Tag: crime fiction

Four dead bodies. One missing person. Let the game begin.
When an anonymous tip-off leads Detective Nikki Parekh and DS Sajid Malik to the sprawling Salinger estate, Nikki’s senses are on high alert. The brutal murder of all four members of the
Salinger family has shocked the sleepy Bradford village to the core.
A mother, father, daughter, and son. . . all killed in exactly the same way – whilst sat around the coffee table, playing a game of Monopoly.
But Nikki notices that there are five pieces on the board. One of the players is missing… Did they manage to escape the killer, or was the killer part of the game?

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Born in Scotland made in Bradford sums up LIZ MISTRY’s life. Over thirty-five years ago she moved from a small village in West Lothian to Yorkshire to get her teaching degree. Once here, Liz fell in love
with three things: curries, the rich cultural diversity of the city… and her Indian husband (not necessarily in this order). Now thirty years, three children, Scumpy, the cat, and a huge extended family later, Liz uses her experiences of living and working in the inner city to flavour her writing. Her gritty crime fiction police procedural novels set in Bradford embrace the city she describes as ‘Warm, Rich and Fearless’, whilst exploring the darkness that lurks beneath.
Having struggled with severe clinical depression and anxiety for many years, Liz often includes mental health themes in her writing. She credits the MA in Creative Writing she took at Leeds Trinity University with helping her find a way of using her writing to navigate her ongoing mental health struggles. Liz’s PhD research contributes significantly to debates concerning issues of inclusion and
diversity of representation within the most socially engaged genre of contemporary crime fiction.
Being a debut novelist in her fifties was something Liz had only dreamed of and she counts herself lucky, whilst pinching herself regularly to make sure it’s all real.
You can contact Liz via her website.

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My thoughts: I really enjoy this series, I love the relationships between the characters, especially Nikki and Saj, and the rest of their team. Their boss DCI Abad is more prominent in this book, which as he’s dating Nikki’s sister is nice, because he’s becoming more of a part of her found family. And as there’s a wedding on the horizon – family is in Nikki’s mind.

There’s a murdered family, all sat round the table playing Monopoly – a game that definitely causes a few feuds and fights, but murder? When they look deeper, it seems there’s more going on. The eldest daughter went missing years before, is there a connection here?

Gripping as ever, this case moves between several different narrators and time periods – showing us a dark, hidden world, that Nikki and her team will bring to light and put an end to. It also seems to involve some of the more senior police figures, will that change things for the better?

Make sure you read the author’s note at the end, Liz is an interesting person and it’s always fun and insightful to learn about the inspiration behind an author’s work. I thought this was a particularly poignant one.

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

A bullet to the brain. An estranged daughter. And a spate of brutal murders.

A bullet lodged in the frontal lobe is bound to cause a few health issues. For DI Al Crow, it’s just the beginning.

When his estranged daughter Rosie is accused of being involved in a grisly murder, Crow becomes her only hope of being acquitted.

Desperate to save his daughter, Crow goes all out to solve the case. He knows this is a chance to repair a rift that has torn his family apart and to prove to his bosses that he’s still up to the job.

The stakes are high, but things are complicated.

To solve the murder, Crow must reckon with his ex-wife’s connection to a seasoned, ruthless conman and Rosie’s relationship with a dangerously unstable psychologist. Can he crack the case and save his family and his career?

Her Last Chance is an intricate crime thriller that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very last page.

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H J Reed lives and writes in Bristol, where she graduated with a PhD in psychology and began a long career lecturing in psychology and criminology, both in mainstream universities and in the prison education system. Her evenings were spent writing novels and short stories in various genres and styles, and pondering on the strange workings of the criminal mind. After a number of publication successes, she gained an MA in creative writing and went on to teach literature and the arts.  Now, she is able to follow her lifelong passion and write crime fiction full time. When she is not writing, she can be found being taken for long muddy walks by a middle-aged, temperamental toy poodle, or in far-flung foreign cities thinking up new plots.

This is HJ’s first DI Crow novel published with Inkubator Books.

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My thoughts: I really enjoyed this book, DI Crow is exactly my sort of curmudgeon. He’s on sick leave after a horrendous injury but swiftly on the case when his daughter Rosie is accused of assisting a murderer in escaping from the psychiatric hospital she works in.

Both he son-in-law John, know she’s innocent, but how to prove it? There follows an incredibly complex and twisting plot, the scheme behind it, the links to two other far flung similar cases (one in Spain) and several other incidents are somewhat tenuous, but Crow’s boss believes him. So they just have to tie it all together and nab the real suspect. Easy.

Totally gripping, excellent writing, clever, suspenseful and enjoyable. I look forward to more DI Crow books from their new home at Inkubator.

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

They should have been watching. But my little girl is gone…

On this crisp October day, the class of six-year-old children are wrapped up warm in gloves and coats for their trip to a local farm. They giggle as they stroke the animals and search for the perfect Halloween pumpkin, and as I watch my daughter Claire race off with her friends, the pink ribbon in her hair bouncing, I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s been so hard since my husband died and my sweet little girl deserves to be happy.

But as the sun sets and the teachers gather the children, Claire is nowhere to be seen.

We call the police and frantically scour the fields and playgrounds, my heart breaking as I cry out Claire’s name. And then a detective shows me a video: my daughter, skipping away from the farm, holding hands with an adult in a bulky coat, their cap pulled down low.

My blood turns to ice. Claire would never leave with a stranger. Whoever took her must be someone I know.

But who could want to punish me this badly? Is it linked to the night I refuse to think about—the terrible night my husband died?

Did my mistakes put my baby girl in danger?
Can I save her by finally facing the past?
Or will I lose her forever when the truth comes out?

A brilliantly twisty thriller that will have you gripped from the first page to the final reveal. Perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware and Lisa Jewell.

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Miranda Smith writes psychological and domestic suspense. She is drawn to stories about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. Before completing her first novel, she worked as a newspaper staff writer and a secondary English teacher. She lives in East Tennessee with her husband and three young children.

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My thoughts: I don’t have kids, but I did used to work with them, and with the same age group as the class in this book. You cannot take your eyes off them for a second. And a second is all it takes for little Claire to disappear. Who has her and why? Is it someone close to the family or is there a link to her father’s tragic death two years before? Who can be trusted?

The twists and turns just keep coming, it’s hard to know which characters are being truthful, they all seem to have things to hide, and as events develop, more coincidences occur – detectives never like those. Will they get Claire back safely? Well, you’ll have to read it to find out!

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

By 2:27 on a Thursday afternoon, the one-legged man from Room 8 at 147 Loxitor Avenue had been beaten to death with a lead pipe. Twenty-eight minutes later, Detective Mike O’Shea is testifying in a stuffy courtroom, unaware that, within an hour, he will be standing in an alleyway littered with beer cans and condoms while his new partner uses a ballpoint pen to flick bugs off of a battered corpse. 

When a rogue undercover copper leaves Mike balancing what is legal with what is right, an unlikely rapport develops between Mike and the lead homicide investigator, a cop’s cop in stilettos. 

At the end of his seventy-two-hour shift, three men are dead, and Mike O’Shea is floating in and out of consciousness in an emergency room hallway, two women by his side.

In the second of the Mike O’Shea Series, Death Before Coffee weaves a homicide investigation through the life of an inner-city police detective intent on balancing his responsibilities as a son, brother, and newly single father with his sworn oath of duty and the promise he made himself to find the man who murdered a former partner.

Born and raised in Toronto, Desmond P. Ryan graduated from UofT and joined what was then the Toronto Police Force. He has been a front-line officer, a beat cop, a patrol sergeant, an instructor at the Toronto Police College, and a detective over the almost thirty years of his career.

Whether as a beat cop or a plainclothes detective, Desmond dealt with good people who did bad things and bad people who followed their instincts. Now a retired detective, he writes crime fiction. Des is presently working on the Mike O’Shea Series and the Mary-Margaret Series, both published by Level Best Books.

Desmond lives in the Toronto neighbourhood known as Cabbagetown, where he can be seen wandering about, considering his next plot point or on his way to the pub.

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My thoughts: we rejoin Detective Mike O’Shea 13 years after the events of 10-33 Assist PC which have shed his optimism, he’s not that cop any more. Now he just wants to get through the day and get a decent cup of coffee at some point.

That’s not to say he’s not a good detective, he is, one of the better ones, but he’s a bit more jaded, a bit less hopeful. And they still haven’t arrested Sal’s killer. Now with several cases on the go, in court and at the station, Mike’s a busy man. His personal life’s in free fall, he hasn’t had time to iron his clothes and there’s a murderer to find. All in a (very long) day’s work.

There’s plenty of action and familiar faces from the first book pop up, adding to the continuity. It’s the same city, but different, the passing of time and all that. But there’s still Sunday dinner at his mother’s, there’s still crime and he still hasn’t really spent any time with his son Max. The only rest he really gets is a trip to A&E.

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

DI Kate Young’s team is hunting for a killer. What they don’t know…is that the killer is her.

DI Kate Young has known for years that her boss, Superintendent John Dickson, is a violent and evil man. But when she finally confronts him and accidentally shoots and kills him, she’s forced to cover her tracks before anyone can pin his death on her. With revelations about his corruption soon to become public knowledge, Kate sets up a trail of evidence to make it seem that Dickson has conveniently vanished…

But Kate knows the corruption doesn’t end with Dickson. As she heads up the team investigating his supposed disappearance, she also pursues other loose ends. Stanka, the sex worker who supplied the evidence against Dickson, leads her to crucial information on another corrupt officer, DI Harriet Khatri, and her dubious involvement with sex traffickers.

As the noose starts to tighten on Kate, she finds herself targeted by traffickers, the bent cops on her force and even her own team of detectives. Can she stay one step ahead of them all and bring Harriet to justice? Can she trust anyone around her? And can she possibly get away with murder?

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USA Today bestselling author and winner of The People’s Book Prize Award, Carol Wyer’s crime novels have sold over one million copies and been translated into nine languages. 

A move from humour to the ‘dark side’ in 2017, saw the introduction of popular DI Robyn Carter in Little Girl Lost and proved that Carol had found her true niche.

February 2021 saw the release of the first in the much-anticipated new series, featuring DI Kate Young. An Eye For An Eye was chosen as a Kindle First Reads and became the #1 bestselling book on Amazon UK and Amazon Australia. 

Carol has had articles published in national magazines ‘Woman’s Weekly’, featured in ‘Take A Break’, ‘Choice’, ‘Yours’ and ‘Woman’s Own’ magazines and the Huffington Post. She’s also been interviewed on numerous radio shows discussing ”Irritable Male Syndrome’ and ‘Ageing Disgracefully’ and on BBC Breakfast television.

She currently lives on a windy hill in rural Staffordshire with her husband Mr. Grumpy… who is very, very grumpy. When she is not plotting devious murders, she can be found performing her comedy routine, Smile While You Still Have Teeth.

To learn more, go to http://www.carolwyer.co.uk, subscribe to her YouTube channel, or follow her on Twitter: @carolewyer

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My thoughts: this series just gets better and better, my heart was in my mouth as Kate digs herself in deeper, putting everything at risk to bring down the syndicate and stop Superintendent Dickson and his cronies. Although now she’s got her own neck in the noose.

She’s having to put her trust in a lot of people, and some she barely knows. Like Stanka, a young woman who’s been trafficked and wants to rescue her little sister from the same criminal gang. She needs Kate’s help and Kate needs hers.

The person Kate thought she could trust perhaps isn’t the one she should, as secrets come tumbling out of various closets.

I was totally hooked once more, Carol Wyer has created characters that just pull you in and Kate is chief among them. I was rooting for her but also wondering how long she could stay out of the suspicions of some of her colleagues.

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

D/C Mike O’Shea, a young cop with a knack for working hard and following hunches, is on the verge of cracking a prostitution ring when an undercover from another unit burns him. 

With only days left before their pimps shuttle the girls out of the country, Mike pushes his team into overdrive. Hours later, with too little information, sleep, or luck, the unthinkable happens.

And now, the chase is personal.

In the first of the Mike O’Shea Series, 10-33 Assist PC draws us into the dirty world of human trafficking through the eyes of the cops who put their lives on the line every day to shut it down.

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Born and raised in Toronto, Desmond P. Ryan graduated from UofT and joined what was then the Toronto Police Force. He has been a front-line officer, a beat cop, a patrol sergeant, an instructor at the Toronto Police College, and a detective over the almost thirty years of his career.

Whether as a beat cop or a plainclothes detective, Desmond dealt with good people who did bad things and bad people who followed their instincts. Now a retired detective, he writes crime fiction. Des is presently working on the Mike O’Shea Series and the Mary-Margaret Series, both published by Level Best Books.

Desmond lives in the Toronto neighbourhood known as Cabbagetown, where he can be seen wandering about, considering his next plot point or on his way to the pub.

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My thoughts: the team that are the the focus of this book are the good guys, tough, wise cracking cops who deal with one of the worst crimes – sex offences, in this case human trafficking, involving minors. The underage teenage girls Mike and his colleagues are looking for have been tricked, kidnapped, raped and abused. But that doesn’t mean everyone has given up on them.

Unfortunately a tangle with another team means their cover’s blown and now the risks are worse, the danger becomes personal when Mike’s partner is hurt and Mike determines to stop at nothing to get these young girls home and safe, bringing down the ring and locking up the cruel men involved.

There’s time for humour in amongst the grimness of their jobs, teasing their partners, asking for new ones, winding up the boss. There’s Sal, with his horrible sunflower seed habit, Julia and her Italian swearing. There’s even time to drop by Mike’s mother’s house for family dinner – even cops have to eat. Until it turns deadly, then everyone becomes laser focused.

A solid new police procedural set in Toronto, with realistic characters and intelligent plotting. This series should be really enjoyable if this first book is anything to go by.

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

Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).

But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.

Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth

My thoughts: this is very, very funny. Not exactly a surprise from the author of Dial A For Aunts and Four Aunties and a Wedding. Vera owns a small tea shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown and her life is pretty quiet until she finds a dead body in her shop one morning.

Gathering her suspects up, and building a found family along the way, she investigates the death, much to the irritation of Officer Grey at the local police station, who would rather she leave it alone.

Vera is delightful but you definitely don’t mess with her and she’s impossible to say no to. Everyone tries to, but somehow this Chinese Miss Marple bowls you along with her. It might be the mountains of food she keeps making, or just the way she carries on as though no one else spoke, but her determination to solve the mystery of the dead man in the tea shop is compelling.

The people she draws into her orbit, her suspects, slowly come to love her and bond with each other as they’re all lonely. Vera gives them advice and encouragement as well as keeping them very well fed (I was so hungry by the end of this book) so they become less alone and closed off. But does she solve the case? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out!

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