Tag: ##TeamLyons

One murder, three families destroyed
And a detective guilty of a crime of her own

When 18-year-old Ben Renshaw is found dead in city woodland, DCI Robin Lyons is plunged into one of Birmingham’s most controversial cases.

Months earlier, Ben and his best friend gave testimony that sent a former classmate, Alistair Heywood, to prison for a vicious sexual assault. Before the trial, the boys and their families endured months of brutal witness intimidation, for which the Heywoods, a privileged and influential local family, faced no legal repercussions. Instead, they vowed revenge.

Is Ben’s murder the fulfilment of that vow, the beginning of a bloody new chapter that will go on claim lives on all sides? Or is the truth – as the Heywoods claim – something entirely different?

To solve the case, Robin has to negotiate the city’s networks of power while walking a dangerous line: her own daughter, Lennie, has a secret that could threaten her liberty – and, if it comes out, Robin’s, too. Before long, Robin comes to question whether she knows what justice is at all.

About the Author

Lucie Whitehouse grew up in Warwickshire. After studying Classics at Oxford, she moved to London where she worked briefly in journalism before finding her niche in publishing. She writes full time and has contributed features to the Times, the Sunday Times, the Independent, Elle and Red Magazine. Lucie now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

My thoughts: While the Lyons family wait for her brother’s trial, Robin has a complicated and heartbreaking case to deal with. Ben Renshaw, 18, an A Level student who set up a website for victims of rape and sexual assault after his friend was raped, was found murdered in the woods. 

During the trial against his friend’s rapist, he, and another friend, Theo, were targeted, supposedly by the perpetrator’s family. But as Robin and her team dig into the case, and following another murder, it seems much more complicated than it appears and dates back to a previous generation whose pain and guilt have carried through.

This is probably the most complicated and upsetting case for Robin and her team, involving as it does teenagers only a few years older than Lennie, and the sins of the father. And with Luke’s case hanging over her, Robin is tense.

But she never takes her eye off the ball and while justice is hard and the truth brutal, destroying several families, the team do find it, even with the hours and hours of CCTV they had to trawl through. 

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

The gripping new crime thriller from the bestselling author of Before We Met and Critical Incidents

Robin Lyons is back in her hometown of Birmingham and now a DCI with Force Homicide, working directly under Samir, the man who broke her heart almost twenty years ago.

When a woman is found stabbed to death in a derelict factory and no one comes forward to identify the body, Robin and her team must not only hunt for the murderer, but also solve the mystery of who their victim might be.

As Robin and Samir come under pressure from their superiors, from the media and from far-right nationalists with a dangerous agenda, tensions in Robin’s own family threaten to reach breaking point. And when a cold case from decades ago begins to smoulder and another woman is found dead in similar circumstances, rumours of a serial killer begin to spread.

In order to get to the truth Robin will need to discover where loyalty ends and duty begins. But before she can trust, she is going to have to forgive – and that means grappling with some painful home truths.

About the Author

Lucie Whitehouse was born in Gloucestershire in 1975, read Classics at Oxford University and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of The House at Midnight, the TV Book Club pick The Bed I Made and Before We Met, which was a Richard & Judy Summer Book Club pick and an ITV3 Crime Thriller selection.

@LWhitehouse5

My thoughts: Robin has rejoined the police, but not the Met, she’s working at West Midlands Police under Samir. She’s heading up a team in Force Homicide – and her latest case is not an easy one. A murdered girl found naked and unidentifiable in an old factory popular with the homeless.

Soon the far right have picked up on the fact that, while another team have quickly solved the murder of a Black teenager, this young woman remains both unknown and no one has been arrested. Then another young woman’s body is found, but Robin thinks it might not be the same killer, something is just a bit off.

As the team dig into the case and attempt to identify the first victim, the press are hot on their heels and so is a local far right rabble rouser. Tensions are rising, the bosses are on the war path and Robin is trying to hold everything together.

This second outing for Robin is shocking, gripping and a total thrill ride. Birmingham is in the midst of a knife crime epidemic, things are reaching boiling point and they need to solve this case fast, but it turns out to be much more complicated and far darker than first suspected.

By skipping forward a few months from the events of the first book, we miss out on the teething problems of Robin’s return to work, which allows us to ease into the story and get to know the team after they’ve got used to one another. Skipping over the complicated, messy stuff, getting into the knitty gritty of both the case and Robin’s life, which I really enjoyed. Roll on book three!

*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 missing girl. A murdered friend. No one left to trust.

‘Seriously good suspense … trust me, you’ll need to know what happens’ Lee Child

‘Superb characterisation, humour and galloping plot’ Susie Steiner

‘This is that deeply satisfying thing, a strong, deft thriller with real depth’ Tana French

Detective Inspector Robin Lyons is going home.

Dismissed for misconduct from the Met’s Homicide Command after refusing to follow orders, unable to pay her bills (or hold down a relationship), she has no choice but to take her teenage daughter Lennie and move back in with her parents in the city she thought she’d escaped forever at 18.

In Birmingham, sharing a bunkbed with Lennie and navigating the stormy relationship with her mother, Robin works as a benefit-fraud investigator – to the delight of those wanting to see her cut down to size.

Only Corinna, her best friend of 20 years seems happy to have Robin back. But when Corinna’s family is engulfed by violence and her missing husband becomes a murder suspect, Robin can’t bear to stand idly by as the police investigate. Can she trust them to find the truth of what happened? And why does it bother her so much that the officer in charge is her ex-boyfriend – the love of her teenage life?

As Robin launches her own unofficial investigation and realises there may be a link to the disappearance of a young woman, she starts to wonder how well we can really know the people we love – and how far any of us will go to protect our own.

About the author

Lucie Whitehouse was born in Gloucestershire in 1975, read Classics at Oxford University and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of The House at Midnight, the TV Book Club pick The Bed I Made and Before We Met, which was a Richard & Judy Summer Book Club pick and an ITV3 Crime Thriller selection.

@LWhitehouse5

My thoughts: Robin is a senior detective at the Met police and makes a career crashing mistake, then she returns home to Birmingham, with teen daughter Lennie in tow. Sleeping in her childhood bunk bed, with Lennie up top, trying to get to grips with her situation.

Rob goes to work for a family friend, PI Maggie, who as well as cheating husbands, helps out women in trouble. They’re on the case of a young woman who’s gone missing.

Then Rob’s best friend Corinna is killed, her house set on fire and her young son seriously injured. Corinna’s husband Josh is missing, did he do this or were they involved in something more dangerous and is there a link between the missing girl and Corinna?

Rob can’t help but dig into Corinna’s death, despite being told by the police, in the form of ex-boyfriend Samir, to stay away. It turns out she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought.

Gripping from the start, Rob’s a great protagonist, she’s smart with great instincts if a bit too impulsive. She’s good at joining the dots and digging out the smallest clues and following them, even if they don’t lead anywhere good.

This case is incredibly personal to her, involving her closest friends but ones who really have too many secrets. And despite her less than official status she’s faster and more determined than the police.

This book really does set the series up, you get to meet Rob, her family, find out her story as well as learn about what she’s done to end up in her parents’ house in her mid thirties.

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