Tag: crime fiction

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Death at Fakenham Races – Ross Greenwood

ramblingmads


When everyone is lying, how do you catch a killer?

A brutal attack at Fakenham Racecourse plunges DI Ashley Knight into the competitive world of horse racing, where fortunes are won and lost in the blink of an eye. As the investigation unfolds, a chilling discovery reveals a darker side to this glamorous sport. In these high-stakes arenas, where winning is everything and everyone has something to hide, a few are willing to cross the ultimate line.

Can Ashley, an outsider in a world of whispers and long-held grudges, unmask the murderer before they kill again?

Ross Greenwood is back with a brand new, heart-pounding case for DI Ashley Knight, perfect for fans of Mark Billingham, Ian Rankin and Peter James.

Purchase


Ross Greenwood is the author of crime thrillers. Before becoming a full-time writer he was most recently a prison officer and so worked everyday with murderers, rapists and thieves for four years.
He lives in Peterborough.

Facebook: @rossgreenwoodauthor
Twitter: @greenwoodross
Instagram: @rossg555
Newsletter
Bookbub profile: @RossGreenwood

My thoughts: I have family connections to the world of race horses, but I don’t know a lot about it, so it was interesting to follow Ashley and her team as they attempt to break into this tight knit but not always happy community of owners, trainers, bookies and race course staff.

The murders are strange, a hammer attack, then run through with a sword, a strange symbol drawn on the victims’ foreheads in the middle of winter. There’s also the attack on affable police officer Frank, is it connected or opportunistic? 

It all seems to centre around one stables and the horses and people who spend their time there. Did some of these people fix a race a few months previously? And is the killer sending a message?

As they investigate the victims and the people around them, there seem to be more questions than answers and plenty of suspects too.

The case is really clever and as always there’s lots of clever twists, red herrings, and carefully seeded clues. But Ashley never let’s confusing evidence and attempts at misdirection stop her from finding out the truth.

*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

Blog Tour: Poor Girls – Clare Whitfield

ramblingmads


Don’t get angry.
Get rich.

1922. Twenty-four-year-old Eleanor Mackridge is horrified by the future mapped out for her – to serve the upper classes or find a husband. During the war, she found freedom in joining the workforce at home, but now women are being put back in their place.

Until Eleanor crosses paths with a member of the notorious female-led gang the Forty Elephants: bold women who wear diamonds and fur, drink champagne and gin, who take what they want without asking. Now, she sees a new future for herself: she can serve, marry – or steal.
After all, men will only let you down. Diamonds are forever.

In Poor Girls, Clare Whitfield exposes the criminal underbelly of 1920s London – but this isn’t a morality tale, it’s an adventure for the willingly wicked.

Purchase


Clare Whitfield was born in 1978 in Morden (at the bottom of the Northern line) in Greater London.
After university she worked at a publishing company before going on to hold various positions in buying and marketing. She now lives in Hampshire with her family. Her debut novel, People of
Abandoned Character, won the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award and is also published by Head of Zeus.

Twitter Instagram BlueSky

Follow Aries
Twitter: @AriesFiction
Facebook: Aries Fiction
Instagram: @headofzeus
Website

My thoughts: The Forty Elephants were a real gang made up of female thieves in 1920s London. The First World War tipped the previous social order on its head and women like Eleanor no longer wanted to stay in their prescribed place. Having worked during the war in jobs that might traditionally have gone to men, she has no desire to be a house maid to a wealthy family.

My great-great-grandmother was in service and apparently it was no picnic. Low pay, long hours, early starts and as many houses didn’t have running hot water and central heating didn’t yet exist, back breaking chores like lugging hot water up the stairs for baths and cleaning all the grates. Fun. Not.

I can see why Nell doesn’t want that life, and the appeal of the Forty Elephants too. Although I’m not criminally minded, seeing other women just like you dressed up, wearing diamonds and appearing to have a great life, well why wouldn’t you want to try it?

I liked Nell, she’s an interesting character, she wants more from life and is willing to do almost anything to get it, a modern women in a modern age, not wanting to be held in place by social class. She does risk getting sent to prison, as many of the Elephants were, but for her it’s almost worth it, just to break out of her expected role.

I enjoyed the snapshot of a different London, the dark underbelly, the way working class people lived, as opposed to the upper classes more often depicted. The contrast between the different stratas of society fascinates me, so this was very interesting and entertaining 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.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Red Water – Jurica Pavičič,  translated by Matt Robinson

ramblingmads

The investigation into a young woman’s disappearance in 1989 falters as Yugoslavia unravels in war.

Beautiful Silva doesn’t come home. Young cop Gorki Sain discovers that she isn’t what she seemed–she dabbled in drugs and dealt in heroin. But Gorki soon finds himself out of a job as Yugoslavia plunges into a fratricidal war. Yet her brother stubbornly continues the search, amid the upheavals of Croatian society, from the fall of communism, through the 1991-1995 war, to the explosion of tourism with its toxic land speculation and corruption. Much happens as if we were witnessing vengeful providence at work in an ancient tragedy, in this case, set off by a sordid crime.

Jurica Pavičić (born 1965) is a Croatian writer, scriptwriter, and journalist, living in Split. He has written seven novels, two collections of short stories and essays. His work has been translated into five languages, but Red Water is his first novel to be translated into English.

Matt Robinson, born in the UK in 1978, lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Formerly a foreign correspondent with Reuters, he now works as a freelance editor and literary translator. Red Water is the second novel he has translated.

My thoughts: When seventeen year old Silva doesn’t come home from a local festival, her parents think she’s with her boyfriend, but he was away the night before. Where can she be? As her family search for her, worry grows. The police detective, Gorki Sain, assigned to her case is stumped too. There seem to be no witnesses to anything. But Silva had secrets.

As Yugoslavia falls into civil war and splits apart, only Silva’s father and brother Mate continue searching for her. Travelling further and further afield following possible sightings. A witness did eventually come forward, claiming to have spoken to Silva at the bus station.

As the years go by and people’s lives change, her family remain haunted by her absence. Even the former detective wonders what happened to her. Will they ever know?

Clever and interesting, blending the family’s lives with the history of Croatia in the late 80s to present day, as Silva’s absence leaves its mark on many lives. This gripped me and didn’t let go. The ending was unexpected and the twists to the tale enjoyable and satisfying. Brilliant.

*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: 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.

books

Cover Reveal: The Village Choir Killer – Frances Lloyd

ramblingmads

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

Facebook Instagram

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Putney Bridge Killer – Biba Pearce

ramblingmads

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?

Goodreads
Purchase 


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.

Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Darkest Winter – Carlo Lucarelli, translated by Joseph Farrell

ramblingmads

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.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Metropolis – Colin Garrow

ramblingmads


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.

Purchase


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.

Website Twitter Bluesky Instagram Bookbub Facebook

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.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Shatter Creek – Rod Reynolds

ramblingmads

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.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: No Red Lines – Michelle Kidd

ramblingmads

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.

Goodreads
Purchase


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.

Facebook Twitter Instagram Website

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.