Tag: crime fiction

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare…

Seventeen-year-old Bryony Lloyd’s father drops her off at a friend’s house to study – but when he returns to pick her up there’s no sign of her, and the woman who lives in the house swears she lives alone. Bryony has vanished into thin air, and her ‘friend’ doesn’t seem to exist.

DI Gaby Darin immediately sees similarities with another missing-persons case: seventeen-year-old Christy Taylor, who vanished without warning several months earlier. There’s nothing in the girls’ personal lives to suggest trouble at home – could someone have taken them both?

After a third case is linked, Gaby knows time is running out if she’s going to find Bryony and Christy alive. After going missing over a year ago, this girl’s just been found dead.

When a tragic accident means Gaby loses a vital member of her team, she distracts herself from her grief by throwing herself into finding the missing girls. Even if it means putting her whole career on the line…

A gripping and thrilling mystery for fans of Angela Marsons, Rachel McLean and Cara Hunter. Cold Grave will have you hooked!

My thoughts: this was another really good book featuring Gaby and her team. This time they’re looking for missing teenage girls – bookish, clever but not particularly striking girls. The last ones you’d expect to run away. But then that might just be the point. Working with Manchester police, who have a similar case, the team gradually draw the net closer on their suspect, but time isn’t on their side.

A shocking tragedy derails Gaby slightly, she’s so caught up in her own emotional spiral that she’s not as focused as she should be. But between DCI Sherlock and Rusty, she’s reminded of the vital role in finding the missing girls that she plays.

I really like these books and so it’s a shame that this is currently the last one planned. Hopefully the author has something good coming up next.

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

All is not well in the village. The local meadows have been the pride of Bishops Well for hundreds of years, but now they are facing the sharp blades of developers. The landowner is a rich and reclusive author who is happy to see them destroyed, but the villagers – including Sam Dee and Maggie Kaye – are fighting back.
Until, that is, someone decides to silence one of their number permanently.
As Maggie and Sam soon discover, there is more than a quick buck to be made in the
developers’ plans. There are age-old secrets and personal vendettas that could have deadly repercussions in Bishops Well today.
With Sam’s legal expertise and Maggie’s… well, Maggie-ness, they delve into the past,
determined to unearth the truth. And, as sparks begin to fly, could there finally be something more between this sleuthing duo?

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Anna Legat is a Wiltshire-based author, best known for her DI Gillian Marsh murder mystery series.
Murder isn’t the only thing on her mind. She dabbles in a wide variety of genres, ranging from dark humorous comedy, through magic realism to dystopian. A globe-trotter and Jack-of-all-trades, Anna
has been an attorney, legal adviser, a silver-service waitress, a school teacher and a librarian. She has lived in far-flung places all over the world where she delighted in people-watching and collecting precious life experiences for her stories. Anna writes, reads, lives and breathes books and can no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction.

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My thoughts: on returning to Bishops Well, there’s a mass act of civil disobedience to start things off, before the first body drops. Because yes, Maggie and Sam have found another dead one, much to DI Gillian Marsh’s annoyance. But it takes them a while to solve this one, first they have to finally work out what happened to Sam’s wife Alice, so she can stop haunting him and as always with Maggie, she picks out a few wrong suspects first.

These books are a bit lighter in tone than the main DI Marsh series, a lot of village life is funny, and the villagers are all fairly eccentric, even with the high murder rate.

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

Meet Julia Bird: recently single, reluctantly retired, and… an amateur sleuth?

Julia Bird has left London for a fresh start in a picturesque Cotswolds village, and the rustic charm and cosy fireplaces of her little cottage are everything she’d hoped for. But when she tears down the old garden shed to make way for a chicken coop, she unearths much more than she’d bargained for… the body of a young woman, apparently buried for decades, thrusting Julia into a baffling mystery.

With only one copper on the case in Berrywick, Julia decides to solve the who and whodunnit herself, taking her wayward puppy Jake along for the ride. And so begins a whirlwind tour of the village – from the dotty 90-year-old to the delightful doctor and the village gardener, it seems everyone has something to hide.

Soon, Julia is convinced she has discovered the killer’s identity, until Jake, a true Labrador, finds a new love of the local lake’s waterfowl and instead ends up catching her chief suspect… drowned. Back at square one, with potential culprits galore, Julia – newly nicknamed the Grim Reaper – despairs at ever solving the murders.

But as Julia ruffles feathers village-wide, the clock is ticking. There is someone in the village who has killed twice already. Will they be prepared to make it third time lucky to keep their secret safe?

This totally addictive page-turning cozy mystery is perfect for fans of M.C. Beaton, Faith Martin and Betty Rowlands.

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Katie Gayle is the writing partnership of best-selling South African writers, Kate Sidley and Gail Schimmel. Kate and Gail have, between them, written over ten books of various genres, but with Katie Gayle, they both make their debut in the cozy mystery genre. Both Gail and Kate live in Johannesburg, with husbands, children, dogs and cats.

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My thoughts: this was a fun murder mystery set in a small English village where everyone knows each other but didn’t know there’s a killer in their midst. Julia’s a new arrival and her decision to get chickens and knock down the old shed in her garden uncovers human remains, sparking off a series of terrible events.

As she starts her own investigation, passing on her finds to the police, someone takes matters into their own hands and Julia is determined to find out who.

I liked Julia, she was very entertaining, and her out of control dog, her neighbours and of course the detective constable who actually lets her help rather than tells her to back off.

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

The third novel in the Shady Hollow mystery series, in which Vera Vixen takes on her most challenging case yet: solving the murder of a rat who appears to still be alive.

Change is afoot in Shady Hollow, with an unusually tense election shaping up between long-serving Chief of Police Theodore Meade and Vera’s beau, Deputy Orville Braun. But the political tension takes a back seat when resident eccentric Dorothy Springfield becomes convinced her beloved husband, Edward, is dead, and that the rat claiming to be him is actually a fraud.

While most of the town dismisses Dorothy’s rants as nothing more than a delusion, Vera has her doubts. More than a few things don’t add up in the Springfield household, but Vera will have to tread carefully, since, with Orville’s attention on the election, she may be more exposed than ever.

My thoughts: a third outing for journalist and amateur sleuth Vera Vixen and possibly the most sneaky crimes yet.

When Dotty Springfield insists her husband has been replaced by an imposter, most of Shady Hollow’s residents dismiss her as crazy, but Vera smells a story, and follows the clues. Which take her on an interesting journey through the Springfield family’s history, and possibly puts her in danger.

She also has to see off an overbearing crime novelist, avoid getting dragged into local politics as the sheriff’s election race heats up and find time for plenty of delicious food.

This is a clever, funny, wry novel and highly enjoyable. I hope there’s more to come as Vera is an engaging protagonist and the crimes she investigates are entertaining and devious.

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

An unsolved mystery ignites a deadly game of chess in this scorching thriller from New York Times bestselling author Mary Burton.

A year after the infamous arsonist Nero was found dead in one of his latest fires, journalist Darcy Sampson receives a tip that the body found at the scene wasn’t Nero at all. Determined to solve the case, Darcy heads to her small hometown in Virginia to track Michael Gannon, an arsonist investigator who refuses to believe that Nero is dead.

But when a new series of fires in the area have a remarkable resemblance to the arsonist’s previous work, Darcy and Gannon are in a race against time to put a stop to Nero once and for all.

But Nero is ready and waiting for them, and he intends on teaching both Gannon and Darcy one last, fatal lesson.

Previously published as The Arsonist

My thoughts: Darcy returns to her hometown on the trail of both arsonist Nero and arson investigator turned mechanic Gannon. She thinks she’s just after a story but once she and Gannon meet, sparks fly, and not the fiery kind.

As buildings burn and the press starts to descend, Darcy struggles to help her alcoholic brother and emotionally detached mother keep the family diner afloat, and help Gannon search for Nero – who might be someone close by.

I liked Darcy, I liked Gannon even though he doesn’t give much away about himself. I think this could grow into a series where the two of them seek out dangerous criminals using their investigative skills.

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