Tag: crime fiction

One bitter winter’s night, Detectives Donovan and Young are called to Fountains Abbey. A crumbling ruin out on the wild and windswept Yorkshire Fells. Where the air hangs heavy with local legend, ancient secrets and now the overpowering tang of freshly spilled blood.

College teacher Patrick Armitage lies sprawled across the stones, in a gory crimson pool. His handsome face is a mask of shock and disbelief. Because Patrick’s not just been murdered. He’s been slaughtered. Stabbed over and over in the coldest blood. Patrick was a devoted family man and everyone’s favourite drama teacher. Does that make him a tragic victim — or a consummate actor, who kept his true self hidden behind a spotless façade?

The deeper Donovan and Young dig, the more they realize that no one in this baffling case is quite what they seem. Least of all Patrick’s grief-stricken widow. She begs the detectives for answers, but meets every question with hostile silence. Then a vulnerable young witness vanishes from college. And Young knows, with spine-tingling certainty, that Patrick’s killer is not done yet …

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Cath Staincliffe is a best-selling, award-winning novelist, radio playwright and creator of ITV’s hit show Blue Murder. Cath has been shortlisted for the CWA Daggers five times, winning 2012’s Short Story Dagger. She won the WGBB Best Radio Drama Award in 2019. Cath’s standalone titles describe the human impact of crime on ordinary families, giving voice to victims, the bereaved, survivors and witnesses.

Cath is a reading junkie who loves hill-walking or pottering in the garden. Her new detective series features chalk and cheese duo Leo Donovan and Shan Young in the stunning setting of the Yorkshire Dales.

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My thoughts: This was a much more complicated case than it first appeared. A supposedly beloved teacher murdered in a remote location, no obvious motive or suspect. But as Leo and Shan investigate it becomes clear that Patrick was not the man most people thought he was. 

Then a young woman, a student of Patrick’s, is found. Did she kill herself or did someone else throw her body in the river? 

Tragedy abounds as the duo solve the case, and Patrick’s young daughters will be the ones carrying the weight of it all. 

Clever and compelling, this is a somewhat shocking and sad case, I really liked Leo and Shan who carry out their roles with grace and sensitivity, all while dealing with complicated personal issues.    

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

Bob and Shirley run a lovely country pub. They also solve murders …

A warmly funny, gloriously British cozy crime and murder mystery series that can be read as standalones or part of a series. Set in a village where the pub is the heart of country life and served with warmth, wit and a very good Sunday roast.

“Murder? In our quiet, little English village?
Great Oakley is a place of hanging baskets, tearooms and riverside walks. We’ve won ‘Britain’s safest village’ 10 years running. I keep three pound coins, a box of toffees and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on my dashboard at all times, and I’ve never needed to lock my car.
Certainly, Bevvy Hogg was disliked. She ran the local Waist Watchers group, yet came to our pub for fish and chips, treacle tart and a bottle of Chardonnay every Friday. But I don’t think she was murdered …”

When Bevvy Hogg is found dead in the Goose and Gander pub garden, with an empty treacle tart plate beside her and several dress sizes slimmer than anyone remembers, Great Oakley’s winning
streak as Britain’s safest village comes to an abrupt end.

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Suzy K Quinn (hello – it’s me!) is writing this bio in the third person. Which feels duplicitous and also a little egotistical. But here goes …

Suzy K Quinn writes book club books and murder mystery series, and has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. She’s a bestselling author in the US, UK and Germany and will soon, very possibly, have written more books than she’s read.

Suzy lives in Wivenhoe, Essex, with her husband and two daughters. She is a twin, an incompetent parent of two and now fully decaffeinated. Her twin sister, Cate Quinn, is also a bestseller author.
When Suzy isn’t writing in cafes, she is walking around woods dictating like a lunatic.

Suzy loves her readers and is ALWAYS happy to chat on facebook
You can also get a free book at her website

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My thoughts: This is very funny, Bob and Shirley alternate in telling you their theories, suspicions and personal vendettas (mostly Shirley).

Pub regular Bevvy Hogg is found by Bob one morning as he goes to check on his tomatoes, dead on the patio he lovingly power washes every week. There’s a suspicious yellow stain next to her and she’s removed her ever present cardigan.

Bevvy was in the pub the night before, downing jugs of water and acting a bit strange. Was she poisoned by John Boy’s cooking? Bob and Shirley are sure their nephew is innocent and are determined to prove it so he can enter the village bake off, but who killed Bevvy Hogg and why? 

It’s a convoluted tale of bitter people and long held grudges (many of them Shirley’s) with cake, fish and chips, a Sunday roast and a brand new uncorruptible police constable working on solving the case with some help from Bob’s spreadsheets, a fox called Cyril and Shirley’s unique way with words.   

Giveaway to Win an e-copy of Bob and Shirley’s Killer Cuppa Puzzle (Open INT)**

One of Great Oakley’s five open gardens served poisoned tea. Can you work out which one before  Bob does?

‘Like Murdle and a cozy mystery rolled into one.’

Murder mystery logic puzzle stories for fans of The Killer Isn’t Alice, Murdle and Can You Solve the  Murder?

These are ‘Puzzlories’. Read them like stories, solve them like puzzles. Each one takes about an hour  to read and solve.

It’s Open Gardens weekend in Great Oakley. Five gardeners have opened their gardens to the public,  and each is offering a unique drink, cake, flower and interesting garden feature to their fellow
villagers.

Unfortunately, one garden owner poured poisoned tea. Probably not on purpose. But you never  know. There are more murders in Britain’s safest village than you might imagine.

Village pub landlady Shirley Duffy visited all five open gardens before returning to the Goose and Gander for a much-needed beer and a sit down. One of those five gardens was the scene of the  crime.
The trouble is, Shirley’s memory is known to be … selective. She can remember every cake she’s  eaten since 1987, but not necessarily when and where she ate it. And she can’t remember which
garden served tea on Saturday afternoon.

Shirley’s husband, Bob, is frustrated that Shirley can’t remember one garden from another. But he finds many things about his wife frustrating, and loves her anyway.
As Bob presses Shirley for details, the clues pile up. Your job is to note them down and work out who served the tea before Bob does.

Twenty clues, one in every short chapter. Fill in your detective’s grid, cross off your suspects and  name the poisoner.Grab your notebook, put the kettle on (carefully) and see if you can beat Bob to the answer.

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

**Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box below. The  winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the  right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.**

What if one moment – one split second – changed everything? 

When a firearms officer shoots a suspect dead and wounds another, who later dies in hospital, the official line is that the sun was in her eyes. Her body cam failed.

Known only as Officer X, her anonymity is meant to protect her – until a judge releases her name and a media storm erupts. Detective Superintendent Jack Dylan and DI Charley Mann are called in to determine whether it was a justifiable use of force – or something darker. And when it’s revealed that Officer X knew the victim, and her brother died of a drug overdose linked to the same woman, the case becomes charged with personal and political tension.

As pressure mounts, a vulnerable witness dies and a lost phone surfaces with a photograph and a message that could unravel everything – and reveal the truth about what happened that day.

Split Second brings Dylan and Mann together for the first time, in an investigation that will test their instincts, their loyalties and the limits of justice itself, as both detectives must decide how far they’ll go – and what they’re willing to sacrifice – to uncover the truth.

Former Head of CID Bob Bridgestock is now an international best-selling author, along with his wife Carol, who also worked for West Yorkshire Police. The couple, who write under the pen name of R.C. Bridgestock, were voted the eight best crime writers of all me by WHSmith Readers.

The writing duo created the character DI Jack Dylan, a detective from Harrowfield, with nine books in the Dylan series. In 2020, they launched a new series featuring a strong Yorkshire female, Detective Inspector Charley Mann. The couple were the storyline consultants/police procedural on BAFTA winning BBC1 police drama Happy Valley, Scott & Bailey and The Beast Must Die, as well as other police dramas.

My thoughts: I can’t imagine having to make the split second decision the story revolves around, knowing you might be about to end someone’s life, but the officer in this case does make that decision and then everything changes.

The decision is made to charge the officer with murder – because she has a link to one of the deceased pair of criminals, and it looks a bit convenient that she was the one who took the shot. But things are a lot more complicated than that.

As the case progresses, as the barristers present their versions of events, hoping to sway the jury, we spend time with Officer X, her nerves and her fears. It’s intense and the confines of the dock add to the feeling of pressure building. Juries can be hard to predict and if one barrister is more persuasive than the other, that could be all it takes.

There’s a couple of killer twists and a few things not followed up by either the police or the lawyers that leave unanswered questions and a nagging suspicion of something else going on. It’s very clever and subtle. 

I really enjoyed this, it’s got excellent plotting, paced out beautifully, and interesting characters, I wanted to know more about so many of them. A really good read. 

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

Detective Abigail Morton of Kent Police is in a race against time to catch a killer before he finds his perfect victim. Because when he finds her, she will die.

She must have red hair, green eyes, and pale skin. Just like Lizzy Oaken. Lizzyʼs drink is spiked. She wakes up in a locked basement. Trapped by a man who knows exactly what he wants from her. He cuts a lock of her hair as a trophy. But for some reason sheʼs not quite right. And Lizzy survives.

Detective Abigail is Lizzyʼs source handler. Her last informant turned up in A&E, badly beaten, too frightened to talk any more. Now sheʼs relying on Lizzy. Because the attacker is still out there. Still searching. And the next woman might be the perfect victim.

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Charlie Gallagher was a serving UK police officer for thirteen years. During that time he had many roles — starting as a front-line response officer, he became a member of a specialist tactical team and finally a detective investigating serious offences. Charlie left to concentrate on writing full time.

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My thoughts: DC Abigail Morton has a tendency to take risks, not check in with her colleagues and put herself in harm’s way. Which she does once again in pursuit of whoever is kidnapping young women, knocking them out, assaulting them and then threatening to send out degrading photos taken during the time they were unconscious. But as awful as it is, sometimes these women end up dead.

The victims have all been students at the university, and there seems to be a link with parties taking place in abandoned, condemned buildings. But Abigail’s informant claims not to know anything.

There’s also a connection to a case from fifteen years ago, could it be the same man, released from prison and living in another county? 

As Abigail continues to run her own investigation, leaving her partner and the wider team out of the loop, she doesn’t realise that she’s being watched, her somewhat foolish attempt to solve the case all by herself, shadowed by people who will keep her safe.

She has good instincts, but is impulsive and her partner, the good natured, cake loving Vince is at the end of his tether. Abigail needs to get better at her communication skills or risk losing her job. Thankfully not this time, and the team might be just in time to save a life.

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