the surface. Meanwhile someone – or something – is hiding in the strange, haunted cave beneath the cliffs. When The Dead Come Calling is a tense, atmospheric thriller which grips to the very last page.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this because I’m fascinated with places like Burrowhead, where the ancient world meets the modern and small town drama. I live in the North London suburbs and it’s quite diverse and part of the city in a way, which small towns and villages aren’t, so life in a place where everyone knows you feels alien to me.

I imagine it makes it harder to solve crime too, it can’t possibly be someone you know, it must be an outsider, a stranger. But of course, anyone of us could be living alongside a murderer and never know.

This book feels very timely, with its themes of racism, homophobia and misogyny, we are living in dark times where these awful types of thinking are resurgent and seem more common than ever, fuelling crime and fear; and it is this environment that Helen Sedgwick taps into.

The writing is tight and clever, the plot realistic to how a small police force would have to work, solving multiple crimes at the same time, often very disparate victims and suspects to round up and interview. The murder can’t always take precedent and so the reader, much like the investigators, must be patient in solving it.

HELEN SEDGWICK is the author of The Comet Seekers, selected as a best book of 2016 by the Herald, and The Growing Season, shortlisted for the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year in 2018. She has an MLitt in Creative Writing from Glasgow University and won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Before she became an author, she was a research physicist with a PhD in Physics from Edinburgh University. She now lives and writes in the Scottish Highlands. http://www.helensedgwick.com/ @helensedgwick @PtBlankBks

Helen Sedgwick on the writing of WHEN THE DEAD COME CALLING ‘When the Dead Come Calling was inspired by a visit to St Ninian’s Cave in the Scottish borders – it’s a cave on a wild beach that became a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Even today, the cave is filled with crosses made out of twigs and ribbons, prayers scratched onto stones and offerings left in the crevices of the rock. It’s a creepy place. I also wanted to write about rural life, having recently moved from Glasgow to the Highlands. It is a very different world. I absolutely love living in the country (a bit like Georgie loves it in the book) but that doesn’t mean I can’t see there are some pretty big issues. The lack of diversity, lack of opportunities, and the isolation are very real problems. And you do come across casual racism and homophobia, and often it has been left unchallenged because of the limits of the community itself and the lack of new experiences. So, I wanted to write about how people in small rural communities turn a blind eye to these problems, about the urban/rural class divide that leads to people in the city dismissing those in the country, and how history and inaction make us all complicit… But at the same time I wanted to write about how people in small communities can be exceptionally kind and warm and how living in a remote place can make you feel more connected to the past and to the landscape. It’s easy for people to judge the country without having lived there, but there’s a lot more to it than people think. I’ve also had an interest in false memory syndrome for years. I wrote two unpublished novels before writing my debut The Comet Seekers, and one of them was a literary thriller about false memory syndrome. The book remains unpublished for a reason (I was still learning to write and it wasn’t good enough!) but the research I did all those years ago fed into the plot for When the Dead Come Calling. Memory is fascinating and also poorly understood, and I keep being drawn back to how our minds create and recreate ‘memories’ that can end up being very different to the lived experience that they relate to. Our brains actually rewrite our own memories over time. That idea kept calling to me, wanting to be written about. It was at a crime writing event at Wigtown Book Festival that I got the idea for the main character of Georgie Strachan. There was a discussion about how fictional detectives always need to be broken or damaged in some way, and I wanted to turn that on its head. Is it possible to write a crime book in which the detective is just a good person who wants to see the best in everyone, despite evidence to the contrary? I started thinking about what would happen to a good, almost naive detective working in a broken world, and that world became Burrowhead.’

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