Tag: reviews

The last thing Penny Carmichael expected when she joined the local bellringing group was for her debut to be thwarted by the discovery of a body just yards from the belfry door.

As her husband and his loyal team painstakingly sift through the evidence and delve deep into the dead man’s past, it’s clear that solving Peter Mackenzie’s murder may prove a challenge, even for someone with DCI Carmichael’s renowned detective prowess.

What was a man who’d lived for decades in North London doing in Moulton Bank? Was his chequered past a factor?
And what about the other members of Penny’s bellringing group. Did any of them have a reason to do Peter harm?

As the case unfolds, DCI Carmicheal and his trusty team seek answers to a complex puzzle which leads them along various paths and, at times, way outside the comfort zone of their rural Lancashire
surroundings.

This fast-paced, cleverly crafted whodunit is the eleventh murder mystery in the gripping Carmichael series from the pen of Ian McFadyen.

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Ian McFadyen was born in Liverpool and enjoyed a successful career in marketing before becoming a writer. Ian’s titles are available in Italian and Czech and, although the author isn’t totally convinced
it’s true, he’s been favourably compared with Wilkie Collins and Colin Dexter. He lives in Hertfordshire with his wife but spends a great deal of his time writing in his bolthole retreat on the Norfolk / Suffolk border. The Corpse Bell is the eleventh in his series featuring DCI Carmichael.

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Instagram : @ianwmcfadyen

My thoughts: The victim might have been murdered in Moulton Bank but he lived near me in North London, so that made me smile.

This is a cleverly plotted, slightly convoluted to keep the detectives on their toes, story, where incidents in the past come to matter a great deal. The deceased, Peter MacKenzie, wasn’t a very nice man, a convicted embezzler, he ran a heir finding business and returned to Moulton Bank, where he’d grown up, for reasons unknown.

Found outside the church bell tower by two bellringers, the police are puzzled, why was he there? Was he meeting someone, and if so, who? His wife thought he was in Yorkshire, at a conference, but clearly that wasn’t the case.

And when one of the bellringers who had found him is also murdered, the plot thickens. What was this man’s connection to it all?

As DCI Carmichael and his team look into the lives of both victims, they uncover some unpleasant things, and slowly piece together the puzzle of who killed them.

I love a carefully constructed, slow burn case, where the tiniest details help bring things together, where the police are looking for the mistakes the killer has made, the things they’ve overlooked, much as in this case.

Really enjoyable (can I really say that about murder? I think I can!) and peopled with interesting characters. That’s another series I now need to read all the backlist books for!  

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

MEET DETECTIVE NICKI HARDCASTLE IN THIS GRIPPING SUFFOLK-BASED CRIME SERIES.

One broken body. Seven missing teeth. A killer who’s only just begun.

Detective Nicki Hardcastle is midway through painting her living room — she’s supposed to be off-duty — when the call comes in. ‘You might want to see this one, boss.’

Minutes later, she’s standing at the foot of a four-storey townhouse in the heart of Bury St Edmunds. A man lies impaled on a black iron spike, his body blood-soaked and broken.

It appears Jacob Towers took his own life. But the details don’t add up.
Why was the dead man carrying seven of his own teeth in his pockets?

Then a chilling voicemail surfaces: ‘It’s time to pay for what you did.’

Two days later, there’s another death. Just as sudden. Just as brutal. And once again — seven teeth.

Someone is dealing out justice, one gruesome death at a time. And they’ve only just begun . .

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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.

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My thoughts: I’m not a fan of teeth, I hate going to the dentist, I go but it really sets my anxiety levels to sky high. There was a task in the last series of Taskmaster involving teeth that made me feel sick. And there’s a very disturbing scene in this book that I really didn’t like.

Having said that, it’s a very clever case, the team are often completely stumped because there’s nothing the victims have in common, beyond the seven teeth.

Whoever is behind these deaths, that at first glance appear to be suicides or accidents, is clever, manipulative and possibly a sadist.

Their motive is so well hidden, and without a key piece of evidence, they might never get the answers. It’s very well done, with plenty of shocking moments and twists. Michelle Kidd really knows how to hook you and keep you hooked.

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

Suzannah is pregnant with her third child. The first is in prison. The second is dead. How far will she go to keep her unborn baby safe?

When Suzannah learns she is pregnant, she feels like safety and happiness are finally within reach.
Her handsome, successful fiancé, Alec, is over the moon about the baby. He proposes and pampers her. He thinks this is Suzannah’s first marriage and first child, but she’s keeping a few secrets.
Actually, a lot of secrets. And they are dangerous…putting Suzannah in a position where she must choose who and what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep her baby and her freedom.

Drowning in her lies, Suzannah is desperate to bury her past, but her ex-husband, who abandoned her years ago, returns, stalking her and demanding to know what really happened to their daughter.

When the imprisoned serial killer who lured and groomed her son, threatens to sell his story to the press, Suzannah feels like the life she’d built and the precious one she’s growing, teeter on a precipice. Now the two children she’s hidden from Alec may be the least of her worries.

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Heidi Field was raised in the beautiful countryside of the South of England with her parents and her two sisters. In her twenties she was a freelance Sports Massage Therapist. She achieved a Degree in Zoology at the age of thirty and then went on to raise two boys and became the stepmother of three more young children.

She still lives near her family home with her partner, their Great Dane and the
children that have yet to fly the nest. In her early forties Heidi completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Winchester University. She entered the course hoping she would become a children’s fantasy writer and left with a burning desire to write contemporary mysteries and thrillers. Heidi wanted to put relatable people in extraordinary situations, challenge them, push them to their limits
and watch them fight for their sanity.

The Other Mother is Heidi’s second novel, the next book in The Peasedale Woods Killers series.

FaceBook page: Heidi Field Author
Insta: Heidi.field.75 Tiktok: @fieldheidi11

My thoughts: Suzannah’s whole relationship with her fiancé is about to fall apart because of the many, many secrets she’s been keeping. She hasn’t told him about her previous marriage, her children,  their fathers, or where she goes every few weeks.

She’s hoping she won’t have to, until an unwelcome blast from the past forces her to. Now things are falling apart completely, because she just can’t seem to tell the whole truth, and Alec’s patience is getting short, he’s worried about her mental state and whether their baby’s safe.

Suzannah’s an unreliable narrator, even to herself she keeps up the pretence and doesn’t share the full truth.

There are plenty of shocking things that come out and more that happen as Suzannah scrambles to stop some of the secrets from spilling out and destroying her life.

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

A body in a suitcase. A woman in a coma. A cold case that’s suddenly red-hot.

When a child’s mummified body is discovered in a suitcase hidden in the loft of a rundown terraced house in Bournemouth, even Sophie Allen and her hardened team of detectives are
shocked to their core.
The only clue to the victim’s identity is a badly-spelt note: Im Jan. im only 10. plees help me.

Meanwhile, a young woman lies in a coma in the local hospital. Student Holly Evans was jabbed in the thigh with a potentially lethal drug while out clubbing with friends. Was Holly simply in the wrong place at the wrong time — or was she deliberately targeted?

When Sophie’s team uncovers a link between Holly and the body in the suitcase, the case takes a shocking twist.
Twenty years ago something very nasty happened inside 68 Crawley Terrace — and someone is prepared to go to any lengths to ensure the truth remains hidden.

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I try to write thoughtful, contemporary crime novels and include several plot layers in my books. The adult novels feature DCI Sophie Allen and her close-knit team of detectives. I don’t write simple whodunnits, nor violent, all-action, gun-toting thrillers.

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My thoughts: This was an excellent addition to this series of crime novels featuring Sophie Allen and her team.

The body of a young child has been found in a suitcase, wedged inside a hidden alcove in the attic of a house. The house belongs to a woman in prison for murder, but before that it belonged to her uncle. She knows something about it, but won’t disclose anything unless the police give her something in return to help with her case.

Meanwhile a student at the University has been ‘spiked’ while out with friends, jabbed in the leg with something in a club. She has a heart condition and is now in a coma. Wrong place, wrong time? It appears so at first, but once they gather more information, something more sinister appears to have been going on.

Could these cases, despite the twenty odd years between them, be connected?

Clever, full of twists and with a team of dedicated detectives on the case, along with some rather suspicious types, who know more than they’re saying, this is the kind of case that will keep you guessing!

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