One close-knit choir. Twenty members, singing in perfect harmony — but two won’t live to see the next rehearsal.
Welcome to sleepy Kings Richington, where nothing ever happens . . .until local butcher and bass singer Charlie Snell turns up murdered! He’s been conked on the head and dumped in the woods.
Detective Jack Dawes is on the case, with an endless list of suspects to interrogate. In life, Snell was a nasty piece of work, with a talent for making enemies wherever he went. From his jealous wife to the pretty young sopranos he groped — and the ambitious mayoral candidate who happened to ‘trip over’ his body. Anyone could be guilty. And anyone could be next.
Just when Jack thinks he’s getting somewhere, a second singer turns up dead. Is the killer picking off choir members one by one — or singing from their own twisted hymn sheet? It’s up to Detective Jack to find out before the body count rises again.
Frances Lloyd was born in Essex but spent a nomadic childhood being carted between RAF stations until mercifully, she was allowed a crack at a proper education in Cheltenham, studying English and Classics. As an adult, she became something of a wandering minstrel with no physical or spiritual roots apart from a strong work ethic. Frances has always been a writer. The job that paid the mortgage was in government communications, She also worked as a freelance journalist and photographer but her ambition was always to write crime novels. She now lives in Northumberland – “Vera” territory – and writes full time. She has published ten DI Dawes murder mysteries. Married three times but now a widow, Frances’ hobbies are reading, wine tasting and cooking
A brutal murder. A deadly secret. A killer who’s done this before . . .
DCI Rob Miller is called to a murder scene in the early hours of the morning. A young woman’s body has been discovered under Putney Bridge. There are clear signs this was a brutal attack. The crime scene is especially unnerving for DCI Miller. It mirrors the victims of the Surrey Stalker — a sadistic predator Miller took down five years ago. But the Surrey Stalker is dead.
This killer isn’t just copying the past — They know things only the original murderer could have known. They know police secrets and crime scene details that were withheld from the press. With the media circling and a mole inside the force leaking information, Miller must untangle a deadly web of deception before the killer strikes again.
But as the body count rises and the noose tightens, one question haunts him: Did he catch the wrong man all those years ago?
Biba Pearce is a crime writer and author of the DCI Rob Miller, Kenzie Gilmore and Shrap Nelson series. Her books have been shortlisted for the Feathered Quill and the CWA Debut Dagger awards, and The Marlow Murders was voted best crime fiction book in the Indie Excellence Book Awards. Biba lives in leafy Surrey with her family and when she isn’t writing, can be found walking along the Thames River path – near to where many of her books are set – or rambling through the countryside.
My thoughts: Putney’s a nice little place, but even nice places can attract terrible people. When a body is found by the river, the first officer on the scene wonders if it washed up from somewhere else, but instead it appears as if the killer has risen from the dead. The woman was killed in exactly the same way as five years before.
DCI Miller and his team have a copy cat on their hands, but more troublingly this killer seems to know details the police withheld from the public. There’s also someone inside the investigation leaking information to the press. Something they really don’t need. The pressure is coming from all directions. Can they catch this killer before he kills as many as the Surrey Stalker did before and prove they were right back then too?
Smart police investigation fiction with a likeable team of officers, a gruesome killer and some pretty clever twists.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own
In November 1944, in the worst winter ever known in Bologna, less than a year since the founding of the Republic of Salò, the bomb-scarred streets are filled with starving refugees who have fled the advancing Allies. The Fascist Black Brigades, the officers of the S.S. and the partisans of the Italian Resistance compete for control in bloody warfare.
Comandante De Luca, once “the most brilliant investigative officer in Bologna” and now working for the Political Police in a building that doubles as a torture facility, finds himself in over his head when three murders land on his desk: a professor shot through the eye, an engineer beaten to death, and a German corporal left to be gnawed on by rats in a flooded cellar.
Losing sleep and his peace of mind, De Luca must close all three cases with ten lives on the line: the Italian hostages who will face a Nazi firing squad if the corporal’s killing is not solved to their satisfaction. As he threads his way through a web of personal and political motivations, risking his life with every step, De Luca will uncover to his own cost the secrets awaiting him in the frozen heart of Bologna.
Carlo Lucarelli was born in Parma in 1960. While researching for his thesis on the history of Italian law enforcement, he became intrigued by the Italian police force’s role in the political upheavals of the 1940s during and after the Second World War. From this seed sprouted his De Luca trilogy, later to grow into an oeuvre of more than twenty crime novels focusing on various characters. Lucarelli hosted the popular late-night Italian television programme Blu notte misteri d’Italia, on unsolved crimes and mysteries, and he is the founder of the Italian crime-writing collective Gruppo 13. He is also a journalist and has worked for multiple Italian newspapers.
My thoughts: I found this very interesting, I don’t know much about Italy in WW2 apart from the fact that they eventually gave the fascists the boot and joined the Allies, so learning a bit about the history and specifically about Bologna, which had its own complicated situation in the 40s, was good.
I also liked De Luca, he doesn’t exactly relish certain aspects of his job at the political police, he doesn’t participate in torture and would probably prefer to just stay a detective, solving murders, much as he does here. He’s trying to solve several different crimes at once, one written off as a crime of passion, another of a rat chewed German soldier found in the water, a third of a man supposedly with connections to the partisans waging their own war on the occupying force.
There’s wheels within wheels, a spy in the department, a woman who may or may not be a killer, the lives of ten prisoners on the line, lies, half truths and the ever present threat of being arrested himself, just because.
He forms an odd sort of partnership with another officer from the passport office, who might be a member of the resistance, as well as a German lieutenant who wants to find out what the dead soldier did with a load of stolen goods, themselves taken from the people of the city.
There are refugees everywhere, living in strange places amongst the bombed out buildings, a whole community sheltering in a theatre, based on what really happened at the time.
The research that has gone into this book is fascinating, it really brings the past vividly to life, I could picture the streets and the soldiers, the air of menace and fear, the scurrying people trying to avoid notice.
De Luca is a brilliant detective, he slowly builds his cases, contending all the while with the complex and delicate political situation, with the genuine risks to his own life if someone isn’t happy with his answers.
If you like historic crime fiction, or any combination of those genres, this is definitely worth reading.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Edinburgh, 1936. People are disappearing. The police are clueless. Can Finlay MacBeth track down the perpetrator before someone else goes missing?
Haunted by his recent past, Professor Finlay MacBeth returns to his home town to take up a new post at the university. Within hours, his reputation for solving the occasional murder prompts the police to ask for his help. Four men—seemingly unconnected—have vanished into thin air. MacBeth must find whatever it is that links the men before the kidnapper strikes again.
But the police aren’t the only ones interested in MacBeth’s activities, and the amateur sleuth soon discovers that finding the missing men is the least of his problems…
In this thriller series set in Edinburgh, Metropolis is book #1 in the Finlay MacBeth Thriller series.
Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland. He has worked in a plethora of professions including taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor, and has occasionally masqueraded as a pirate.
He has published more than thirty books, and his short stories have appeared in several literary mags, most recently in Witcraft, and Flash Fiction North. Colin lives in a humble cottage in Northeast Scotland where he writes novels, stories, poems and the occasional song. He also plays several musical instruments and makes rather nice vegan cakes.
My thoughts: Finlay MacBeth returns to his home city of Edinburgh to teach literature at the university, but news of his success in helping the London police has reached there before him, and after a series of disappearances, the police ask him for his help. Aided by his young apprentice and his flirty landlady, he soon gets to work puzzling out the connections and the perpetrator.
However he is being followed by a mysterious man in a trench coat. MacBeth has secrets, secrets he must protect, but someone out there knows them. And now he will need to find out who.
Clever, atmospheric, full of literary references, particularly Sherlock Holmes, and with an interesting cast of characters as well as an intriguing and somewhat disturbing plot. I look forward to the next book.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Hampstead County Police Department is embroiled in scandal after corruption at the top of the force was exposed.
Cleared of involvement and returned to active duty, Detective Sergeant Casey Wray nonetheless finds herself at a crossroads when it becomes clear that not everyone believes she’s innocent. Partnered with rookie Billy Drocker, Casey works a shocking daytime double homicide in downtown Rockport with the two victims seemingly unknown to one another.
And when a third victim is gunned down on her doorstep shortly after, it appears an abusive ex-boyfriend holds the key to the killings. With powerful figures demanding answers, Casey and Billy search for the suspect, fearing he’s on a murderous rampage. But when a key witness goes missing, and new evidence just won’t fit, the case begins to unravel.
With her career in jeopardy, Casey makes a shattering discovery that threatens to expose the true darkness at the heart of the murders … with a killer still on the loose
Rod Reynolds is the author of five novels, including the Charlie Yates series. His 2015 debut, The Dark Inside, was longlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger, and was followed by Black Night Falling (2016) and Cold Desert Sky (2018); the Guardian has called the books ‘Pitch-perfect American noir.’
A lifelong Londoner, in 2020 Orenda Books published his first novel set in his hometown, Blood Red City. The first in the Casey Wray series, Black Reed Bay, published in 2021, was shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger, with its long-awaited sequel, Shatter Creek, out in 2025.
Rod previously worked n advertising as a media buyer, and holds an MA in novel writing from City University London. Rod lives with his wife and family and spends most of his time trying to keep up with his two daughters.
My thoughts: Even though she’s the one that exposed the corruption in the police department, Casey is still being treated as though she’s tainted, and the new lieutenant is the worst for this. She’s all over Casey, threatening to demand a transfer for her, taking her off the tricky case they’ve landed, blaming her for an over keen identification of a suspect, even when the evidence didn’t fit.
Two people have been killed, there’s a missing witness, then another murder, that may or may not be connected. Something seems off about the case from the beginning. Casey and her team are putting a lot into the investigation, trying to identify the missing witness, a young woman with a small child, trying to deal with the crazy wife of one of the victims, who is throwing her weight around.
The higher ups aren’t happy, the stench of corruption lingers, there’s still an open case on the department with the feds, more heads may need to roll. Now this mess, could there be a connection?
Casey is a diligent detective, she sees things others miss and wants all the answers, she’s not happy with the decision to pin all three deaths on a dead man, it doesn’t make sense. So she keeps looking. And with her new boss threatening her badge, what has she got to lose?
Smart, tense, full of sudden twists, with a brilliant protagonist, the writing is compelling and the plot keeps you intrigued. Excellent.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
DETECTIVE JACK MACINTOSH IS BACK — BUT SO IS A KILLER WHO KNOWS NO LIMITS.
After a three-month recovery from his last brutal case, Detective Jack returns to his desk expecting a fresh start. DS Cassidy hands him a cheese toastie and a reassuring grin. ‘Everything’s under control here, sir. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’ Then his phone rings.
The body of a young woman has been found hanging from a curtain pole in a vacant office building — but it’s the sinister detail that stops Jack cold. Stuffed in her mouth is a copy of the London Underground map. White City station circled in red. He’s back.
Seventeen years ago, six young women were found strangled to death. Their bodies strung up in abandoned buildings throughout the city. In their mouths, a copy of the London tube map. They called him the Central Line Killer. He was never caught.
The clock is ticking. Jack is in a race against time to unravel the twisted clues left by a killer who’s always one step ahead — and willing to go further than ever before.
Michelle Kidd is a crime fiction author best known for the DI Jack MacIntosh and DI Nicki Hardcastle series. Michelle qualified as a legal executive in the early 1990s, spending ten years practising civil and criminal litigation. But the dream to write was never far from her mind and in 2008 she began writing the first book in what would later become the DI Jack MacIntosh series. Michelle now works full time for the NHS and lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. She enjoys reading, wine and cats — not necessarily in that order.
My thoughts: This is a clever read with lots of twists and turns, a serial killer has returned, where has he been since the late 90s? He’s killing young women and leaving their bodies hanging in windows of abandoned buildings along the Central line.
The case is still open from his previous spree of murders, and there’s a link to a series of assaults in Yorkshire too. Is this the same man?
Jack and his team want to stop him before any more women die, but they can’t figure out the links between the victim or why the killer is sending a retired journalist copies of the Tube map. Why involve her?
Asking the detective who investigated the last spate of deaths for his input, Jack attempts to unravel the complex web of connections between the killer, a man in Wandsworth prison, the journalist and the victims.
His friend, Rob, is also looking for someone – his sister Genete. Separated by the care system, as his biological mother dies, will he find his sister, and will she help the police find their killer?
The writing kept me hooked, with every little clue and connection the team made, as well as wondering just how much Carter can eat!
Smart, enjoyable crime fiction with interesting characters and a great 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.
Instead of escaping reality to this fantastic city, this city of phantoms, I was rushing towards it – hard fate awaited me in this soupy shade of a place…
In the oppressive heat of summer in Bologna, English detective Daniel Leicester is reliving his beloved wife Lucia’s final days. Vivid memories have been awakened by the sight of her bicycle, missing since the accident that killed her, ridden by a stranger through the city’s tight medieval streets.
As unfinished business bleeds – quite literally – into the present, the sickening realisation that Lucia’s death wasn’t accidental dawns on Daniel. He embarks on a quest for the truth, and this most personal of crusades leads him to two contrasting worlds: the secretive, ancient realm of freemasonry, and the revolutionary ‘Reclaim Bologna’ activist movement.
What links these two opposing factions? Is there a chance Lucia wasn’t the woman Daniel believed her to be? And will the truth be too painful, or too perilous, to bear?
Tom Benjamin grew up in the suburbs of north London and began his working life as a journalist before becoming a spokesman for Scotland Yard. He later moved into public health, where he developed Britain’s first national campaign against alcohol abuse, Know Your Limits, and led drugs awareness programme FRANK. He now lives in Bologna.
Find Tom on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at tombenjaminsays.
My thoughts: I’ve read a couple of books in this series before so I knew I would enjoy it. In investigating his late wife’s death, Daniel is also filling in some of the gaps in his back story too. We learn why they moved to Italy, and then why they really moved to Italy.
He’s wrapping up the last few investigations before the summer, and heading to the family summer house, or so he thinks. Instead he is being flooded with memories, of Lucia, of his involvement with a rather peculiar aristocrat who was a member of the Masons, but had to flee the city.
After seeing Lucia’s distinctive bicycle, missing since her death, he starts following and investigating a group of local protesters, who are wrecking holiday homes in the city, demanding that the local government house locals not tourists. The police would very much like to speak to these people too.
Daniel discovers a web of connections between his client, the protesters, his former acquaintance and Lucia’s death. It all ends in truly dramatic fashion, and a headache for the police to sort out.
Moving between time lines as Daniel roams the city looking for the bicycle, and hoping to get some answers, his only assistance a reluctant Dolores, and the drones Carlos operates from the comfort of his sunlounger. Bologna in the summer is a hot, sweaty mess, much like Daniel.
This series is really interesting and enjoyable, Daniel is a likeable and wry protagonist, and Englishman in a country he still, despite years living there, doesn’t quite understand.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Snowblind – 10th Anniversary edition, including NEW Dark Iceland series prequel, Fadeout.
Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors – accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik – with a past that he’s unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life.
An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness – blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose.
Taut and terrifying, Snowblind is a startling debut from an extraordinary new talent, taking Nordic Noir to soaring new heights.
Ray Eke has always found peace in his job, collecting litter for the city council. Until the day he finds the brutalized, bloodless body of a girl on his round. He recognizes her immediately too. Lauren Pascoe went missing three years before. It’s also clear she hasn’t been lying on the roadside verge all this time. Someone’s clearly been holding her prisoner. Keeping her as their very special toy.
The police know it couldn’t have been Ray, whose gentle heart is obvious to all. But then another girl is taken. And she’s someone who Ray had a connection to, back in his previous job as an accountant, before his breakdown…
The twists in this novel are guaranteed to leave readers with their jaws on the floor. Just when you think you know who the killer is, you’ll have your mind blown!
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.
My thoughts: Well, this was deeply unsettling stuff, the police have a nightmare of a case on their hands. Lauren went missing three years ago and now her broken, tortured body is found dumped by the road still dressed in the clothes she was wearing when she went missing.
Opening a cold case when it isn’t good news must be quite hard but the team are dedicated and willing to dig until they get some answers. And then Hannah goes missing. She just popped out to get some milk for the office, and then she was gone. If it is the same person, then she’s in for a world of pain.
Ray Eke, who works for the council collecting rubbish, found Lauren, and he knew Hannah too. Can this seemingly benign musician be involved? It seems unlikely, but as they struggle to find any evidence of who might have taken both victims, and as what they do uncover seems to point in one direction…oops, no spoilers but the twists will make your head spin.
I enjoyed this but was definitely creeped out at the same time, the things Lauren endured are horrific. And the shocking moments towards the end, the last page *shudders*. So good but also so sinister.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Returning to Little Clarsden to claim her half of Rose Cottage, Frankie receives a chilly reception from her estranged sister, Julia, who still nurtures an old grievance. Hoping to manage their fractured relationship, they take part in a murder mystery weekend at a Somerset mansion. But the playful intrigue turns deadly when they stumble upon a real corpse.
Amid the glamour and intrigue of the other guests and the actors slipping in and out of character, it’s difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Nothing and no one is as they seem
With a killer on the loose, a body that vanishes without a trace, and trust in short supply, Frankie and Julia must set aside their differences to uncover the truth.
Can the sisters solve the mystery before they become the next victim?
This is the first book in this intriguing, witty, cosy crime series.
My thoughts: This was a fun, funny, entertaining and enjoyable read as estranged sisters, forced to co-habit by their late aunt’s will, end up on a murder mystery holiday where the murders end up being rather more real than expected.
Julia is bored with retirement and her long held plan of writing a book isn’t happening. When chaotic sister Frankie crashes back into her life, she’s furious. At the village fete Frankie wins a murder mystery weekend for two in the raffle, and so the sisters head off to Medfield House in Somerset to play at being detectives. Only someone is using the fake murders as cover for real ones.
Julia and Frankie set about solving both sets of deaths, the fictional and the non. Julia’s actually a rather brilliant detective, her many years running a school means she’s excellent at sussing people out and Frankie, while far more impulsive, isn’t too bad either. It might even cure Julia’s writer’s block.
This is the first book in the series and I’m looking forward to seeing where the sisters end up next.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book to read and review, but all opinions remain my own*
ramblingmads 